Current Graduate Students

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Stephen Arguetta received his BA in International Affairs from Northeastern University in Boston in 2000 and entered the Boston University PhD program in 2003 with a Presidential Fellowship. He is studying American diplomatic history and international history with Professors David Mayers and William Keylor. His interests include Cold War history (specifically US policy toward Europe and Latin America), as well as cultural and intellectual history. Prior to enrolling at Boston University, Stephen found work as a development research analyst and as a professional musician. E-Mail

Christine Axen received her MA from Boston University with a research project that reinterpreted the political message of the Bayeux Tapestry. She is currently framing a dissertation project concerning the lay religious life of medieval Le Puy-en-Velay, under the tutelage of Professor Clifford Backman. E-Mail

AJ Ballou received an MA degree from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2006 and an MTS (Master of Theological Studies) degree from the Iliff School of Theology in Denver, Colorado, in 2002. He received his BA from Maryville College in 1998. AJ is focusing on modern US intellectual history with Professor Jon Roberts as his advisor. He is currently writing his dissertation, “Fellowship Reverberations: The Fellowship of Reconciliation and Social Christianity, 1914-1947.” E-Mail

Anne Blaschke entered the PhD program in 2003, after taking her BA from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2000 and working as a writer and editor in historical publishing for three years. She studies American sociocultural political history and women’s and gender history, and is in the final stages of writing her dissertation, “Racing Toward Activism: Women, Race, and Sport in the United States, 1928-1978.” Her adviser is Professor Bruce Schulman. E-Mail

Seth Blumenthal Field: American. Advisor: Professor Bruce Schulman. E-Mail

Daniel Burge entered Boston University’s graduate PhD program in 2011 after receiving his BA at the University of Puget Sound in 2010. He is studying 20th century American history (political, economic, and social) with Professor Bruce Schulman. E-Mail

Christina Carrick entered the Boston Univeristy PhD program in 2011 after receiving her BA in History from the University of Indianapolis.  She is studying Colonial and Revolutionary American history with Professor Brendan McConville, and is particularly interested in Loyalists in the American Revolution. E-mail

Brian Casady earned his BA from Oregon State University in 1998 and entered the Boston University PhD program in 2004 and is studying African history with Professor Diane Wylie. His area of interest is the history of urban infrastructure in East Africa with a particular focus on the changing patterns of energy use and the interaction between built and natural environments. E-Mail

Dane (D.J.) Cash entered the Boston University PhD program in 2003 and is currently writing his dissertation, “The Forgotten Debate: American Intellectual Opinion and the Korean War, 1950-19953,” under the direction of Professors William Keylor and Andrew Bacevich. He has taught American history at Emmanuel College in Boston. E-Mail

Christopher Conz entered the Ph.D. program in African History at Boston University in 2011.  He earned his B.S. from the University of Hartford in 1999 and a Master of Education at UMASS, Amherst in 2004.  Chris taught courses in World and U.S. history at Longmeadow High School in Western Massachusetts for three years before serving in the Peace Corps in Lesotho from 2007-2010. His research interests focus on Lesotho, environmental history, and the broader region of southern Africa.  He is working with Professors Wylie and McCann. E-Mail

Patrick Culhane received his BA from the University of Massachusetts in 2008 and entered the Boston University MA program in 2010. He taught history for two years at a public school in Massachusetts before entering the program. He is interested in the struggle between church and state, especially during the medieval period, and also in religious history in general. E-Mail

Andrew David entered the Boston University PhD program in 2009 after receiving a BA in history from BU in 2005 and an MA in the History of International Relations from the London School of Economics in 2006. He is working on topics relating to US foreign policy with Professor David Mayers. He is especially interested in Anglo-American relations in the twentieth century, the evolution of the National Security Council, and the foreign policy decision-making process. E-Mail

Beth M. Forrest Field: European, history of food. Advisor: Professor Thomas Glick. E-Mail

Zach Fredman received his BA from the University of Arizona in 2003. He entered the Boston University PhD program in 2009 after spending several years working in Chengdu, China, as an ESL and Research Methods teacher. He is interested in studying the history of twentieth-century American foreign policy and international relations, particularly US-China relations. His advisor is Professor Andrew Bacevich. E-Mail

