Christian Bradford
MA Student
christian.bradford@maine.edu
Savannah Clark
M.A. Student
savannah.clark@maine.edu
Fields: Nineteenth-Century American history, Women’s history, Religious history
Advisor: Mary Freeman
Education: BA in History and Religious Studies from Gettysburg College in 2018 and MA in History from University of Maine in 2022
Research Interests: My research focuses on the experiences of Northern New England women during the Civil War
David Coombs
Ph.D. Student
david.coombs@maine.edu
Fields: His most recent work investigates the intersecting roles of the Teamsters union, deregulation, and the trucking industry-in-transition during a 564-day strike involving Coles Express of Maine in 1982.
Advisor: Anne Knowles
Education: B.A. in Philosophy (2016) and M.A. in English and Education (2019), University of Nevada
Research Interests: His research examines the effects of government deregulation and corporate centralization in late twentieth century New England, as seen through the eyes of the trucking industry.
Derek DeMello
Ph.D. Student
derek.demello@maine.edu
Fields: Northeastern Native Americans, Ethnohistory, Environmental History
Advisor: Micah Pawling
Education: BA in History with minor in secondary education from Bridgewater State University (2010); MA in history and CGS in public history from Rhode Island College (2023)
Research Interests: My research interests are the Native peoples of northeast North America and their cultures, intertribal relationships, land and resource utilization, actions when faced with European settler colonialism and invasive species, and persistence to the present day. My MA thesis work examined the historiography of King Philip’s War.
Publications: Review of The Slow Rush of Colonization: Spaces of Power in the Maritime Peninsula, 1680-1790 by Thomas Peace, Maine History (forthcoming summer 2024)
Laura Curioli
MA Student
laura.curioli@maine.edu
Fields: American Constitutional studies, early American colonialism, twentieth century American political history, religious history.
Advisor: Joel Anderson
Education: B.S. in History and Secondary Education
Research Interests: My studies observe the rise and establishment of Constitutional ideologies, such as the juxtaposition of originalism and textualism, and how those impact the evolution of American political history.
Gregory Gaines
Ph.D. Student
gregory.gaines@maine.edu
Fields: Scandinavian studies, Immigration history, Cultural studies, Medieval studies, Digital Humanities.
Advisor: Anne Knowles
Education: B.A. History, Clark University (2015), M.A. History, Clark University (2016), M.A. Medieval Icelandic Studies, University of Iceland (2018).
Research Interests: I am interested in the movement of Scandinavians to North America in the nineteenth century, and how this movement was affected by various cultural artifacts from the Medieval period.
Lucretia Grindle
Ph.D. Student
Advisor: Mary Freeman & Mazie Hough (co-chairs)
Maggie Kontra-Emmens
Ph.D. Student
maggie.kontraemmens@maine.edu
Fields: Identity, Scottish studies, Canadian studies, Popular Culture, Gender, Digital
Humanities
Advisor: Mark J. McLaughlin
Education: BA History, Old Dominion University; MA History, Old Dominion University
Research Interests: My dissertation will focus on the Scottish diaspora and Scottish identity and influence in Canada, 1870-1914. This is a slight change from my Masters work regarding a formation of Canadian identity through the trench newspapers of the Great War, although the seed of identity remains strong. Even though it has been mentioned that “identity” is the jello of historical topics, my focus is on solidarity or groupness while still touching on many aspects of its multivalence (such as, nationality, citizenship, ethnicity, race, name, family, heritage, class, employment, community, religion, language, and gender).
Group Affiliation(s): American Historical Association (AHA), Phi Alpha Theta Honor Society, Canadian Historical Association-La Société historique du Canada (CHA/SHC)
Christine Liu
Ph.D. Student
christine.liu@maine.edu
Fields: Holocaust Studies, Digital Humanities
Advisor: Anne Knowles
Education: B.A. in History, University of California, Berkeley; M.A. in Computational Media, Duke University
Jennifer Munson
M.A. Student
jennifer.munson@maine.edu or jmunson@colemuseum.org
Fields: Genocidal Studies, Memorialization History, Dark Tourism, Maine History
Advisor: Anne Knowles
Research Interests: I am interested in the memorialization of the Holocaust on U.S soil and the involvement of immigrants in erecting those memorials.
Dylan O’Hara
Ph.D. Student
dylan.ohara@maine.edu;
Fields: My fields of study include American Urban History, 20th century American Political History, as well as Women’s History and African American History.
Advisor: Nathan Godfried
Education: BA in History and English Literature from Connecticut College (2017); MA in History from the University of Texas at San Antonio (2019), MA Thesis titled, “‘Floating Across the Catwalk:’ Race and Women’s Labor in Three Debutante Societies in Urban San Antonio, 1930-1960.”
Research Interests: My current dissertation research focuses on the uneven and inequitable urban development of greater Boston between 1920 and 1980. This project places special emphasis on community resistance to urban renewal, women’s role in writing scripts of urban reformation, and ongoing issues of the changing landscape of racial segregation in Dorchester and Roxbury.
