M.A. Alumni: Where are they now?
M.A. History Alumni Interviews
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Masters Research Projects
All M.A. graduates complete independent research; their project titles can be found below.
- Miles Abernethy, “Rebels on the Margin: White Confederate Perceptions of Marginal Populations in the South”.
- Paige Carter, "The Body Unsettled: Illicit Acts and Settler Colonial Progression in the Eighteenth-Century North Carolina Interior".
- Kylie Edington,"Between the Sheets and the Streets: Mapping Queer Intimacies and the Politics of Pleasure in New York City in the 1980s."
- Kaylen Griles, "Citizens and Surveillance".
- Mason Keyser, "Making Memory in Early Twentieth Century Virginia: A Study of Tribal Politics and Civil War Landscapes".
- Hannah Schetselaar, “Remembering Colonial Virginia: Erasure and Representation in American Memory”
- Harless, Kaitylnn. "Our Strike in West Virginia": Women's Labor, Militancy, and Activism in the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strikes, 1912-1913"
- Kimball, Jared. "Die Süd Strategie: Politics of the German 48ers in Richmond, 1852-1864"
- Okoe, Jonathan. "Ayaresa: The Licensure of Native Physicians in Kumase and Greater
Asante During the Colonial Period, 1934 to 1957" - Pfeifer, Tim. "Back to Nature: Bernarr Macfadden's Antimodern Modernism"
- Renner, Elizabeth. "As if by Magic: Finding Some Comfort During the War"
- Christy, Miranda. “That We May Exert Our Influence More Powerfully: Race, Politics and Identity in Ohio’s Southeast Borderland, 1802-1865”
- Dean, Amanda.“We don’t want them in our schools: Black School Equality, Desegregation, and Massive Resistance in Southwest Virginia, 1920s-1960s”
- Evers, Sarah. “The Story of His Life and Work: Public History at The Booker T. Washington Birthplace Memorial (1945-1956)”
- Blake, Erica. “Negotiating Sovereignty: Resistance and Meaning Making at the Bear Mountain Mission in Early-Twentieth Century Virginia”
- Flanagan, Savannah. “Unruly Sisters: Moravian Women, Dissent, and the 18th Century North Carolina Piedmont”
- Pearson, Derek. “The Steep Climb to Low Earth Orbit: A History of the Space Elevator Community’s Battle Against the Rocket Paradigm”
- Adkins, Clay. “The Great Appalachian Flood of 1977: Prisoners, Labor, and Community Perceptions in Wise, Virginia”
- Brabble, Jessica. “Save the Babies: Progressive Women and the Fight for Child Welfare in the United States, 1912-1929”
- Montoya, Sydney. “Creating a Nation: Fiscal Policy, Expansion, and Protest in Pennsylvania”
- Olex, Benjamin. “‘The Painful Task of Thinking Belongs To Me’: Rethinking Royal Navy Signal Reform during the American War of Independence”
- Balli, Tyler. “Reading Zion: Book Cultures of Mormon Youth, 1869-1890”
- Legg, John. “Unforgetting the Dakota 38: Settler Colonialism, Indigenous Resurgence and the Competing Narratives of the U.S.-Dakota War, 1862-2012”
- Stewart, Emily. “Standardization, Segregation, and Professionalization in Virginia Public Schools, 1898-1917”
- Furrow, Heath. “‘We can do very little with them’: British Discourse and British Policy on Shi’is in Iraq”
- Martin, Kaitlyn. “Religious Practices in Classical Thebes”
- Walters, Kathryn. “20,000 Fewer: The Wagner-Rogers Bill and the Jewish Refugee Crisis”
- Wesdock, Ryan. “The Floatplane Controversy: Proscription, Procedure, and Protection in Carroll County, Virginia, 1992."
