Dissertations in Progress
Dissertator: Allio, Andrew
Advisor: Porter, Eric
Dissertation title:“Now Boarding, Platform Two: BART and the Development of the Modern San Francisco Bay Area”
Dissertator: Bergamini, Clara
Advisor: Christy, Alan
Dissertation title:”Learning Nation and Enacting Empire Through Disaster”
Dissertator: Butingan, Leonard
Advisor: Matera, Marc
Dissertation title:”Black Anti-Racist Activism and the ‘Afterlife of Empire’ in Britain 1976-2000″
Dissertator: Chan, Man Ning
Advisor: Hu, Minghui
Dissertation title:”Music, Tradition, and Power: A History of Qin-zither in Early Modern China”
Dissertator: Crowder, Troy
Advisor: Cioc, Mark
Dissertation title: “Creeping Blight: A History of Tropical Agriculture and Pandemic Disease, 1850-2000”
Dissertator: Cruz, Carlos
Advisor: Delgado, Grace
Dissertation title:”Magonismo in Continuum: A Historical and Contemporary Exploration of Ricardo and Enrique Flores Magón’s ‘Indigenous Proletariat in Mexico and the American Southwest.”
Dissertator: Duncan, David
Advisor: Porter, Eric
Dissertation title: “Voices in the Tule: An Oral History of Community Activism and Desegregation in the San Francisco Bay Area”
Dissertator: Huse, Amanda
Advisor: Jones, Catherine
Dissertation title:“She was Afraid I Would Tell It’: Women and Ku-Klux Violence in Postwar, Postemancipation Georgia”
Dissertator: Mah Gricuk, Ania
Advisor: Chan, Shelly
Dissertation title: “A Transnational History of Cooling Herbal Tea, 1880s-present”
Dissertator: Milton, Piper
Advisors: O’Hara, Matt and Breen, Ben
Dissertation title:”Divine Weather: Climate and Evangelization in Colonial Sonora, 1680-1794″
Dissertator: Sanceri, Jeffrey
Advisor: Haas, M. Lisbeth
Dissertation title: “Negotiating Dominance: Juvenile Delinquency and Masculinity in Progressive Era Los Angeles, 1891-1914”
Dissertator: Kristine Swarts-Zanin
Advisor: Heckman, Alma
Dissertation title:”Building Sacred Heritage: Construction Projects at Jerusalem and Bethelehem’s Holy Sites from the Late Ottoman through the Jordanian and Early Israeli Periods”
Dissertator: Ulbrich, Linda
Advisor: Matera, Marc
Dissertation title:”Yesterday was a difficult day to be Sister: An Emotional History of First World War Nursing”
Dissertator: Wang, Christina
Advisor: Aso, Noriko
Dissertation title:”Beyond the Glass Case: Japanese Museums and Decolonial Memory-Making”
Dissertator: Zhao, Audrey
Advisors: Westerkamp, Marilyn and Christy, Alan
Dissertation title:”The Global Journey of Ginseng: A Comprehensive Study of its Impact on Early Modern Trade and Cultural Exchange”
Ph.D.s Awarded in 2025 – 2026
SIMON-REYNOLDS, Meleia (BA, UC Irvine)
“Alter-Narratives of Manong and Mangang History: Memory, Photography, and Archives in California’s Pajaro Valley”
YOUNG, Wyatt (BA, UC Santa Barbara)
“Improvisations Under Empire: How Philippine Lives Negotiated the 1904 Philippine Exposition”
Ph.D.s Awarded in 2024 – 2025
McCLELLAN-UFUGUSUKI, Alexyss (BA, UC Santa Cruz) “Shimacentric:
The Political Indeterminacy of the Ryukyu Islands and the Formation of the United
States’ Archipelagic Empire”
RICHARDSON, Drew (BA, University of Regina) “Mediating Monsters and Provincial Place-Making: Folklore, Local Identity, and the Supernatural in Modern Japan”
Ph.D.s Awarded in 2023 – 2024
ARUCK, Aaron (BA, Amherst College) “Tracking Contagious Cases: Venereal Disease, Sex Work, and the Making of the Male Homosexual at the U.S.-Mexico Border, 1926-1964”
GREEN, Steven (BA, California State East Bay; MA, Southern New Hampshire University) “Noshing in the Midwest: Foodways and Midwestern Jewish Communities”
TAN, Joshua (BA, New York University; MA, University of British Columbia) “Schooling Free Asia: Diasporic Chineses and Educational Activism in the Traspacific Cold War”
van HARMELEN, Jonathan (BA, Pomona College; MA, GeorgetownUniversity) “Legislating Injustice: Congress, Japanese American Lobbyists, and the Wartime
