PH.D. DISSERTATIONS & POSITIONS

"The Magic of Things: Matter, Spirit, and Power in Venice, 1580-1730,” by Anna Bennett (Visiting Lecturer in World History, Georgia State University). Winner of the 2021 David John Ruggiero dissertation prize for best dissertation in the humanities, Center for the Humanities, University of Miami. 

“A League of their Own: Culture and Society in Portugal’s Atlantic Armies, 1624-1668," by Nelson Marques (Instructor, Ransom Everglades School). 

"Partners in Pleasure: State and Private Capital in the Making of Modern Mediterranean Tourism" by Dale Pappas. 

“Projecting the Present on the Past: Unifying Themes and Narrative Complexity in Twelfth-Century English Monastic Chronicles,”  by Stephanie Skenyon (Executive Director of the Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History, Middlebury, VT). 

 “Conquest and Hagiography: Rewriting Saints after the Normal Conquest," by Gabriela Faundez Rojas

“History at the Speed of Sound: A Transnational Case Study of the Concorde Supersonic Transport as a Reflection of Critical Issues in Postwar Europe,” Drew Wofford (Adjunct Professor, Nova Southeastern University). Winner of the 2020 David John Ruggiero dissertation prize for best dissertation in the humanities, Center for the Humanities, University of Miami. 

"Sprints of Citizenship: Black Women Track Stars and the Making of Modern Citizenship in the United States and Jamaica, 1946-1964" by Cat Ariail (Lecturer, Department of History, Middle Tennessee State University)

"Haiti's Resistant Press in the Age of Jean-Claude Duvalier, 1971-1986" by Jennifer Garcon (Librarian for Modern and Contemporary Special Collectionsl, Princeton University)

"Visions of a Modern Nation: Haiti at the World's Fairs" by Hadassah St. Hubert (NEH Program Officer)

"Cultivating Resistance: Haitian-Dominican Communities and the Dominican Sugar Industry, 1915-1990" by Amelia Hintzen (Gilder Lehrman Center Fellow, Yale University).  This dissertation won the 2016 David John Ruggiero Dissertation Award from the UM Center for the Humanities and the Barrett Prize from the Institue for the Advanced Study of the Americas, University of Miami.

"Defeat and Re-Playing Renaissance Civic Identity: The Academy of the Intronati in Siena" by Carolyn Zimmerman (Project Manager, Epic Systems)

"A Family upon a Deep Blue Sea: The Atlantic Life of Eliza Lucas Pinckney" by Megan Hatfield

"Withcraft, Witchdoctors, and Empire: the Proscription and Prosecution of African Medicine and Religion in British Atlantic Colonies, 1760-1960s" by Danielle N. Boaz (Assistant Professor, Department of Africana Studies, UNC-Charlotte). This dissertation received an Honorable Mention for the 2015 David John Ruggiero Dissertation Award from the UM Center for the Humanities.

"The State with Two Centers: The French Monarchy and the Dukes of Pfalz-Zweibrücken in Early Modern Alsace, 1648-1789" by Stephen Lazer (Lecturer in the School of Historical, Philosophical, and Religious Studies at Arizona State University).  This dissertation won the 2014 David John Ruggiero Dissertation Award from the UM Center for the Humanities.

"Negotiating the Sacred: Spirituality and Reform in the Age of Enlightenment in Venice and the Veneto" by Simonetta Marin.  

"Mariana of Austria and Imperial Spain: Court, Dynastic, and International Politics in Seventeenth-Century Europe" by Silvia Zisa Mitchell (Assistant Professor of History, Purdue University)

"Consuls, Corsairs, and Captives: the Creation of Dutch Diplomacy in the Early Modern Mediterranean, 1596-1699" by Erica Heinsen-Roach (Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of History and Politics at the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg)

"Gender, Labor, and Virtue in Eighteenth-Century Georgia" by Lauren Lane (Department of History, Palmer Trinity School)

"Public Performance: Free People of Color Fashioning Identities in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Cuba" by Jacqueline Grant (Assistant Director of the Upper School at the Sage Ridge School in Reno, Nevada). This dissertation won the Barrett Dissertation Prize from the UM Center for Latin American Studies for the best Ph.D. dissertation written on Latin America by a University of Miami student during the previous academic year. It also won the 2012 David John Ruggiero Dissertation Award in the Humanities from the UM Center for the Humanities.

"American Women and the Modern Olympic Games -- A Story of Obstacles and Struggles for Participation and Equality" by Cecile Houry (Assistant Vice President in the Office of Engagement at Florida International University). This dissertation received the David John Ruggiero Dissertation Award from the Center for the Humanities at the University of Miami.

"Rattling the collective consciousness: Helen Dickens and medical activism in Philadelphia, 1935-1980" by Ameenah Shakir (Assistant Professor of History, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University)

"A Pan-African Imagined Community: Anti-Colonialism, Rastafarians and Post-Colonial Tanzania 1961-1992" by Monique Bedasse (Assistant Professor, Washington University, St. Louis)

"Tension Under the Sun: Tourism And Identity In Cuba, 1945-2007," by John Gustavsen (Belén Preparatory Academy, Miami, FL)

This dissertation won the Barrett Prize from the UM Center for Latin American Studies for the best Ph.D. dissertation written on Latin America by a University of Miami student during the previous academic year.

"Calusa Responses to the Spanish Missionary Enterprise in Post-Contact Florida" by Carmen Lopez (Assistant Professor of History, Miami Dade College)

"Neither Southern nor Northern: Miami, Florida and the Black Freedom Struggle in America's Tourist Paradise, 1896-1968" by Chanelle Rose (Associate Professor of History at Rowan University)

"The Science of Nation Building: A History of Geographic Sciences in Colombia, 1821-1921” 
by Lina del Castillo (Assistant Professor of History and Latin American Studies, University of Texas - Austin)

“Bending Steel with Bare Hands: Modernity and the American Superhero in the Twentieth Century,”
by Aldo Regalado (now at Palmer Trinity School, Miami, Florida)

“Making West Indians Unwelcome: Bananas, Race & the Immigrant Question in Izabal, Guatemala, 1900-1929.”
by Douglas W. Kraft (now at U.S. Department of State)

”Bridging the Island: Brazilian Elite Views of Spanish America and Themselves 1880 – 1912” 
by Ori Preuss (now Visiting Asistant Professor at Tel Aviv University, Israel)

"The Mexican Revolution in Taxco de Alarcon, 1920-24: Hidden But Not Forgotten"
by Mercedes Vigon (now Coordinator, Latin American Master's Program, School of Journalism, Florida International University)

"A Man Chosen by God: The Office of Archbishop in Novgorod, Russia, 1165-1478"
by Michael Paul (now Assistant Professor of History, Indiana-Purdue University, Indianapolis)

"A City of Children: Boys, Girls, Family, and State in Imperial Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
by Erica Windler (now Assistant Professor of History, Michigan State University)

"Machado: A Historical Interpretation"
by Fritz Berggren

"Interwar Bolivia and Refugees from Nazism: A Unique Case"
by Mariana Conea (now Assistant Professor of History, Miami International University of Arts and Design)

"Pearl of the Paraiba No More: The Limits of Industrailization and Modernization in Brazil"
by John Crocitti (now Assistant Chair of History, San Diego Mesa College, California)

"Constructing the Brazilian Middle Class: São Paulo, 1930-45"
by Cristina Mehrtens (now Assistant Professor of History, Miami-Dade College, North Campus)

"Civilizational Designs: The Architecture of Colonialism in the Native Parishes of Potosi"
by Emma Sordo (Assistant Professor of History, Florida International University)