Annual Newsletter

July, 2019

We welcome our incoming Ph.D. candidates for Fall 2019!

Africa

Jessica Cohen (BA, Davidson College)

Ancient History

Victoria Greene (BA, University of Pennsylvania)

Early Modern Europe

Elizabeth Branscum (BA, St. Olaf College)

Julia Tomasson (BA, University of Chicago)

History-East Asia

Mairead Hynes (BA, University of Connecticut Storrs; MA, Doshisha University)

International & Global History

Karolina Partyga (BA, London School of Economics; MSc, University of Oxford)

Jewish History

Lelia Stadler (BA, Tel Aviv University; MA, Tel Aviv University)

Latin American History

Caitlin Liss (BA, Smith College; MA, New York University)

Jun Qi Pan (BA, London School of Economics; MSc, London School of Economics)

Middle East History

Nancy Ko (BA, Harvard College)

Modern European History

Elya Assayag (Bachelor of Laws, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem; MA, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

Dillon Banis (BA, Morgan State University)

Charis Marantzidou (BA, Sarah Lawrence College; MSc, London School of Economics)

Lucas Ramos (BA, Princeton University)

William Sadleir (BA, University of Washington; JD, Florida State University; MA, University of Cincinnati)

Lucy Sharp (BA, University of Sydney)

Michael Gioia (BA, Stanford University; M.Phil, University of Cambridge)

United States History

Evan Brown (BA, Yale University; MA, University of Chicago)

Shakti Castro (BA, Hunter College CUNY; MA, University of Massachusetts Amherst)

Ella Coon (BA, Columbia University; MA, New School University)

Madison Ogletree (BA, Auburn University)

Ph.D.s Conferred in 2018-19

Alcenat, Westenley.  “Children of Africa, Shall be Haytians”: Prince Saunders, revolutionary transnationalism, and the foundations of Black emigration 
Sponsor: Eric Foner

Aumoithe, George.  Strange bedfellows: Public health and welfare politics in the United States, 1965-2000 
Sponsor: Alice Kessler-Harris

Buljina, Harun.  Empire, nation, and the Islamic world: Bosnian Muslim reformists between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, 1901-1914
Sponsor: Mark Mazower

Ferguson, Susanna.  Tracing tarbiya: Women, education, and childrearing in Lebanon and Egypt, 1860-1939
Sponsor: Rashid Khalidi

Gonzalez Le Saux, Marianne.  The Rule of Lawyers: Legal Profession, Politics and the Social in Chile, 1925-1989
Sponsor: Nara Milanich

Freeman, Mary.  The politics of correspondence: Letter writing in the campaign against slavery in the United States
Sponsor: Barbara Fields

Ispahani, Merve.  Building sovereignty in the late Ottoman world: Imperial subjects, consular networks, and documentation of individual identities 
Sponsor: Rashid Khalidi

Kaplan, Abram.  The myth of Greek algebra: Progress and community in early-modern mathematics
Sponsor: Matthew Jones

Kressel, Daniel.  Technicians of the spirit: Post-fascist technocratic authoritarianism in Spain, Argentina, and Chile, 1945-1988 
Sponsor: Pablo Piccato

Kung, Chien Wen.  Nationalist China in the postcolonial Philippines: Diasporic anticommunism, shared sovereignty, and ideological Chineseness, 1945-1970s  
Sponsor: Marwa Elshakry

Kuzuoglu, Ulug.  Codes of modernity: Infrastructures of language and Chinese scripts in an age of global information and revolution 
Sponsor: Madeleine Zelin

Luo, Weiwei. The common good: Property and state-making in late imperial China 
Sponsor: Madeleine Zelin

Marcus, David.  In socialism’s twilight: Michael Walzer and the politics of the long New Left 
Sponsor: Casey Blake

Mulder, Nicholas. The economic weapon: Interwar internationalism and the rise of sanctions, 1914-1945  
Sponsor: Mark Mazower

Newman, Rachel. Transnational ambitions: Student migrants and the making of a national future in twentieth century Mexico
Sponsor: Pablo Piccato

Vendell, Dominic. Scribes and the vocation of politics in the Maratha empire, 1708-1818
Sponsor: Nicholas Dirks

Yee, Ethan.  The burden of forgiveness: Franciscans’ impact on penitential practices in the thirteenth century  
Sponsor: Neslihan Senocak

Zakar, Adrien.  The disembodied eye: Technologies of surveillance and the logistics of perception in the Ottoman Empire and Syria, 1900-1930 
Sponsor: Christopher L. Brown

Zárate, Arthur.  The making of a Muslim reformer: Muḥammad al-Ghazálī (1917-1996) and Islam in postcolonial Egypt, 1947-1967 
Sponsor: Marwa Elshakry

Congratulations to all those who successfully defended their dissertations in 2018-19!

Alcenat, Westenley.  “Children of Africa, Shall be Haytians”: Prince Saunders, revolutionary transnationalism, and the foundations of Black emigration 
Sponsor: Eric Foner

Aumoithe, George.  Strange bedfellows: Public health and welfare politics in the United States, 1965-2000 
Sponsor: Alice Kessler-Harris

Bhattacharyya, Tania.  Ocean Bombay: Space, itinerancy and community in an imperial port city, 1839-1937  
Sponsor: Manan Ahmed

Buljina, Harun.  Empire, nation, and the Islamic world: Bosnian Muslim reformists between the Habsburg and Ottoman Empires, 1901-1914
Sponsor: Mark Mazower

Ferguson, Susanna.  Tracing tarbiya: Women, education, and childrearing in Lebanon and Egypt, 1860-1939  
Sponsor: Rashid Khalidi

Freeman, Mary.  The politics of correspondence: Letter writing in the campaign against slavery in the United States 
Sponsor: Barbara Fields