Incarceration of Japanese Americans During World War II, 1930–1945″
Ph.D.s Awarded in 2022 – 2023
CHANG, Sarah Shu (BA, Stanford University) “In Search of the Socialist Working Woman: The Spatial Politics of Gender in Chengdu from Maoism to State Capitalism”
HAN, Kyuhyun (BA, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies) “Seeing the Forest Like a State: Forest Management, Wildlife Conservation, and Center-Periphery Relations in Northeast China, 1949–1988″HICKEY, Donald (BA, George Washington University; MA, California State University, Fullerton)“When Johnny Reb and Billy Yank Went Marching West: A History of American Civil War Veterans in California: 1865-1930”
JACKSON, Lisa (BA, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill; MA, San Francisco State University) “Twenty-Four Hour Party People: A Transnational History of Communist Bodies, 1919-1943”
JOESTEN, Daniel (BA, San Jose State University; MA, University of Utah) “Between Subject and Alien: Adecolo”nization, Citizenship, and the Irish Diaspora in Interwar Britain 1921-1937”
KRYSINSKI, Charles (BA, Northland College) “Black Theology and The End Of Time”MARTINEZ, Priscilla (BA, Baylor University; MA, Baylor University) “By Land and by Sea: Indigeneity, Mestizaje, and Nationalism at the Western-Pacific Borderlands from 1824-1934″
MIU, Wilson (BA, University of Chicago) “Marriage Laws and Practices in South China, 1930-1980″ZHANG, Jinghong (BA, Beijing Language and Culture University: MA, University of Manchester, UK)”Down to the Roots: Teeth, Dentistry, and Dental Hygiene in Modern China, 1907-1985”
Ph.D.s Awarded in 2021 – 2022
CAVE-LaCOSTE, Bristol (BA, DePaul Univeristy) “Living Openly and Notoriously: Sexually Nonconforming Immigrant Women Navigating Immigration Control, 1852-1920”
LAWRENCE, Sean (BA, Santa Clara University; MA, Brandenburg University of Technology, Cottbus, Germany) “What Do You Suppose This Rain Is Worth?: German Colonialism, Politial, Ecology, and The Founding of Modern Turery”
Ph.D.s Awarded in 2020 – 2021
BERNARDINO, Erik (BA, UC Los Angeles; MA, UC Los Angeles) “Rightful Work: Rethinking Peonage, Free Labor, and Prostitution in the California Borderlands, 1877-1937”
KIRSCH, Taylor (BA, UC Berkeley) “Indigenous Land Ownership in the Praying Towns of the New England Borderlands: Indigenous Lives Lands and Legacies of Seventeenth Century New England”
Ph.D.s Awarded in 2019 – 2020
GARCHA, Kiran (BA, Univ. of Washington; MA, UCLA) “Bringing the Vanguard Home: The Role of Children, Home and Family in the Black Panther Party”
SCHULTZ, Jaclyn (BA, Univ. of Wisconsin; Milwaukee, MA, Univ. of Wisconsin, Milwaukee) “Learning the Values of a Dollar: Childhood and Cultures of Economy in the United States, 1820-1900”
TCACENCO, Andrei (BA, UC Santa Barbara) “Historicizing Soviet Nostalgia: Soviet socialism from 1920 to the Present”
Ph.D.s Awarded in 2018 – 2019
BANKS, Elyse (BA, Wesleyan Univ.; Connecticut ) “Catholic Interracialism in New Orleans, 1930-1980: A Historical Survey wiht Implications for the Post-Katrina Movement”
CONRAD, Nickolas (BA, UC Berkeley; MA, Washington State Univ. ) “The Voyage into Unbelief: Leaving the Catholic Church in France 1870-1940”
HART, Amy (BA, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo; MA, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo) “Life After Community: The Communitarian Women Who Transformed Nineteenth-Century American Society”
MaCGIOLLABHUI, Muiris (BA, UCD Dublin, Ireland) “Carrying the Green Bough: An Atlantic History of the United Irishmen, 1795-1830”
WILLIAMS, Samantha (BA, UCLA; MA, American Univ. Washington DC, ) “That was our home, and it needs to be remembered:” Erasing and Reclaiming the History of the Steward Indian School”
Ph.D.s Awarded in 2017 – 2018