Contact: @DylanGOHara1 (Twitter)
Recent Publications:
“Book Review of Smeltertown by Monica Perales.” Book Review of Smeltertown: Making and Remembering a Southwest Border Community by Monica Perales. Harrison Middleton University, 2020.
“Legacies of HemisFair: Urban Renewal and Mexican Americans in San Antonio,” in The Americas and the New World Order: Selected Essays on Latin America and Global Politics. (ed) Joshua Hyles. Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2019.
Recent Presentations:
TransitCon 2022| The Largest Free Virtual Transit Conference in the U.S., Hosted by TransitCon.org, January 30, 2022| Presentation titled, “Urban History & Planning the Future: What Historians Lend to Rebuilding Equitable American Cities.
Women & Climate Change Lecture Series| University of Maine, Department of Women & Gender Studies, February 18, 2021| Presentation titled, “Ecofeminism and the Urban Environment.” Presented in partnership with the McGillicuddy Humanities Center, The Climate Change Institute, and the Women & Gender Studies Departments at the University of Maine. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSyoRSUjRQc
Andrew Reddy
Ph.D. Student
areddy@biddefordschools.me
Fields: Acadian History, Diaspora Studies, Colonial History, Northeast Borderlands, Canadian Studies
Advisor: Mark McLaughlin
Education: BA Liberal Learning University of New England, 1988; MS Special Education University of Southern Maine 2009; MA American and New England Studies University of Southern Maine 2018
Research Interests: My research interests include the use of expulsion narratives by Acadian descendants as cultural identity markers and the post expulsion insurgency movements by Acadians who resisted relocation and lived on the margins of the British Empire, forming and maintaining alliances with indigenous populations.
Group Affiliations: Phi Alpha Theta Honor Society
Recent Publications: Book Review of A History of Maine Railroads by Bill Kenny. Maine History
Lindsay Ropiak
M.A. Student
lindsay.ropiak@maine.edu
Fields: Canadian-American, Cultural
Advisors: Professor Mark McLaughlin and Professor Nathan Godfried
Education: Bachelor of Arts in English and an Anthropology minor
Research Interest: Cultural production and consumers in the 20th century, particularly after World War II. My thesis explores branches of comedy that developed alongside the counter and youth cultures of the late 1950s to 1970s to become mainstream entertainment and a reflection of the experiences and sensibilities of the Boomer generation as they came of age in United States and Canada.
Group Affiliation(s): Phi Alpha Theta
Hannah Schmidt
Ph.D. Student
hannah.schmidt@maine.edu
Fields: Colonial North America, Indigenous history, Spatial history, Women and Gender
Advisor: Liam Riordan
Education: B.A., History, Southern Illinois University (2013); M.A., History, Southern Illinois University (2017)
Research Interests: My dissertation explores captive-taking in the colonial northeast and aims to show how spatial analysis can inform our understandings of captivity and captive-taking. This project emphasizes spatial language as well as mapping to illuminate how spatiality intersects with other social constructs such as gender and race and shaped captive experiences. It also attempts to decolonize scholarly approaches to captivity narratives by recentering Indigenous people’s experiences in captivity as well.
Darcy Stevens
Ph.D. Student
darcy.stevens@maine.edu
Fields: American Revolution, Early American, Canadian-American Northeast Borderlands
Advisor: Liam Riordan
Education: B.S. History Emporia State University; (2005) M.A. American History Emporia State University (2008)
Research Interests: My research focuses on the contentious socio-political terrain of the American Revolution, and how it influenced inhabitants’ decisions about allegiance and neutrality in the Northeast Borderlands of Maine, Nova Scotia, and Wabanakia.
Group Affiliations: UMaine Canadian-American Center Fellow, David Center for the American Revolution Fellow, New England Historical Association, Massachusetts Historical Society, Phi Alpha Theta Honor Society. Maine History journal Book Review Editor
Recent Publications:
“’The Unhappy and Unparalled Defeat at Penobscott’ and the Entanglement of Machias and Bagaduce.” The Beehive, Massachusetts Historical Society. June 4, 2021
“Performing Allegiance and Neutrality in the Shadow of Fort George” – The Castine Visitor, publication of the Castine Historical Society, Vol 30, No 3 – Fall 2020
“Fontaine Leval: A Revolutionary Story” – Chebacco, journal of the Mount Desert Island Historical Society, Volume XXI – 2020
Recent Presentations:
“Performing Allegiance and Neutrality in Occupied Machias and Bagaduce Maine During the American Revolution. Conrad E. Wright Research Conference, Massachusetts Historical Society, July 14-16 2022
“Positioning Neutrality at the 1777 Aukpaque Conference,” Atlantic Canada Studies, biennial conference. University of New Brunswick, May 25-28, 2022.
“Navigating the Revolutionary Northeast: Borderlands through Fluid Allegiance and Neutrality.” Colonial Society of Massachusetts Graduate Student Forum, June 11, 2021.
Sarah Witthauer
Ph.D. Student
sawitthauer@gmail.com
Fields: Early American, and Women’s History.
Advisor: Liam Riordan
Education: BA. 2012, MA 2014 – Queens College, Queens NY.
Research Interests: American Loyalist women, and Early American families.