Gerien-Chen, James.  Between empire and nation: Taiwan Sekimin and the making of Japanese empire in South China, 1895-1937
Sponsor: Carol Gluck

Gonzalez Le Saux, Marianne.  The Rule of Lawyers: Legal Profession, Politics and the Social in Chile, 1925-1989
Sponsor: Nara Milanich

Ispahani, Merve.  Building sovereignty in the late Ottoman world: Imperial subjects, consular networks, and documentation of individual identities 
Sponsor: Rashid Khalidi

Kaplan, Abram.  The myth of Greek algebra: Progress and community in early-modern mathematics
Sponsor: Matthew Jones

Kressel, Daniel.  Technicians of the spirit: Post-fascist technocratic authoritarianism in Spain, Argentina, and Chile, 1945-1988 
Sponsor: Pablo Piccato

Kung, Chien Wen.  Nationalist China in the postcolonial Philippines: Diasporic anticommunism, shared sovereignty, and ideological Chineseness, 1945-1970s  
Sponsor: Marwa Elshakry

Kuzuoglu, Ulug.  Codes of modernity: Infrastructures of language and Chinese scripts in an age of global information and revolution 
Sponsor: Madeleine Zelin

Luo, Weiwei. The common good: Property and state-making in late imperial China 
Sponsor: Madeleine Zelin

Marcus, David.  In socialism’s twilight: Michael Walzer and the politics of the long New Left 
Sponsor: Casey Blake

Mulder, Nicholas. The economic weapon: Interwar internationalism and the rise of sanctions, 1914-1945  
Sponsor: Mark Mazower

Murphy, Anna.  Corporatizing defense: Management expertise and the transformation of the Cold War U.S. military 
Sponsor: Betsy Blackmar

Newman, Rachel. Transnational ambitions: Student migrants and the making of a national future in twentieth century Mexico
Sponsor: Pablo Piccato

Resnikoff, Jason.  The misanthropic sublime: Automation and the meaning of work in the postwar United States
Sponsor: Casey Blake

Shinnar, Shulamit.  “The Best of Doctors Go to Hell”: Rabbinic medical culture in late antiquity (200-600 C.E.)
Sponsor: Beth Berkowitz

Vendell, Dominic. Scribes and the vocation of politics in the Maratha empire, 1708-1818
Sponsor: Nicholas Dirks

Yee, Ethan.  The burden of forgiveness: Franciscans’ impact on penitential practices in the thirteenth century  
Sponsor: Neslihan Senocak

Zakar, Adrien.  The disembodied eye: Technologies of surveillance and the logistics of perception in the Ottoman Empire and Syria, 1900-1930 
Sponsor: Christopher L. Brown

Zárate, Arthur.  The making of a Muslim reformer: Muḥammad al-Ghazálī (1917-1996) and Islam in postcolonial Egypt, 1947-1967 
Sponsor: Marwa Elshakry

 

Dissertation Write-up Fellowships Awarded for the 2018-19 Academic Year (Update in progress)

 

Doris G. Quinn Fellowship

Devon Golaszewski,
Orcun Okan,
Jake Purcell

Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship

 

Harriet Zuckerman Dissertation Completion Fellowship

 

Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship

 

 CES/Mellon Dissertation Completion Fellowship

 

Lowenheim History Fellowship

 

Fellowships, Awards, Grants, & Babies (Update in progress)

Halimat Somotan has started a pre-doctoral fellowship at the Carter G. Woodson Institute for African-American and African Studies, at the University of Virginia.

Heath Rojas, a first-year doctoral student, won the Raymond J. Cunningham Prize for the best article published in a history department journal by an undergraduate. His winning article, titled “A Model of Revolutionary Regicide: The Role of Seventeenth-Century English History in the Trial of King Louis XVI,” appeared in Herodotus in Spring 2018.

Madeline Woker was named a Spring 2019 fellow of the Camargo Foundation Core Program, and her article “Edwin Seligman, initiator of global progressive public finance” will be published in the Journal of Global History in November 2018.

Amanda Martin-Hardin published an article (titled “Nature in Black and White: Summer Camps and Racialized Landscapes in the Photography of Gordon Parks”) in the journal Environmental History.

The Heyman Center for the Humanities named doctoral candidates Liz Dolfi (Religion), Alma Igra (History), Paul Katz (History), Warren Kluber (Theatre), and Emily Rutherford (History) as its 2018-2019 graduate student fellows.

The National Science Foundation awarded grants supporting the dissertation research of four GSAS doctoral students: David Alfaro Serrano (Economics), Eduardo Romero Dianderas (Anthropology), Aaron Plasek (History), and Anna Schirrer (Anthropology).

Conor Wilkinson won the Graduate Student Best Paper Prize at the South East Regional Seminar in African Studies & Southeast Africanist Network Annual Joint Meeting, for his paper “Ancestors and Family Life in Eastern and Southern Tanzania at the Turn of the Twentieth Century.”

Robin Reich won the prize for Best Student Paper (for “Nearly Gold and Nearly Perfect? Meaning and Materiality of Copper-Alloy in Twelfth-Century Sicily”) from the Medieval Academy of America at its 2018 Annual Meeting.

Benjamin Serby published an article (“The Dialectical Liberalism of Richard Hofstadter”) in the journal Society.

A group of Columbia faculty, librarians, and students—including doctoral candidates Zeinab Azarbadegan (History), Mahmood Gharavi (Religion), and Sadegh Ansar (Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies)—received a $500,000 grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources to digitize the university’s collection of Islamic manuscripts and paintings.

An award from the National Science Foundation will support the dissertation research of History Ph.D. candidate Sean O’Neil, who is studying the history of science in early modern Europe.

Baby Historians