BRZYCKI, Melissa (BA, Univ, of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) “Inventing the Socialist Child in China, 1949-1966”
GAO, Xiaofei (BA, Nankai Univ.; MA Nankai Univ.) “Maritime Manchuria: Empire, State and Laborers 1905-1999”
MONTGOMERY, Stephanie (BA, Univ.of Reno) “Gender, Criminality, and the Prison in China, 1928-1953”
Ph.D.s Awarded in 2016 – 2017
BARBATA JACKSON, Jessica (BA, Reed College) “The “Privileged Dago”?: Race, Citizenship and Sicilians in the Jim Crow Gulf South, 1870-1924”
BORTSOV-SHARGO, Ilia (BA, UC Santa Cruz) “Within Thinkers’ Worlds: on the Anti-Soviet Promotion of Honor and Humanity in the Works of Soviet and Post-Soviet Historians”
ORNELAS RODRIGUEZ, Ignacio (BA, CSU Monterey Bay) “The Struggles for Social Justice in the Monterey Bay Area: The Transformation of Mexican and Mexican American Political Activism, 1930-2000″PIETRENKA, Ben (BA, UC Santa Cruz) “Religion on the Margins: Transatlantic Moravian Identities and Early American Religious Radicalism”
Ph.D.s Awarded in 2015 – 2016
GUDGEIRSSON, Megan (BA, CSU San Marcos; MA UC Ivine) “Perfect Child, Perfect Faith Raising Children In Nineteeth-Century Religious Communities”
RIZZO, Martin (BA, UC Santa Cruz) “No Somos Animales: Indigenous Survival and Perseverance In 19th Century Santa Cruz, California”
SHOTT, Brian (BA, Wesleyan Univ. of Connecticut) Mediating America: Black and Irish Press and the Struggle for Citizenship, 1870-1914″
SMYTH, Edward “Noel” (BA, Univ. of Iowa) “The Natchez Diaspora: A History of Indigenous Displacement and Survival In The Atlantic World”
Ph.D.s Awarded in 2014 – 2015
HU, Fang Yu (BA, UC Berkeley; MA, Univ. of Chicago) “Taiwanese Homes, Japanese Schools: Han Taiwanese Girls’ Primary Education Under Japanese Rule, 1895-1945”
ILLINGWORTH, James (MA, Univ. of Edinburgh) “Crescent City Radicals: Black Working People and the Civil War Era in New Orleans”
ROMERO, Alicia (BA, Univ. of New Mexico; MA, Univ. of New Mexico) ” Portrait of Barrio: Memory and Popular Culture in Barelas, NM 1881-2000″
SHUMAN, Amanda (BA, Virgintia Tech.; MA, UC Santa Cruz) “The Politics of Socialist Athletics in the People’s Republic of China, 1949-1966”
TAI, Jeremy (BA, NYU; MA, Columbia Univ.) “Opening Up The Northwest: Reimagining Xi’an adn the Modern Chinese Frontier”
WRIGHT, Dustin (BA, Northern Arizona Univ.; MA, UC San Diego) “The Sunagawa Struggle: A Century of Anti-Base Protest in a Tokyo Suburb”
Ph.D.s Awarded in 2013 – 2014
CANDELA, Ana (BA, College of Charleston; MA, Univ. of Charelston) “Nations, Migration and Governance: Cantonese Migrants to Peru and the Makeing of Overseas Chinese Nationalism, 1849-2013”
HUDSON, Michael (BA, Univ. of Nothern Iowa; MA, Univ. of Nothern Iowa) “Storming Fortresses: A Political History of Chess in the Soviet Union, 1917-1948”
MARTIN, Laura (BA, Marlboro College; MA, UC Santa Cruz) “Precarious City: Marginal Workers, The State, and Working-Class Activism in Post-Insdustrial San Francisco, 1964-1979”
MULLINS, Elizabeth (BA, Oberlin College; MA, UC Santa Cruz) “Making Girls, Women and Nuns: U.S. Catholic sisters, convents and schools in the Dominican Republic, 1946-66”
PALTER, David (BA, Oberlin College; MA, UC Santa Cruz ) “Testing for Race: Stanford University, Asian Americans, and Psychometric Testing in California, 1920-1935”
PAMPHILE MILLER, Chrislane (BA, UC Santa Cruz; MA, UC Santa Cruz) “‘Blessed Are the Peacemakers’: African American Emigration to Haiti, 1816-1826”
SMITH, Sara (BA, UC Berkeley; MA, UC Santa Cruz) “Organizing for Social Juststice: Rank-and-File Teachers’ Activism and Social Unionism in California, 1948-1978”
Ph.D.s Awarded in 2012 – 2013
RENNER, Martin (BA, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison; MA, UC Santa Cruz)
“Conservative Nutrition: The Industrial Food Supply and Its Critics, 1915-1985.”
