Alumni of the Center for Premodern Studies
Learn about the dissertation research and current positions and projects of UMN alumni who were active in the Center for Premodern Studies.
Jennifer Carnell
PhD German
"Repeat the Sounding Joy: Hearing Communal Joy in Medieval German Literature"
Advisor: James Parente, Jr.
Current Position: Cataloger of Western Manuscripts, Hill Museum and Manuscript Library
Moinak Choudhury
PhD English
"Autodidacts: Eighteenth-Century Progress Narratives and the Limits of Enlightenments"
Advisor: Timothy Brennan
Current Position: Postdoctoral Fellow, Georgia Tech
Alex Korte
PhD Spanish
"Under the Predatory Flag: Medieval Tales of Iberian Piracy"
Advisor: Michelle Hamilton
Current Position: Visiting Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota-Duluth
Caleb Molsted
PhD English
"Alimentary Theology: Religious Experience and the Language of Food in Late Medieval English Vernacular Literature"
Advisor: Andrew Scheil
Current Position: Research Affiliate Center for Premodern Studies
Katherine Pierpont
PhD History
"Title"
Advisor: Ruth Karras and Kathryn Reyerson
Current Position: Lecturer, Michigan State
Chris Saladin
PhD History
"Resurrecting Carthage: Mapping Memory in the Roman Colony, c. 146 BCE – 200 CE"
Advisor: Andrew Gallia
Current Position: Visiting Assistant Professor of Digital Arts and Humanities, Carleton College
Samantha Crain
PhD English
"Judicious Improbable as Critique: The Brontës’ Possible Fictions and Their Reception"
Advisor: Brian Goldberg
Erin Crowley-Champoux
PhD Anthropology
"Cattle, Food, and the Rise of Early Ireland"
Advisor: Peter Wells
Current Position: Lecturer, University of Southern Maine
Jennifer Easler
PhD English
"The Futility of Prophecy: Prophecy and Poetry in English Narratives of Troy"
Advisor: Andrew Scheil
Jonas Gardsby
PhD English
"Unsettled: Trials, Attempts, and Unknowing in the Early Modern Essay"
Advisor: John Watkins
Current Position: Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay
Elizabeth Howard
PhD English
"The Parted Voice: Polyvocal Utterances in Victorian Elegies"
Advisor: Andrew Elfenbein
Current Position: Assistant Professor, Bethlehem College and Seminary
Laura Price
PhD English
"Things Fall Apart: Decapitation and the Quest for Certainty in Early Modern English Literature"
Advisor: John Watkins
Jesse Dorst
PhD History
"Bumfodder: Cheap Paper, Ephemeral Print, and the Unsettled Nation, 1651-1720"
Advisor: JB Shank
Macey Flood
PhD History of Medicine
"Simple Medicines: Land, Health, and Power in the 19th-century Ojibwe Western Great Lakes"
Current Position: Visiting Scholar, The University of Texas Medical Branch
Tim Frye
PhD Spanish and Portuguese
"Megaprojects and Literature in Chile, Panama, and Brazil"
Advisors: Sophia Beal, Jamie Hanneken
Current Position: Visiting Assistant Professor, Macalester College
Robert Hultgren
PhD Spanish and Portuguese
"Embracing the Text: Stories of Conversion in Sixteenth-Century Spain"
Advisor: Michelle Hamilton
Current Position: Teacher, Forest Lake High School
Melissa Johnson
PhD English
"'The Real World Represented': Identity Politics and Diverse Representation in Shakespeare and Young Adult Lit"
Advisor: Katherine Scheil
Current Position: Adjunct Faculty, Texas Christian University
Jen-chou Liu
PhD English
"Metaphors of Authorship: Eighteenth-Century Novelists' Imaginations of the Reading Publics, 1740-1810"
Advisor: Tony C. Brown
Wesley Lummus
PhD History
"One Nation, Two Languages: Latinization and Language Reform in Turkey and Azerbaijan, 1905-1938"
Advisor: Giancarlo Casale
Virgil Slade
PhD History
"Sport in South Africa: The 'Ideal Body' and the Limitations of Political Equality and 'Reconciliation' in the Post-apartheid State, c 1900 - 2020"
Advisor: Helena Pohlandt-Mcormack
Current Position: Assistant Professor, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
Emma Snowden
PhD History
"Bridging the Straight: The Shared History of Iberia and North Africa in Medieval Muslim and Christian Chronicles"
Advisors: Michael Lower, Ruth Mazo Karras
Current Position: Visiting Assistant Professor, Hollins University
Anthony Thomas
PhD Classical and Near Eastern Religions and Cultures
"Ambrose of Milan Combats the 'Crooked Interpreter': Forming Nicene Identity through Old Testament Exegesis."
