Graduate Student News

Spring 2005

At Marquette University, graduate students share a professional camaraderie as well as a strong emphasis on academic excellence. Each generation of graduate students introduces unique personalities and varied research interests. This diversity of specialty areas encourages a wider breadth of understanding in each graduate student's academic career at Marquette. Overall, the program is marked by an emphasis on teaching experience, creative research, and collegiality among faculty and students. The Marquette history graduate program looks forward to the contributions of future generations of graduate students and takes great pride in the achievements of its current and past members.
________________________




David Bruce, a doctoral candidate in Early Modern Europe with a focus on Great Britain, is presently writing his dissertation, a biography on the life of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton (1786-1845). He hopes to have it completely wrapped-up by April 2005 - barring any unforeseen disasters. For the past five years, he has also been working as an instructional assistant and occasional adjunct instructor (Western Civilization) in Marquette’s College of Professional Studies.

Chris Chan is a first year MA student in American and 20th century European history, with an emphasis on literature and anti-modern studies. He has presented a lecture on G.K. Chesterton and the Modern British Writers at the 2004 American Chesterton Society Conference in St. Paul, and has had articles on economics in sports and the Nobel Prize in Literature published inGilbert Magazine. Next fall, he plans to work as an RA, and complete his MA. He continues to work as a contributing editor for Gilbert Magazine, and has published three essays: "Why I am an Anti-Modernist," "What is Anti-Modernism?," and "Criticizing Criticism: A Defense of the Genre." Several more, including "Chesterton, Ibsen, and the Doll House" and "Humanity is Still Learning How to Read" will be published in the months to come. Also, this May, his essay "The Gleeful Cynicism of Evelyn Waugh" was published on the e-zine The Dusty Shelf.

Preston Cosgrove is a first year MA student studying Modern American History. While waiting to see where his interests lead him, he is taking courses in 20th century U.S. Foreign Relations, Modern European History, and the American Revolution.

John Degnitz is a Doctoral Candidate (finally) and teaching fellow. His dissertation will focus on Milwaukee city politics during the Gilded Age. He recently presented a paper on Milwaukee city government at the Urban History Association Conference last October. He is also a co-author/editor of the forthcoming "Milwaukee Stories" that will be available in spring through the Marquette University Press.

Andrew Demshuk is a student of Modern German history, though his research has also dipped considerably into the Early Modern period. Recently, he has placed the final touches on his Master's Thesis, which concerns the impact of British press and opinion on the Anglo-Prussian Alliance during the Seven Years' War. Currently, he is exploring British reaction to the Year of the Three Kaisers, specifically the impact that the death of the "liberal" Kaiser Frederick III had on cross-channel sentiments and relations. Thus far, the project has turned up some highly-unexpected results. He also plans to investigate the extent to which the German emphasis on "citizenship by blood" played a role when German expellees were forced into western Germany after World War II. Though they were recognized as a part of the same nation and given legal citizenship, were these Germans from the east necessarily greeted as such by their western countrymen? This Spring, he completed his comprehensive examinations, and has accepted a fine offer from the University at Urbana-Champaign to pursue his doctorate in German history.

Doctoral candidate Jodi Bartley Eastberg presented conference papers at the Fifth Annual Graduate Student Conference at the University of Toronto, and at the Beyond Imperial Centre and Colonial Periphery Conference held at Cambridge University, Cambridge, England. She has accepted an assistant professor position at Alverno College for next fall.

Meara Feely is a first year MA student specializing in Irish history.

Carolyn Hansen is a second year MA student, whose academic interest centers on North Africa, particularly Algeria, and Modern Europe. Last November, she and fellow graduate student, Enaya Othman, presented papers as part of a panel at the African Studies Association annual meeting in New Orleans. Her presentation "Without a Voice: Women in Postcolonial Algeria," focused on the effect of decolonization on Algerian women.

First year MA student Christine Jaworski is interested in 20th century history of the United States, and hopes to develop an emphasis on women and African American studies that she began as an undergrad.