FEINSTEIN-JOHNSON, Kelly (BA, Scripps College California)
“Reading Images and Texts: English Broadside Ballads and Visual Culture, 1600-1800”
JIN, Michael (BA, Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison; MA, UC Santa Cruz)
“Beyond Two Homelands: Migration and Transnationalism of Japenese Americans in the Pacific, 1930-1955”
O’CONNELL, Joseph Brian (BA, UC Irvine; MA San Jose State California)
“English Purchasing Power: The Rise Of Consumerism in Rural England, 1675-1750 “
SANCHEZ, Sabrina (BA, UC Berkeley; MA, UC Santa Cruz)
“In the Name of the Father, Govenor, and “A-1 Good Men”: Preforming Gender & Statehood in Territorial New Mexico, 1880-1912″
ROSENZWEIG, Laura (BA, Union College NY; MA-Education Standford Universitly; MA UC Santa Cruz) “Hollywood’s Spies: Jewish Infiltration of Nazi and Pro-Nazi Groups in Los Angeles, 1933-1941”
ZAVADIVKER, Polly (BA, UC Berkeley; MA/MPA, New York University; MA, UC Santa Cruz)
“Blood and Ink: Russian and Soviet Jewish Chronicals of Catastrophe From World War I to World War II”
Ph.D.s Awarded 2011 – 2012
BUENO, Marianne M. (BA, University of Texas, San Antonio; MA, UC Santa Cruz)
“Milatary Formations: Mexican American Civil RIghts and Community Belonging During the World War II Era”
GUZMAN, Christina M. (BA, Santa Clara University; MA, UC Santa Cruz)
“Race, Citizenship, and the Negotiation of Space: Chineses, Japanese, and Mexicans in Fresno, California, 1870-1949”
Ph.D.s Awarded 2010 – 2011
MO, Yajun (BA, Fudan University; M.Phil., Chinese University of Hong Kong)
“Itineraries for a Republic: Tourism and Travel Culture in Modern China, 1866-1954”
MURPHY, Michael P. (BA, University of Massachusetts; MA, University of Vermont)
“Envisioning Romantic Political Economy: The Formative Years of Michel Chevalier”
Ph.D.s Awarded 2009 – 2010
BROOKS, Christopher D. (B.A., University of Oregon; M.A., University of Oregon)
“Exile: An Intellectual Portrait of Andre Gorz”
MARTIN, Eliza L. (B.A., University of San Diego, California)
“Growth by the Gallon: Water, Development and Power in San Diego, California, 1890-1947”
ENGINEER, Urmi (B.A., Wake Forest University)
“Hurricane of the Human Frame: Yellow Fever, Race, and Reconstruction in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans”
Ph.D.s Awarded 2008 – 2009
CHAN, Shelly (B.A., University of British Columbia; M.A., University of British Columbia; M.A., University of California, Santa Cruz) “The Overseas Chinese (Huaqiao) Project: Nation, Culture, and Race in Modern China, 1890-1966”
Ph.D.s Awarded 2007 – 2008
MCDONALD, Kevin (B.A., University of Richmond; M.A., Rutgers University) “Pirates, Merchants, Settlers and Slaves: Making an Indo-Atlantic Trade World, 1640-1730”
RAMNATH, Maia (B.F.A., Butler University; M.A., New York University; M.A., University of California, Santa Cruz) ” ‘The Haj to Utopia’: Anti-Systemic Ideologies in the South Asian Diaspora, 1905-1930″
SUN, Xiaoping (B.A., Qiqihar Teachers College; M.A., Liaoning University; M.A., University of California, Santa Cruz) “New Life: State Mobilization and Women’s Place in Nationalist China, 1934-1949”
ZAPPIA, Natale (B.S., Cornell University; M.A., Claremont Graduate University; M.A., University of California, Santa Cruz) “The Interior World: Trading and Raiding in Native California, 1700-1863
Ph.D.s Awarded 2006 – 2007
DAY, Alexander (BA, Colby College; MA, UC Santa Cruz) “Return of the Peasant: The Politics of Rural Social Justice in Contemporary China”
LOWGREN, Andrea: “Street Reputations: Mapping Racialized Sexuality in San Francisco, 1930s-60s”
Ph.D.s Awarded 2005 – 2006
CHIN, Angela (BA, UC Berkeley; MA, UC Santa Cruz) “Bound to Emancipate: Management of Lower-Class Women in 1920s and 1930s Urban South China”