- Wild, Emily. “The Women of Waterford, Virginia: Gender, Unionism, Quakerism and Identity in the American Civil War”
- Boggs, Ellen. “That mountain is like a drug store”: Knowledge and Medicine in Southern Appalachia, 1900-1933"
- Brown, Katie. “‘When This You See, Remember Me’: Visual Culture and Civil War Soldiers’ Views of Permanence"
- Harmon, Emily. “Shaping the City from Below: Urban Planning and Citizens’ Battle for Control in Roanoke, Virginia, 1907-1928"
- Hemmingson, Grace. “‘This was a man’: Masculinity and Student Life at Virginia Military Colleges, 1905-1920”
- Atkins, David. “‘Perfectly White’: Light-Skinned Slaves and the Abolition Movement 1835-1865"
- Caprice, Kevin. “Won but Not One: The Construction of Union Veteranhood, 1861-1917"
- Cherry, Earl K. Jr. “Training Virginians: The Rural Training Schools of Virginia’s Segregated Education System, 1895-1955”
- Keller, Chris. “‘The Freshest and Yet Oldest Sound’: Flatt & Scruggs, Martha White, and the Negotiation of Change and Nostalgia”
- MacDonald, Jonathan. “Reel Guidance: Midcentury Classroom Films and Adolescent Adjustment"
- Nehrt, Jenny. “Promoting Positivity: Securing Memphis’s Image in Times of Crisis"
- Williams, Rebecca. “Weird Old Figures and a New Twist: Cultural Functions of Halloween at the Turn of the 20th Century" Additionally, Rebecca completed a video project as a part of the public history thesis option.
- Bolt, Carmen. “Dammed If You Don’t: The Palmertown Tragedy of 1924 in Collective Memory”
- Evenson, Sara. “Consuming Trade in Mid-Eighteenth Century Albany”
- Skiles, Debra Faith. “Building Cultural Bridges: American Women Missionaries in Korea, 1885-1910”
- Gogan, Claire. “To Play Jewish Again: Roots, Counterculture, and the Klezmer Revival”
- Nowland, Nicholas. “A Unique Hell in Southwestern Virginia: Confederate Guerrillas and the Defense of the Virginia and Tennessee Railroad“
- Carlson, Kristin. “Christian Duty in the Crisis of Secession: A Comparison of Charleston and Philadelphia”
- Kelley, Lucas. “Suffrage for White Men Only: The Disfranchisement of Free Men of Color in Antebellum North Carolina”
- Seabrook, Tom. “Tributes to the Past, Present, and Future: Confederate Memorialization in Virginia, 1914-1919”
- Slough, Spenser. “Germans on the Western Waters: Artisans, Material Culture, and Hybridity in Virginia’s Backcountry, 1780-1830”
- Stoltz, Taylor. “Aristocrats, Republicans, and Cannibals: American Reactions to French Women in Violence”
- Zlokas, Rosemary. “Consuming Beauty: The Impact of Prescriptive Beauty Literature on College Women, 1940-1950” Website created as public history thesis project: www.consumingbeauty.com
- Ames, Eric. “‘United in Interest and Feeling’: The Political Culture of Union in the Virginia Borderland, 1850-1861.”
- Dowrey, Alexandra. “The Classics and the Broader Public in Philadelphia, 1783-1788: Avenues for Engagement.”
- Hight, Alison. “‘What are ye, little mannie?’: the Persistence of Fairy Culture in Scotland,1572-1703 and 1811-1927.”
- Jones, Adam. “‘The land of my births and the home of my heart’: Enlistment Motivations for Confederate Soldiers in Montgomery County, Virginia, 1861-1862.”
Profiles of Recent Alumni
Kaitlynn Harless
Email: kaitlynnjmh@vt.edu
Hometown: Pearisburg, Virginia
Undergraduate Institution: University of Colorado Boulder
Research Interests: women & gender, activism, labor, oral history, and food studies
Research Paper Title: "Our Strike in West Virginia": Women's Labor, Militancy, and Activism in the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek Strikes, 1912-1913
What She's Doing Now: Archival Assistant and Oral Historian at the Charles M. Schulz Museum
Geographic Areas of Interest: North America
Faculty Advisor: Marian Mollin
Jared Kimball
Email: jaredkimball@vt.edu
Hometown: Buchanan, Georgia
Undergraduate Institution: Brigham Young University
Research Interests: nineteenth century U.S. immigration and politics
Research Paper Title: Die Süd Strategie: Politics of the German 48ers in Richmond, 1852-1864
Post-Graduation Plans: Working in archival or a library and eventually pursuing a Ph.D. in history
Geographic Areas of Interest: North America and Europe
Faculty Advisor: Dan Thorp
Jonathan Okoe
Hometown: Ngleshie Amanfro (Accra), Ghana
Undergraduate Institution: Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Ghana
Research Interests: History of Health, Medicine, Science, African Diaspora