Matt Luckett a second year MA student from St. Louis, MO who likes to watch movies, socialize with friends from (and outside of) the department, play music, and, most of all, read and write history! His primary areas of interest are late colonial and early republican American history, specifically social and economic history. He intends to broaden his interests at the Ph.D. level to include Spanish borderlands, colonial settlement in contemporary US and Mexico,
and the early history of Mexico (up to the War of Reform). Although he has yet to publish a major paper, he is proud of his Master's thesis on anti-horse thief societies in Wisconsin during the late 1800s. Currently, he is writing a photo-essay for Milwaukee History magazine on Milwaukee during wartime (especially WWI & WWII), and is a Teaching Assistant under Dr. Rob Baker for History 006 (American History Survey). He plans spending next year, as he likes to call it, on "academic hiatus," in order to learn Spanish and familiarize himself more thoroughly with Latin-American history. He hopes to resume his studies in one year or two, with the goal of teaching at the college level after completing his doctorate.

Second year MA student Michael Maes is specializing in 19th and 20th century American history with nineteenth century Europe as a minor field. Currently, his interest has fallen in the realm of 20th U.S. diplomatic policy (specifically Cold War diplomacy). He has bounced around during
his time at Marquette, studying an array of areas that include papers on 19th century cultural history, the Civil War Era, and the Conservative movement in 20th century U.S. politics. He will finish my studies this May, and plans on teaching at the secondary or junior college level.

Doctoral candidate John McCarthy presented a conference paper at the Urban History Association meeting held in Milwaukee.

Doctoral candidate Christopher Miller is currently researching 19th century suburbanization of Milwaukee county. This work has taken him into other disciplines, notably geography, and as a result, he has presented at both History and Geography conferences. Recent presentations include the American Association of Geographers (“How GIS can Identify an emerging suburb,” March 2004) and the Urban History Association (“Suburban incorporation as rural adaptation in the metropolitan fringe of 19th century Milwaukee,” October 2004). He is currently involved in putting together a panel that will discuss international differences in incorporation and annexation law in the 19th century; the site of this presentation is as yet unknown. He presented a paper entitled "Incorporation as Rural Adaptation on the Metropolitan Fringe in Nineteenth-Century Milwaukee," at the Urban History Association biannual meeting in Milwaukee, and two chapters of his dissertation: one at the Newberry Library Urban History Dissertation Seminar (which he co-coordinated with John McCarthy), and the other at the Marquette University History Graduate Writing Workshop (which he also co-coordinated). He completed a manuscript on the Milwaukee Brewers (co-authored with John McCarthy) that will appear in the forthcoming Encyclopedia of Baseball Teams (Greenwood Press); is in the final edit stage of a manuscript that has been accepted for publication in Milwaukee History; and has completed a draft of an entry on "incorporation" for the Encyclopedia of Urban History. Lastly, his essay on "Milwaukee's Social and Cultural History" will appear in the forthcoming Milwaukee Stories, a compendium of articles published in the journals of the Milwaukee County Historical Society. This work will be published by the Marquette University Press and features the work of four other Marquette doctoral candidates in addition to his essay. Outside the classroom, he continues to participate in departmental bowling, basketball, and softball teams; was also active in the recently-founded Graduate Student Organization; and served a half-term as a Graduate Student Representative to the Academic Senate. During the next academic year, he will be finishing up his dissertation and hopefully defending in January or February. He will be participating in a round-table discussion on teaching Geographical Information Systems (GIS) in history courses at the Social Science History Association meeting in Portland in November of 2005, and teaching as an adjunct lecturer at Carroll College in the fall. And finally, he will also continue his recently commenced role as a list editor for H-urban, a scholarly discussion list that is part of the H-net family of discussion networks. The rest of his time will be consumed with job applications, work in his neighborhood association, and watching baseball.

Dave Muse is an MA student in Modern European History. In addition to regular class work (involving much reading), he is gathering information for papers: exploring Algerian independence, and an annotated bibliography on the breakup of the USSR.

Ann Ostendorf has a busy semester planned for next fall. She will start off with her qualifying exams (scheduled for August), then teach a section of History 006, the American History survey, while conducting research for her dissertation. She is examining a rather non-traditional historical topic: the music culture of the southern Mississippi before the Civil War. She will also present a paper at the Society for the History of Children and Youth Conference titled “'Where Music is Not the Devil Enters’: Children’s Music Instruction in Late Nineteenth-Century Milwaukee.” She recently published an article in the winter 2004 issue of the Tennessee Historical Quarterly, "Song Catchers, Ballad Makers and New Social Historians: The Historiography of Appalachian Music."