ESBENSHADE, Richard: “The Populist-Urbanist Debate in Hungary and the Divided Construction of Hungarian National Identity, 1929-44”
HAUGH, Alexandra: “Indigenous Political Culture and Eurasian Empire: Russia in Siberia in the 17th Century”
WENQING, Kang (BA, Institurte of International Relations, Beijing, China; MA, Univ. of Denver; MA, NYU; MA, UC Santa Cruz) “Male Same-Sex Relations in China, 1900-50”
MATSUBARA, Hiroyuki: “Unsettled Controversies: The Anti-Prostitution Movement and the Transformation of American Political Culture, 1910-19”
Ph.D.s Awarded 2004 – 2005
KALLIOMAKI, Aki (B.A.U., University of Helsinki; M.A., University of California, Santa Cruz) “’The Most God-provoking Democrats on This Side of Hell’—The United Irishmen in the United States”
KLEIN, Stephanie (B.A., California State University, Hayward; M.A., California State University, Hayward; M.A., University of California, Santa Cruz) “Indian Women and Catholic Mission in Mexico and Canada 1500-1700”
PAPANDREU, Dimitri (B.A., University of California, San Diego; M.A., University of California, Santa Cruz) “Peasant Culture and Modernization in Twentieth Century Umbria”
SIMONTON, Kathleen (B.A., University of California, Santa Cruz; M.A., University of California, Santa Cruz) “Downhome From Ulster: Ulster Irish in Megantic County Quebec, 1814-1850”
Ph.D.s Awarded 2003 – 2004
HALL, Rebecca (B.A., Swarthmore College; M.A., University of California, Santa Cruz; J.D., University of California, Berkeley) “”Not Killing Me Softly: African American Women, Slave Revolts, and Historical Constructions of Racialized Gender””
ROBINSON, Emily (B.A., Wellesley College; M.A., University of California, Santa Cruz)“”Immigrant Covenanters: Religious and Political Identity, From Scotland to America””
Ph.D.s Awarded 2002 – 2003
CHEIKHETOV, Serguey (B.A.U., Novosibirsk University; M.A.U., Central European University; M.A., University of California, Santa Cruz) “Private Entrepreneurship in the Soviet Union: 1920s-1980s”
PURSLEY, Sasha (B.A., University of Texas, Austin; M.A., University of California, Santa Cruz) “The Motherland Calls: The 46th Taman Guards Women’s Aviation Unit in the Great Patriotic War”
RYAN, Michele (B.A., Johns Hopkins University; M.A., University of California, Santa Cruz) “In My Hand For Lending: Quaker Women’s Meetings in London, 1654-1699”
Ph.D.s Awarded 2001 – 2002
WAYNE, Tiffany (B.A., University of California, San Diego; M.A. University of California, Santa Cruz) “Woman Thinking: Feminism and Transcendentalism in 19th-Century America”
WILSON, Joel (B.A., Northwestern University; M.A., University of California, Santa Cruz)
“’’Free Huey’: The Black Panther Party, the Peace and Freedom Party, and the Politics of Race in 1968”
YARYAN, William (B.A. University of California, Santa Cruz; M.A., University of California, Santa Cruz) “Saving the Redwoods: The Ideology and Political Economy of Nature Preservation”
Ph.D.s Awarded 2000 – 2001
MAGHRAOUI, Driss (B.A., Rider College; M.A., University of California, Santa Cruz) “Moroccan Colonial Troops: History, Memory and the Culture of French Colonialism”
Ph.D.s Awarded 1999 – 2000
BROWN, Shannon A. (BA, Cal Poly State; MA, University of California, Santa Cruz) “”Annihilating Time and Space: The Electrification of the U.S. Army, 1875-1920″”
LANGERBEIN, Helmut (B.A.; University of California, Santa Barbara; MA, CSU Northridge) “”Profiles of Mass Murder: the Einsatzgruppen Officers”
VANN, Michael G. (B.A. University of California, Santa Cruz; MA, University of California, Santa Cruz) “”White City on the Red River: Race, Power, and Culture in French Colonial Hanoi, 1872-1954″
WHALEN, Philip E. (B.A., University of Massachusetts; MA, University of California, Santa Cruz) “”The Life and Works of Gaston Roupnel”