Sara Georgini entered the Boston University MA program in 2007 after earning a BS in ournalism in 1998 and a BLS in history in 2007, both from BU. Admitted to the PhD program in the fall of 2009, she is studying early American history with Professor Jon Roberts and is particularly interested in the link between colonial religion and revolution. E-Mail

Lilly Havstad entered the Boston University PhD program in 2010 after earning her BA in history from the University of California at Davis in 2008. She studied abroad in Durban, South Africa, from 2006 to 2007 where she attended the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Howard College. She hopes to study economic and social histories of contemporary social justice issues such as foreign economic aid, public health initiatives, and other applications of development in colonial and post-colonial Southern Africa. She is also interested in studying transnational history and Africa’s relationships with other parts of the world. E-Mail

Aaron Hiltner received his BA from Gustavus Adolphus College in 2010 and subsequently entered the MA program at Boston University in 2010. He is working in post-World War II American cultural history while examining issues of race, masculinity, and identity. He will study these issues with Professor Bruce Schulman. E-Mail

Katherine (Kate) Hollander earned an interdisciplinary BA in poetry and German history from Marlboro College in Marlboro, Vermont, in 2002. A poet as well as a student of history, she has a master’s degree from Boston University’s graduate program in creative writing and has published poetry and criticism in a variety of literary journals, including a review of a new translation of the late work of the German-language poet Paul Celan. She has a longstanding interest in German cultural and political history, particularly in the Social Democratic Party (SPD), and is pursuing research on the SPD’s stance on the arts during the Wilhelmine and Weimar periods. She is working with James Schmidt. E-Mail

Michael Holm holds a BA (1998) and an MA (2002) in contemporary history from the University of Southern Denmark in Odense, Denmark, and an MA in History from McGill University in Montreal, Canada (2007). He entered Boston University’s PhD program in history in 2008. His primary interest is the Cold War, and he is working with Professor William Keylor on the interplay of American ideology and trans-Atlantic relations during the Eisenhower era. E-Mail

Ellen Horrow received her AB in history from Princeton University in 2004 and entered the Boston University PhD program in 2006 with a Presidential Fellowship. She is focusing on American diplomatic and economic history with Professor Louis Ferleger. Her dissertation examines the American and British oil industries in the Middle East in the post-World War II period. E-Mail

Scott Hough entered the Boston University MA program after receiving his BA from the University of Washington in 2008. Between programs, he spent six months studying Japan’s language and modern culture in Tokyo. He is working in US diplomatic history with Professor Cathal Nolan and is especially interested in the international crisis of the mid-twentieth century and how it transformed America, its view of itself, and role in the world. E-Mail

Darcy Jacobsen received her bachelor’s degree from Boston University in 1990 and entered the MA/PhD program in autumn 2006. Prior to returning to school she had an interim career as a marketing manager and writer in Massachusetts and Washington State. Darcy is studying medieval history at BU and has a strong interest in dynastic ties throughout Europe during the high and late medieval periods, particularly those connected to the Angevin empire. Her advisor is Professor Clifford Backman. E-Mail

Douglas C. Kierdorf Field: medieval European. Advisor: Professor Thomas Glick. E-Mail

Linda Killian Field: American. Advisor: Professor Bruce Schulman. E-Mail

Krista Kinslow entered the Boston University Ph.D. program in 2011 after graduating from the University of Indianapolis in Indianapolis, Indiana, with a bachelor’s degree in Marketing and History. She is studying nineteenth century United States history, specifically dealing with Reconstruction following the Civil War. Her specific research interests regard the study of the emancipation of slaves and the government’s role in aiding this transition, especially the role agencies such as the Freedmen’s Bureau played. She also is intrigued by the nation’s construction of memory following the Civil War and Reconstruction and the role rhetoric from Revolutionary War anniversaries may have had on the people’s view of reunion between North and South. Her advisor is Nina Silber. E-Mail

A graduate of the University of California at Berkeley (BA, Rhetoric 1999) and the University of Virginia School of Law (JD 2002), Aaron Knapp entered the Boston University PhD program in the fall of 2010. From 2002 to 2010, he was a trial attorney in San Francisco, practicing in a broad range of substantive areas, including constitutional law and insurance and securities law, and writing and speaking on related legal topics. At Boston University, he is studying US intellectual history with Professor Charles Capper, focusing on the history of law and lawyers, the history of political thought, and the intellectual origins of American constitutionalism. E-Mail