Current Position: Lecturer, University of Minnesota; Assistant Editor for Book Reviews, American Society of Church History
Amy Bolis
PhD English
"Exporting Othello: Shakespeare, Race, and Adaptation in America (2008-2018)"
Advisor: Katherine Scheil
Mario Cossio Olavide
PhD Spanish and Portuguese
"El que toma candela del fuego ajeno. Don Juan Manuel y la refundación castellana del mundo cortesano en el siglo XIV"
Advisor: Michelle Hamilton
Current Position: Post Doc, Universidad de Alcalá
Jenna Dreier
PhD English
"'As you from crimes would pardoned be': Prison Shakespeare and the Practices of Empowerment"
Advisor: Katherine Scheil
Current Position: Minnesota Prison Education Program Coordinator
Amy Fairgrieve
PhD English
"I've Got a Bad Feeling: Rethinking Negative Affect in Literary Studies"
Advisor: Andrew Elfenbein
Current Position: Writing Center Coordinator, Normandale Community College
Joanne Jahnke-Wegner
PhD History
"Captive Economics: Social Reproduction, Commodification, and Settler Colonialism in the Northeast 1630-1763"
Advisor: Kirsten Fischer
Current Position: Assistant Professor, University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire
Sean Killackey
PhD French & Italian
"Disenchantment and Re-Enchantment: Rhetorical Tension in the Siècle Des Lumières"
Advisor: Daniel Brewer
Current Position: Visiting Assistant Professor, St. Olaf College
Charlotte Madre
PhD English
"Creating Indian and British Selves: Life-Writing and Colonial Relations, 1794-1826"
Advisor: Brian Goldberg
Current Position: Faculty, King's Academy, Jordan
Bailey Poletti
PhD History
"Final Preparations: The Emergence of Human Agency in Christian Apocalyptic Speculation in the 10th and 11th Centuries"
Advisor: Kathryn Reyerson
Noam Sienna
PhD History
“Making Jewish Books in North Africa, 1700-1900”
Advisor: Daniel Schroeter
Current Positions: The Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Biography 2022-2024 Junior Fellow; Lecturer, University of Minnesota
Yon Ji Sol
PhD English
"To Enlist or Not, for the Empire: The Citizens of the British Isles and Stories of War from the Four Kingdoms 1798-1853"
Advisor: Andrew Elfenbein
Colleen Stockmann
PhD Art History
"Weeds and Wildflowers: Drawing, Landscape, and Abolitionism in New York, 1850-1870"
Advisor: Jen Marshall
Current Position: Assistant Professor, Gustavus Adolophus College
Dustin Studelska
PhD History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
"Forgetting the Hand: Wedgwood, Sèvres, and the Industrial Fate of Skill"
Advisor: Jennifer Alexander
Current Position: Strategist at Zeus Jones
Natalia Vargas Marquez
PhD Art History
"Looking Through the Landscape: Colonialism and the Indigenous Painters in Seventeenth-Century Cuzco"
Current Position: Visiting Assistant Professor, DePauw University
Kent Weber
PhD History
“Chinese Exclusion and the U.S. Empire in Hawai’i and Cuba, 1874-1943”
Advisors: Erika Lee, David Chang
Current Position: Visiting Assistant Professor, St. Olaf College
Lars Christensen
PhD Musicology
"The Time-Suturing Technologies of Northern Song Musicology"
Advisor: Gabriela Currie
Brooke Creager
PhD Anthropology
"Dynamics of Religious Ritual: Migration and Adaptation in Early Medieval Britain"
Advisor: Peter Wells
Adam Fix
PhD History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
"Sensible Mathematics: The Science of Music in the Age of the Baroque"
Current Position: Global Writer, Transportation & Electronics Group, 3M
Alexander Greff
MA History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Current Position: Technical Communications Writer, Medtronic
Yuanxin Jiang
PhD History
“More than just a Drink: Tea Consumption, Material Culture, and ‘Sensory Turn’ in Early Modern China (1550-1700)”
Advisor: Ann Waltner
John Manke
PhD History
“Granum Bonum: Grain Distribution and the Emergence of Popular Institutions in Medieval Genoa”
Advisor: Kathryn Reyerson
Current Position: Project Coordinator, East View Information Systems
Emmie Miller
PhD History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
"Empire of Ice: Arctic Natural History and British Visions of the North, 1500-1800"
Current Position: Academic Administration, University of Minnesota
Karsten Olson
German, Nordic, Slavic and Dutch
"Beyond the Public Sphere: The Secret Agency of the Many"
Advisor: Matthias Rothe
Current Position: Lecturer, German, University of North Carolina Asheville
Paul Vig
PhD History