Second year doctoral student Enaya Othman earned her undergraduate degree in world history and modern Middle East, and minored in political science at Birzeit University in the West Bank, Palestine. In 1998, she completed her MA at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, focusing on immigration and ethnic history, and in particular the Arab-American community in Milwaukee. She currently is studying American history and foreign policy in the Middle East in preparation for her doctoral exams, and plans to conduct research on the role American Quaker (Friends) Schools have played in Ramallah, Palestine since the late nineteenth century. She recently presented a paper, “Muslim Brotherhood between Modernism and Fundamentalism” at the African Research and Scholarship Day at Marquette, and another paper, “The Concept of Nationalism in Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood: Strategy or Objective?” at the African Studies Association meeting held in New Orleans.

Second year MA student Eric Otremba is specializing in early modern European history and colonial America. He is primarily interested in the Atlantic world community of the eighteenth century, and enjoys studying the interactions of Europe, the Americas, and Africa during this period. He has written papers on: the ideological impulses behind the British abolition movement prior to 1807; a comparison of the respective ethnographic historiographies of Jamaican and Surinamese Maroon communities, which investigates the various modern, scholarly attempts to categorize and define the body of early-modern commercial practices collectively known today as “mercantilism”; and an examination of Charleston in 1739, focusing on the effects of the outbreak of war with Spain upon the colony. He is also interested in studying European interactions with the Middle East in the nineteenth century, specifically the Ottoman Empire. On this topic, he has written a paper examining the twentieth-century historiography of the nineteenth-century Ottoman reform movement, and is currently researching British perceptions and preconceptions of the Turkish “other,” as illustrated within Victorian serial publications.

Doctoral candidate Will Prigge presented a conference paper at the Baltic Studies Conference at the University of Toronto. He also published “The Latvian Purges of 1959: A Revision Study,” Journal of Baltic Studies 35 (Fall 2004), and has accepted a one year Visiting Assistant Professor position at Drury University, Springfield, MO.

Charles Reed is a graduating MA student in modern European history. In the fall, he will continue his doctoral studies at the University of Maryland at College Park, where he has been awarded the Prange Fellowship in Modern European history. Under the guidance of Dr. Richard Price, he will concentrate his studies on the British Empire, and the conduit the field offers for studying perceptions of “the Other,” both by Britons in the metropole and those being brought under British influence “out in the empire.” He will continue exploring his research interests on working class perceptions of the British Empire and how these perceptions shaped their sense of national identity.

Doctoral candidate Wayne Riggs presented a conference paper at the Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies in Berkeley, CA

Doctoral candidate Steve Servais presented conference papers at the American Society of Environmental Historians Conference in Victoria, British Columbia, and at the Urban History Association meeting held in Milwaukee.

Aaron Stockham, a first year doctoral student from Murray, Utah, is focusing his studies on 20th century American history, especially the FBI and national security and secrecy issues. He also is interested in Joseph McCarthy, his Senate hearings, and other Senate hearings of the 1950s, such as the Kefauver Committee (Organized Crime) and the Committee to Study Juvenile Delinquency. He is hoping to publish a paper from his current research on the Comic Book Code of 1954, or possibly his work on McCarthy's executive sessions before the Army-McCarthy hearings.

Doctoral candidate Adam Stueck presented a conference paper at the Tenth Annual Graduate Student History Conference held at Temple University, Philadelphia, PA.

Monica Witkowski, will be continuing her graduate work at Marquette next fall as a first year doctoral student, focusing on colonial American history with a minor emphasis on women's history. Her recent research includes: "'A Sport To Puzzle the Knowing Ones': Horse Racing in Milwaukee, 1850-1880," a look at how formal and informal horse racing and speed trials in the city of Milwaukee influenced the culture of the city and how participants worked towards establishing a nationally recognized harness racing track at Cold Spring Park; and "'To Live as Good Christians in a Busy Modern World that May Not Think Too Much About God": The Sisters of the Divine Savior and Female Education In Milwaukee, 1948-1960," a look at the first high school run by the Sisters of the Divine Savior, Divine Savior High School. In addition to looking at the Sister's role as educators and administrators, the paper gives an overview of what all-female Catholic education entailed in the post-World War II era in Milwaukee.

Janna Lee Wrench, who is certified to teach at the high school level, is currently looking for a teaching position. She will also be applying to PhD programs.