Graduate Program Notes
The excellent work of our program’s graduate students, present and former, continues to be recognized with competitive research fellowships and success in a challenging job market.
Current Students
PhD candidate Kaitlin Simpson accepted a tenure-track position as an assistant professor of US history at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette starting in August 2024. She will be defending her dissertation, “The Flowers of El Dorado,” on the transnational history of the cut flower trade in the US and Colombia during the 20th century, in the early summer.
Thomas Maurer defended his PhD dissertation in June 2023, and not long thereafter, took a position as assistant professor of History at Ave Maria University in Florida. Maurer was also a finalist for a Fulbright to Italy.
Kyle Vratarich was recently awarded a fellowship from the White House Historical Society to undertake dissertation research. He will spend two months in Washington, DC, searching through repositories such as the National Archives, the Library of Congress, and the Kiplinger Research Library to develop his research on Orville Babcock’s role in the Grant Administration, the scandals in which he was involved, and his work to develop the physical landscape of the nation’s capital.
Roraig Finney was awarded a one-week Filson Fellowship at the Filson Historical Society, the primary historical archive and library of the state of Kentucky. Finney will travel to Louisville to conduct research for his dissertation on the politics of immigration in the US South in the latter half of the 19th century. He also received a Special Collections Research Travel Grant from the Louisiana State University Libraries, which will allow him to pursue dissertation research.
Ashley Cornell, current premodernist master’s degree student, received a competitive grant from the College of Arts and Sciences to research AI literacy and its utility in the humanities classroom. This was part of the College’s recent AI Educational Campaign. I’m very excited to see the results of Ashley’s work!
Alumni
2018 doctoral graduate Allen York’s first book, Our People are Warlike: Civil War Pittsburgh and Home-Front Mobilization, will be published in November by the University of Tennessee Press.
2021 doctoral graduate Alexandra Garnhart-Bushakra started a position as academic program manager and course instructor in the Department of History at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh.
2014 doctoral graduate Jordan Kuck, now an associate professor of history at Brevard College, was selected to serve as the keynote speaker of the World Affairs Conference’s national conference in Washington, DC. Kuck will be speaking on “How the War in Ukraine Melted Frozen Conflicts in the Baltic States.”
Grad Student Stacie Beach Lobbies for the Humanities in DC
During the 2024 spring break, history PhD candidate Stacie Beach traveled to Washington, DC, to attend the National Humanities Alliance (NHA) Annual Meeting and Advocacy Day. The NHA works with humanities faculty, institutions, and advocates to bolster humanities enrollments, promote public engagement with the humanities, and increase funding for the humanities. During the annual Humanities Advocacy Day, Beach joined others in meeting the state’s Congressional leaders to discuss and promote the humanities and funding programs that support work in the humanities.
The primary focus for the Tennessee delegation, with members from the University of Tennessee, Eastern Tennessee State University, and Vanderbilt University, was to advocate for Congressional support for the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). While the NEH provides research grants to university faculty in the humanities, most of the money the NEH receives from the government is dispersed through local history councils to help support museums and public outreach across the country.