Benjamin Kochan received a BS from MIT in 2006. Prior to entering the PhD program at Boston University in 2011, Ben spent five years working for a Boston-based seafood processor and distributor. His interests are in nineteenth and twentieth-century U.S. environmental history, particularly the history of New England’s maritime industries. His advisor is Professor Sarah Phillips. E-Mail

Jonathan Koefoed received his BA in philosophy and his BA in history from The Barrett College at Arizona State University in 2004. He received his MA in historical theology (American emphasis) from Saint Louis University in 2007 and entered the PhD program at Boston University the same year with a Dean’s Fellowship. He is studying nineteenth-century American intellectual history with Professors Charles Capper and Jon Roberts. He is particularly interested in the advent of American Transcendentalism and the transatlantic influence of Samuel Taylor Coleridge on the American story. While at Saint Louis, Jonathan was recognized by the Graduate Student Association for presenting the best original research paper at the Annual Graduate Research Symposium. E-Mail

Jolanta Komornicka received her BA from Reed College in 2004 for History-Literature. She is studying medieval history under Professor Clifford Backman. In 2005 she received her MA from Boston University on the topic of contemporary reactions to Jadwiga of Anjou’s reign in Poland. Jolanta is currently writing her dissertation–under the direction of Professors Clifford Backman, Deeana Klepper, and Dan Smail–on the concept of lese-majesty in France under Philip VI Valois, with a particular focus on the role played by the Parlement of Paris.E-Mail

Mark Kukis joined the Boston University PhD program in 2011. Before that Kukis worked as a journalist for roughly a decade, including three years as a correspondent for Time magazine in Iraq. He has also written for the New Republic and Salon. His most recent book is Voices from Iraq: A People’s History, 2003-2009 (Columbia University Press, 2011). The book is an oral history of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq as told entirely by Iraqis. Originally from Texas, Kukis earned a BA in journalism from the University of Texas at Austin. At BU Kukis is focusing on U.S. foreign relations. His advisor is Andrew Bacevich. E-Mail

François Lalonde entered the Boston University PhD program in 2005 after earning his BA and his MA at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He is mostly interested in twentieth-century international relations, particularly the early Cold War, and is working with Professor William Keylor. He is also interested in modern American history and in American foreign policy. E-Mail

Kathryn Lamontagne received her BA and MA from Providence College in 2001 and 2003 respectively. She also earned an MA from the Institute of Germanic and Romance Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London in Cultural Memory in 2005. Her MA dissertation in London explored the dual roles of remembrance and forgetting of the Irish Civil War at Kilmainham Gaol and Museum, Dublin. Entering the Boston University PhD program in 2006, she is working with Professors Charles Dellheim and Arianne Chernock in the field of modern British cultural history. E-Mail

William McCoy entered the Boston University MA program in 2002 after earning a BA in history two years before at Point Loma Nazarene University in San Diego, California. Having been admitted to the PhD program, he is working in the field of African history with Professor Diana Wylie and is particularly interested in the history of southern Africa and the development of contemporary Africa out of the colonial period. E-Mail

Gareth McFeely entered the Boston University PhD program in 2008. He received his BA from Trinity College Dublin in 1995 and his MPhil from the University of Cambridge in 1998. His primary interest is in the history of leisure in Africa, and he is working on African popular culture and audience responses, particularly related to the movies. E-Mail

Michael McGuire received his BA in history from Vassar College in 1998 and in the fall of 1999 entered the Boston University PhD program with a Mellon Fellowship in Humanistic Studies. His main academic interest is the domestic and foreign situation of the French Army prior to World War I. His advisor is Professor William Keylor. E-Mail

Natalie Mettler entered the Boston University PhD program im 2005. She received her BA in anthropology and French from Macalester College in 2003. Her interests include African agricultural and food history and its relevant applications to contemporary development efforts, transformation in African Diaspora societies, and the repercussions in governance of colonial changes in Africa. E-Mail

David Mislin entered the Boston University PhD program in September 2006 after receiving a BA in history from Oberlin College in 2003 and a Masters of Theological Studies in American religious history from Harvard Divinity School in 2005. His area of interest is twentieth-century American social and religious history, with a focus on the experience of US Catholics. He is working with Professor Jon Roberts. E-Mail