Research Paper Title: Ayaresa: The Licensure of Native Physicians in Kumase and Greater
Asante During the Colonial Period, 1934 to 1957
What He's Doing Now: Pursuing a Ph.D. at The University of Texas at Austin
Geographic Areas of Interest: Africa
Faculty Advisor: Matthew Heaton
Tim Pfeifer
Email: twp13@vt.edu
Hometown: Baltimore, Maryland
Undergraduate Institution: Virginia Tech
Research Interests: U.S. cultural and intellectual history
Research Paper Title: Back to Nature: Bernarr Macfadden's Antimodern Modernism
Post-Graduation Plans: attending Duke University's School of Law
Geographic Areas of Interest: North America
Faculty Advisor: Ed Gitre
Elizabeth Renner
Email: usgrant@vt.edu
Hometown: Longmeadow, Massachusetts
Undergraduate Institution: Virginia Tech
Research Interests: U.S. Civil War and environmental history
Research Paper Title: As if by Magic: Finding Some Comfort During the War
Post-Graduation Plans: attending Northeastern University to study environmental science and law
Geographic Areas of Interest: North America
Faculty Advisor: Paul Quigley
Miles Abernethy
Email: milesa64@vt.edu
Hometown: Virginia Beach, Virginia
Undergraduate Institution: Virginia Tech
Research Interests: public history, war & society, nationalism, nineteenth century, Civil War era, history of Virginia Tech
Portfolio Project: Rebels on the Margin: White Confederate Perceptions of Marginal Populations in the South
Post-Graduation Plans: Park Guide with the National Park Service at Appomattox Court House National Historic Park
Faculty Advisor: Paul Quigley
Paige Carter
Email: pacarter23@vt.edu
Hometown: Farmington, North Carolina
Undergraduate Institution: Catawba College
Research Interests: gender and sexuality, U.S. Indigenous studies, U.S. South, Colonial History of the U.S.
Portfolio Project: The Body Unsettled: Illicit Acts and Settler Colonial Progression in the Eighteenth-Century North Carolina Interior
Post-Graduation Plans: high school English teacher in North Carolina
Faculty Advisor: Marian Mollin
Kylie Edington
Email: kedington27@vt.edu
Hometown: Fairfax, Virginia
Undergraduate Institution: Randolph College
Research Interests: gender & sexuality, pleasure & leisure, and U.S. urban history
Portfolio Project: Between the Sheets and the Streets: Mapping Queer Intimacies and the Politics of Pleasure in New York City in the 1980s
Post-Graduation Plans: Admissions counselor at Hollins University
Faculty Advisors: Dennis Halpin and Amanda Demmer
Kaylen Griles
Email: kayleng23@vt.edu
Hometown: Halifax County, Virginia
Undergraduate Institution: Christopher Newport University
Research Interests: American nationalism and citizenship, early modern espionage, the Republic of Letters, networking/network analysis
Portfolio Project: Citizens and Surveillance
Post-Graduation Plans: Pursuing a paralegal certificate in Florida and, in the future, a J.D. or a Ph.D. in Public Affairs.
Faculty Advisor: Rachel Midura
Mason Keyser
Email: masonk98@vt.edu
Hometown: Hot Springs, Virginia
Undergraduate Institution: Virginia Tech
Research Interests: the role of landscapes in historical bias, the resurgence of tribal politics in eastern VA in the early 1900s
Portfolio Project: Making Memory in Early Twentieth Century Virginia: A Study of Tribal Politics and Civil War Landscapes
Post-Graduation Plans: Writing, editing, and proofreading in Richmond, VA
Faculty Advisors: Jessica Taylor and Mark Barrow
Hannah Schetselaar
Email: hnschetselaar@vt.edu
Hometown: Gainesville, Virginia
Undergraduate Institution: Roanoke College
Research Interests: colonial U.S., race, and gender
Portfolio Project: Remembering Colonial Virginia: Erasure and Representation in American Memory
Post-Graduation Plans: Currently seeking a position in public history, especially one involving teaching, research, and/or programming.
Faculty Advisors: Jessica Taylor and Dan Thorp
Recent Graduates Photo Gallery
History M.A. graduates, class of 2022
History M.A. graduates, class of 2025
Graduate students from the Class of 2024 and Class of 2025
2025 M.A. graduate Paige Carter with Dr. Danna Agmon and Dr. Marian Mollin
Katie Gibson, class of 2023
Paige Carter, class of 2025
2025 M.A. graduate Miles Abernethy & his faculty advisor, Dr. Paul Quigley
Students from the class of 2025 participate in the annual department Stump the Chumps trivia competition
Erica Blake, class of 2022, celebrates at the department ice cream social