History Accolades 2023–24

Alumni

Adey Almohsen (PhD ‘21) has been awarded an ACLS Fellowship for his book project, Minds in Exile: An Intellectual History of Palestinians 1945–70. 

Paula Cuellar Cuellar (PhD ‘22) co-produced Indigo/Añil based on her dissertation about sexual violence against women during the Salvadoran Civil War, which has won several awards at film festivals, and she has been appointed the Harry W. Bass Jr. Assistant Professor of History at the University of Texas at Dallas.

Vanessa Goodthunder (BA ‘16) received a CLA Emerging Alumni Award for her work in reviving the Dakota Language and culture through her role as director of C̣aƞṡayapi Waḳaƞyeża Owayawa Oṭi (The Lower Sioux Children are Sacred School).

Ketaki Jaywant (PhD ‘21) won the annual Sardar Patel Dissertation Award. 

Michelle Lavelle (BA ‘20) graduated with an MA in history (and an MS in Library Science) from Simmons University.Pedro Quijada (PhD ‘21) has accepted a position at the Wheeler School in Providence, RI.

Christopher Saladin (PhD ‘23) has accepted a tenure-track position in the History Department of Rowan University in New Jersey. 

Joe Trotter (PhD ‘80) of Carnegie Mellon University received the 2023 John Lewis Award for History and Social Justice from the American Historical Association.

Heider Tun Tun (PhD ‘21) co-published Co-Madres: Testimonio de la lucha por los derechos humanos en El Salvador, 1974-1994 (2023).

Elizabeth W. Williams (PhD ‘17) published Primitive Normativity: Race, Sexuality, and Temporality in Colonial Kenya (Duke University Press, 2024). 

Undergraduate Students

Gwen Bailey was selected for an internship position within the MNHS program and Dakota County at the Sibley Historic House.

Oscar Chuba was awarded the Hedley Donovan Scholarship in the Summer of 2024 for “(A)Social History: Gendered Autism in the Early Soviet Union and Post-War United States.”

Christina Craig volunteered at Camphill Village Minnesota, where she lived, worked, and cared for adults with disabilities. 

Ryken Farr and Isabel Laderman received Leo and Lillian Gross Scholarships in Jewish Studies from the Center for Jewish Studies in 2023–24. 

Peter Grace will serve as the Peter A. Krueger Socially Responsible Design Intern (Curatorial) at the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York this summer.

Jack Kelly graduated with high distinction and will attend graduate school at the University of Minnesota. 

Dyllon Lohmann was awarded the Norman Moen Scholarship in the Summer of 2024 for an internship with the Olmsted County Historical Society

August Mentch was awarded the Hedley Donovan Scholarship in the Summer of 2024 for "Social Consequences of Mid 20th Century Native American Urban Relocation: A Case Study of Chicago and Denver" 

Isabelle Pizzurro was awarded the Hedley Donovan Scholarship in the Summer of 2024 for “Unheard Voices: Jewish Religious Support for Decriminalizing Abortion.”

Siya Sakhardande was awarded the Hedley Donovan Scholarship in the Summer of 2024 for “Pregnancy Post-Roe: The Rise of Crisis Pregnancy Centers in the United States.”

Cecelia Starkey has been accepted and enrolled in the University of Minnesota Law School with a scholarship.

Ian Zukor spoke at the College of Liberal Arts undergraduate commencement ceremony on May 12.

Graduate Students

Joshua Althoff published "Managing Settlers, Managing Neighbors: Renarrating Johnson v. McIntosh through the History of Piankashaw Community Building," Journal of American History 110, n. 4 (2024).

Joshua Althoff, Treasure Tinsley, and Elijah Wallace received Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships for the 2024–25 academic year. 

Elizabeth Badger defended her dissertation "Gaming Culture: Intellectual Property, Capitalism, and their Impacts on the Culture and Gendering of Video Games 1970-1995." 

Jokeda Bell received a Beverly and Richard Fink Summer Research Fellowship in 2024. 

Myra Billund-Phibbs won the Estelle Freedman Award, LGBTQ+ History Association in January 2024 and has been invited to present "Emerging Voices in LGBTQIA History," at the Organization of American Historians Conference in April 2025.

Eliana Chavkin and Stephan Knott received CLA Doctoral Dissertation Fellowships for the 2024–25 academic year. 

Heather Collins received Adjunct Faculty Teaching Excellence Award, Getty College of Arts and Sciences, Ohio Northern University, May ‘23, and the Hella Mears Summer Fellowship for the 2024–25 academic year.

John Dieck received a Hella Mears Graduate Fellowship in European Studies for summer 2024 and published research in SPARK.