Katie Moore received her BA from Barnard College in 2009. She entered the Boston University PhD program in 2010 with a Dean’s Fellowship and is working with Professor Brendan McConville in the field of early American history. Her research interests include political economy, race and gender, and the Atlantic world. E-Mail

Amy Noel entered the Boston University PhD program after receiving her BA from California State University, Fresno in 2009. She is studying early American history with Professor Brendan McConville and is particularly interested in the revolutionary era, as well as iconography and public memory during the early republic. E-Mail

David Olson received his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history from McGill University in his home town of Montréal. He has broad interests in international and global history. In 2008, he received a travel grant from the European Union Center of Excellence in order to pursue archival research in Europe. He entered the Boston University PhD program in 2009 and is studying transatlantic relations in the seventies. E-Mail

Katherine Opie received her BS from the United States Military Academy in 2001 and entered the Boston University MA program in 2009. Ater serving in the Army for eight years, she is taking this opportunity to branch out and study African history. She is particularly interested in East Africa in the aftermath of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. E-Mail

Patricia Peknik entered the Boston University PhD program in 2004 after earning an MA from the English Department and an MA from the Department of History at BU. She is working with Professors Jon Roberts and Charles Capper, focusing on nineteenth-century American intellectual history. E-Mail

Joel Pinsker received his BA from Clark University in 2001. He entered the Boston University MA program in 2010 after spending a year abroad in southern Germany as a Fulbright fellow and working several years in the business world. He is studying Jewish intellectuals in Wilhelmine Prussia and late Hapsburg Austria and their relationships to modernity, nationalism, and anti-Semitism. He is working with Professor Simon Rabinovitch. E-Mail

Matt Pressman received a B.A. in history from Dartmouth College in 2003 and entered the Ph.D. program at Boston University in 2011. In the intervening years he worked as a journalist at Vanity Fair magazine, where he was an assistant editor and occasional writer (a series of his articles about the media won the 2010 Mirror Award for Best Commentary, digital media). He is studying 20th-century American history with Bruce Schulman and is particularly interested in the history of the news media in America. E-Mail

Philip Rotz received his BA from Eastern Nazarene College in 1999 and entered the Boston University PhD program in 2010. From 2002 to 2010, he worked in public health and health system strengthening programs in Botswana and across Southern Africa. He is pursuing studies in African history. His interests include the development of healthcare services and systems in southern Africa, medical education and the migratory patterns of clinicians, and the relationship between service delivery and perceptions of legitimacy in developing country settings. E-Mail

Chris Seely received both his BA and his BS from the University of Utah in 2005. He entered the Boston University MA program in 2006. He was admitted to the PhD program in fall 2007 and is studying twentieth-century US political history, working closely with Professor William Keylor. E-Mail

Robert Shimp graduated from Marquette University in 2011 with a BA in both History and Broadcast and Electronic Communications. He is currently studying with Professor Brendan McConville in early American history. His major interests are in the development of American political history and diplomatic history in the early Republic. E-Mail

Zachary Smith received his BA from Emory University in 2001 and his MA from the University of Colorado, Boulder, in 2005. He is studying modern United States history with Professor Bruce Schulman. He is particularly interested in political history, especially the post-World War II conservative movement and Congress. E-Mail

Kallie Szczepanski received her BA in the history of Africa/the Middle East from Western Washington University in 1997 and a JD from the University of Washington School of Law in 2002. She entered the Boston University PhD program in 2008 with a Presidential Fellowship. She is studying the environmental history of Africa with Professor James McCann. Her interests include the history of interactions between people and landscapes in Ethiopia and legal issues surrounding land use. E-Mail

Benjamin Twagira, who is from Rwanda, received his MA in 2008 from the University of Wisconsin, studying journalism and mass communication. For his master’s thesis he read oral traditions from pre-colonial Rwanda to understand how state actors legitimized state-based violence, especially when such violence targeted the elite and powerful people. He has also worked for the New York Public Library as an in-house researcher for the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. When he decided to pursue a PhD in African history, he wanted to broaden his focus to include the greater East African region; he entered the Boston University program in 2010 and is working with Professor Diana Wylie. E-Mail

Sarah Westwood received her BA in history from DePaul University in 2003.  She entered Boston University MA program in 2007 after serving two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Senegal.  She was admitted to the PhD program in 2009 and focuses on the military history of West Africa.  Her current research explores the development and evolution of the Senegalese army.E-Mail