Dissertators Workshop - Graduate Students
Janaka Bowman
Field: English: American Literature (19th Century African-American)
Topic: Freedom Promised, Freedom Told: Black Women's Narratives of
Emancipation and Reconstruction, 1861-1892
Advisor: Dwight McBride
Sarah Blackwood
Field: 19th c. American literary realism and visual culture, history of
photography, history of science, antebellum African-American visual culture
Diss. Title: Portraiture: Representing Interiority in American Culture, 1839-1900
Advisor: Betsy Erkkila, Department of English
Katy L. Chiles
Field: English: Early American literature and culture; critical race theory
Topic: "Surprising Metamorphosis: Transformations of Race in Early
American Literatures"
Advisor: Betsy Erkkila
Christine M. Dunford
Field: Performance Studies
Topic: Deploying Nature: A Performance Ethnography of Gardeners,
Urban Gardens and Change in a Chicago Neighborhood
Advisor: E. Patrick Johnson
Michael Green
Field: History: America (Twentieth century / Cold War social history and race)
Topic: Black Yanks in America's Pacific: Military Service, the
National Security State, and Interpersonal Politics, 1945-1953.
Advisor: Michael Sherry
Tasha M. Hawthorne
Field: English: 20th Century African American Literature
Topic: "Foxes, Players, and Vixens: Reading Black Popular Fiction"
Advisor: Dwight McBride
Kamasi C. Hill
Field: 20th Century African-American Religious History
Topic: Between Pulpit and Power: Black Religious Nationalism Amongst
Detroit's African Methodists
Advisor: Larry G. Murphy
Sarah Mesle
Field: English
Title: "Representing the Racial Self: Pro-Slavery Ideology and the Problem of
Sentimental Literature"
Advisor: Julia Stern
Mshai Mwangola
Field: Africa (20th / 21st century, Performance, Diaspora)
Topic: "Performing our Stories, Performing OUrselves: In Search of Kenya's Uhuru
generation)
Advisor: Margaret Thompson Drewal
Tamara Roberts
Field: Performance Studies: Popular music (20th century, U.S.,
racial politics)
Topic: Musicking at the Crossroads of Diaspora: Afro-Asian Musical Politics
Advisor: E. Patrick Johnson
Crystal Renee Sanders
Field: History: American (20th Century/African American)
Topic: TBA
Advisor: Nancy MacLean
Tobin Shearer
Field: History/Religion
Topic: The Danger of Purity: How White Mennonites Maintained Racial
Distance, 1940 to 1971
Advisor: Josef Barton/Cristie Traina
Dana Wiener
Field: History
Topic: Racial Radicals: Antislavery Activism in the Old Northwest, 1830-1861
Advisor: Stephanie McCurry