Cihan Demir received the Hella Mears Graduate Fellowship in European Studies for summer ‘24.

Benjamin Hansen published “Making Christians in the Umayyad Levant: Anastasius of Sinai and Christian Rites of Maintenance,” Studies in Church History, Volume 59 (2023) and “An Improvised Apocalypse: The Rebuilding of the Jerusalem Temple from Julian to ʿAbd al-Malik,” Studies in Late Antiquity 8/2 (2024), and defended his dissertation “Between Trepidation and Hope: A Study of Palestinian Christians after the Arab Conquests, ca. 630-797.”

Jacob Henke received a CPS Dissertation Development Fellowship for summer ‘24.

Mukund Jha was chosen for the Dissertation Proposal Development Program for the 2024–25 academic year.

Jayne Kinney published “Sitting on the Watcher's Stage: Networks of Generational Teaching and Sovereignty Among the Corn Rows" in the American Indian Quarterly 48.2 (spring ‘24), defended her dissertation “The Heart of the Nation: the Roles of Female Leadership Networks in Mandan and Hidatsa,” and has accepted a position at College Possible working with low-income high school students as a College Access Coach.

Keira Mac Neill received a Gender Policy Report GRPP Summer Fellowship in 2024.

Nicholas Nyachega defended his dissertation “‘Seeing Like Borderlanders’: Border(lands) Controls, Mobilities, Contestations, and Everyday Life in North-eastern Zimbabwe, 1880s to Present,” and has accepted a postdoctoral fellowship at the Ohio State University.

Margie Tang-Oxley was awarded the Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship, 2023–24

Jessica Tharp received a McNally Fellowship for the 2024–25 academic year.

Sultan Toprak published “Prohibition and Negotiation: Alcoholic Beverages and Taverns in Seventeenth-Century Ottoman Istanbul,” The Social History of Alcohol and Drugs: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 38, n. 1 (2024).

Catherine Ulep defended her dissertation “Makaʻāinana Wāhine: Clothing, Power, and the Sex-for-Goods Trade in Nineteenth-Century Hawai’i,” and has accepted a tenure-track position assistant professorship at Whitman College. 

Ana Joanna Vergara Sierra published "The Escribano of Babel: Power, Exile, and Enslavement in the Venezuelan Llanos During the War of Independence (1806–1833)," in The Americas (Early Online 2023). 

Jan Volek published "Hic sunt dracones: Eastern Europe in the study of the Middle Ages," Postmedieval 15 (2024).

Shinya Yoshida was awarded an IHRC Fellowship for the 2024–25 academic year, Japanese Association of American Studies Student Travel Grants for the OAH Annual Conference, Huntington Library Fellowship, and The Uehiro Foundation on Ethics and Education Research Grant in 2024. 

Faculty & Staff

Post-doctoral Fellow Andre Kobayaski Deckrow received a University of Minnesota Postdoc Awards in Outreach and Communication with the Non-Academic Community for his excellent collaborations in public history.

Tracey Deutsch was appointed associate dean for humanities in CLA.

Kirsten Fischer received the Sara Evans Faculty Woman Scholar/Leader Award sponsored by the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost and the Women’s Center. 

Sheer Ganor has received a year-long residential fellowship from the Frankel Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Michigan.

Katharine Gerbner was appointed director of the Program in Religious Studies.

Aaron Hall has been awarded a residential fellowship for spring 2025 at The Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University.

Howard Louthan published a co-edited volume entitled Beyond the Battlefield: Reconsidering Warfare in Early Modern Europe (Routledge, 2024).

Saje Mathieu was awarded the University's Justice, Equity, Diversity & Inclusion (JEDI) Award, the John Tate Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Advising, and the Fulbright Distinguished Research Chair Fellowship for 2024–25.

Department Administrator Amanda Nelson received a CLA Outstanding Service Award for 2023–24.

Jean O'Brien, was awarded the title of Regents Professor and received the Carter Revard Legacy Award for Best Edited Collection, Association for the Study of American Indian Literatures, 2024. 

Professor Emerita Carla Rahn Phillips has been selected as the sixth recipient of Spain's international Premio de Historia Órdenes Españolas (History Prize of Spain's Noble Military Orders).

Kathryn Reyerson was elected President of the Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America.

Yalile Suriel and William P. Jones were awarded a Sawyer Seminar Grant from the Mellon Foundation for a year-long seminar on Just Policing. 

Yalile Suriel published a co-edited volume entitled Cops on Campus: Rethinking Safety and Confronting Police Violence (University of Washington Press, 2024).

Barbara Welke became President of the American Society for Legal History.