“Hunters and After Riders: A History of Hunting and the Making of Race in the Waterberg, 1840s-Present”
Advisors: Helena Pohlandt-McCormick, Allen Isaacman
Current Position: Senior Analyst, Market Analytics, Constellation
Emily Beck
PhD History of Medicine
"Communities of Healing: Domestic Medicine and Society in Early Modern Italy"
Current Position: Assistant Curator, Wangensteen Historical Library, University of Minnesota
Ivy Faulkner-Gentry
PhD Anthropology
"Cross-Cultural Interaction and Migration: Rethinking Greek Colonization in the 7th - 4th Centuries BC with the Exchange of Attic Figured Pottery"
Advisor: Peter Wells
Marcelo Fuentes
PhD Spanish and Portuguese
“An Empire of Two Religions: Muslims as Allies, Enemies, and Subjects in the Literature of the Iberian Christian Kingdoms”
Advisor: Michelle Hamilton
Current Position: Assistant Professor, New Jersey City University
Matthew King
PhD History
"The Norman Kingdom of Africa and the Medieval Mediterranean"
Advisor: Michael Lower
Current Position: Assistant Professor, University of South Florida
Veronica Menaldi
PhD Spanish and Portuguese
“Out of Love: Magic and Control of (an)Other in Premodern Iberia”
Advisor: Michelle Hamilton
Current Position: Assistant Professor, University of Mississippi
Asa Olson
PhD English
"The Form of Selfhood: Elegy and Self-Presentation in Early Modern England"
Advisor: John Watkins
Current Position: Academic Technologist II, Earl E. Bakken Center for Spirituality and Healing, University of Minnesota
Adelia Solemsli-Chrysler
PhD German, Nordic, Slavic and Dutch
"Translation on the Move: Place, Language, and the Jewish Body in Rose Ausländer's Poetry"
Advisor: Leslie Morris
Jeffrey Squires
PhD English
"The Exculpation of the Desperate: Comforting the Desperate in England, 1580–1680"
Advisor: Nabil Matar
Current Position: Assistant Teaching Professor of English, Carnegie Mellon University in Qatar
Basit Qureshi
PhD History
"Crusade, Crisis, and Statecraft in Latin Christendom: The Case of Fulk V of Anjou (1090-1143)"
Advisors: Michael Lower, Kathryn Reyerson
Current Position: Senior Product Manager, United Health Group
Amanda Taylor
PhD English
"Fabricating the Martial Body: Anatomy, Affect, and Armor in Early Modern England and Italy"
Advisors: Shirley N. Garner, John Watkins
Current Position: Senior Program Development Manager, Medtronic
Nathan Weaver Olson
PhD History
"A Republic of Lost Peoples: Race, Status, and Community in the Eastern Andes of Charcas at the Turn of the Seventeenth Century"
Advisor: Sarah Chambers
Current Position: Contract Technical Writer, Medtronic
Jessica Apolloni
PhD English
"Tales of Resistance: Combating Legal Power from Italian Shores to London Streets"
Advisor: John Watkins
Current Position: Assistant Professor, Christopher Newport University
Jesse Izzo
PhD History
"The Frankish Nobility and The Fall of Acre: Diplomacy, Society, and War in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, c.1240-1291"
Advisor: Michael Lower
Current Position: Lecturer, Stanford University
Caitlin McHugh
PhD English
"The Afterlives of Shakespeare's Tragedies"
Advisors: Katherine Scheil, John Watkins
Current Position: Associate Manager, Capella University
Kathryn Mogk
MA English
“‘Pore Paraille’: Clothing as Disguise in Piers Plowman”
Current Position: Director of Academic Programming at the Center for Christianity and Scholarship at Duke University
Katie Sisneros
PhD English
"The Abhorred Name of Turk": Muslims and the Politics of Identity in Seventeenth-Century English Broadside Ballads
Advisor: Nabil Matar
Current Position: Content Strategist, United Health Group
Molly Tun
PhD Spanish and Portuguese
“El Quipu: Escritura Andina en las Redes informacticas Incaicas y Coloniales”
Advisor: Luis Ramos Garcia
Current Position: Assistant Professor, Simpson College
Ann Zimo
PhD History
"Muslims in the Landscape: A Social Map of the Kingdom of Jerusalem in the Thirteenth Century"
Advisor: Michael Lower
Current Position: Assistant Professor, University of New Hampshire
Cameron Bradley
PhD History
"Between Brothers: Brotherhood and Masculinity in the Later Middle Ages"
Advisor: Ruth Mazo Karras
Current Position: Associate Director, Payment Integrity R&D Transformational Programs at Optum
Alexander Wisnoski
PhD History
"Contesting Husbands and Masters: Law, Society, and the Marital Household in Colonial Lima"
Advisor: Sarah Chambers
Current Position: Assistant Professor, University of North Georgia