EMSI Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow, 2024–2025
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Comparative Literature
Dissertation Title:
On Vegetables and Vermin: The Politics of Insect-Plant Encounters from the Early Modern to the Anthropocene
2003-2024 EMSI Ph.D. Dissertation Fellows
Lina Nie
2023-2024 EMSI Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Ph.D. Candidate, Van Hunnick History Department
Project Title:
“Being Transnational: Maritime Exchanges in East Asian Sphere from the Tenth to the Seventeenth Century”
Current Position: Assistant Professor of History, Texas A&M University
Alejandro Garay Celeita
2022-2023 EMSI Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture, USC
Dissertation Title: “Green Cosmologies: Indigenous Peoples and Plants in Early Modern South America”
Ekaterina Shubenkina
2021-2022 EMSI Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Slavic Languages & Literatures, USC
Dissertation Title:
“Learning to Write in Russia, 1700-1860”
Lydia Sigismondi
2021-2022 EMSI Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, USC
Dissertation Title:
“Friendly Rivals: Empire, Commerce, and Creole Identity in the Early Modern Caribbean”
Michael Benitez
2021-2022 EMSI Summer Ph.D. Fellow
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of English, USC
Dissertation Title:
“Shakespeare’s Archive-in-Action: Queer Futurity in Shakespeare’s Plays”
Current Position: Instructor, Mt. San Jacinto College
Dina Murokh
2021-2022 EMSI Summer Ph.D. Fellow
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Art History, USC
Dissertation Title:
“‘A Sort of Picture Gallery’: The Visual Culture of Antebellum America”
Current Position: Assistant Director, Williams College Graduate Program in the History of Art
Corey Blanchard
2020-2021 EMSI Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of History
Dissertation Title:
“‘A Good Mansion House, on Such an Eligible Site’: Material Culture, Commercial Networks, and Society in the Piscataqua, ca. 1700-1780”
Mary-Alice Daniel
2020-2021 (deferred) EMSI Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of English
Dissertation Title:
“Our Forgotten Caliphate: Rediscovering the Black Mythologies of California”
Current Position: 2024 Mary Routt Endowed Chair of Writing, Scripps College
Emily R. Anderson
2019-2020 EMSI Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of Art History
Dissertation Title:
“The Bespoke Book: Experimental Printing in Early Modern Italy”
Harrison Diskin
2019-2020 EMSI Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of History
Dissertation Title: “Building the Republic: New York City in an Age of Revolution”
Current Position: Senior Communications Associate at Luminary Labs
Randall Meissen
2018-2019 EMSI Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
2016-2017 EMSI/VSRI Mellon Sawyer Seminar Fellow
Department of History
Dissertation Title:
“Early Modern Theological Debates and Natural Science in the Iberian Atlantic (1580-1640)”
Current Position: University Chaplain and Director of Campus Ministry, Florida Tech
Steven Minas
2018-2019 EMSI Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of English
Dissertation Title:
“The Rhetoric of Cognition: Thinking Moments in Spenser, Shakespeare, and Milton”
Current Position: Lecturer, USC
Lauren Dodds
2017-2018 Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
2016 Summer Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of Art History
Project Title:
“Collecting the Renaissance: The Samuel H. Kress Collection of Italian Art”
Current Position: Postdoctoral Researcher (staff) for USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute and USC Mellon Humanities in a Digital World
Megan Herrold
2017 Summer Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of English
Project Title:
“Productive Misogyny in Medieval and Early Modern Literature: Women, Justice, and Social Order”
Current Position: Osteopathic Medical Student and Humanities Scholar
Amanda Ruud
2018 EMSI Summer Tutorial Instructor
2016-2017 Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of English
Project Title:
“Shakespeare’s Speaking Pictures”
Current Position: Visiting Assistant Professor of Humanities and Literature, Valparaiso University
Karin A. Amundsen
2016 Summer, 2015 Summer Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of History
Project Title:
“Upon Uncertain Hope of Gain: Metallurgy, Mining, and English Colonization in the Americas, 1550-1640”
Current Position: Postdoctoral Scholar / Teaching Fellow, USC
Lauren Weindling
2016 Spring Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of Comparative Studies in Literature and Culture
Project Title:
“Blood is the Argument:” Discourses of Blood, Character, and Affinity in Early Modern Drama”
Current Position: Fellow, Centre for Renaissance and Reformation Studies, University of Toronto / Book Reviews Editor for Early Theatre
John W. Fanestil
2015-2016 Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of History
Project Title:
“The Martyrological Origins of the American Revolution”
Current Position: Co-founder and Convener of the Friends of Friendship Park, San Diego
Sean Nelson
2015 Spring Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of Art History
Project Title:
“Jerusalem Lost: Crusade, Myth, and Historical Imagination in Grand Ducal Florence”
Current Position: Academic Director, Syracuse University, Florence
S. Alexander Smith
2014-2015 Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of History
Project Title:
“Private Luxuries: Consuming Identity in the English Atlantic, c. 1580-1713”
Nicholas Gliserman
2013-2014 Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
2012 EMSI Summer Tutorial Instructor
Department of History
Project Title:
“Landscapes of War: A Study of Northeast America, 1688-1713”
Current Position: Director of Technology, Information, and Digital Engagement, The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History
Keith Pluymers
2013-2014 Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
2013 EMSI Summer Tutorial Instructor
Department of History
Project Title:
“Colonizing Land and Landscapes in the Early Modern English Atlantic, c. 1575-c. 1640”
Current Academic Affiliation: Associate Professor of History, Illinois State University
Ellen Dooley
2013 Summer Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
2012 EMSI Summer Tutorial Instructor
Department of Art History
Project title:
“Painting Salvation: Affluence, Art, and Plague in Golden Age Seville”
Current Position: Social Science Instructional Leader and Teacher, Milken Community Schools
Amanda Weldy Boyd
2013 Summer Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of English
Project title:
“His Work, My Words: Performance Anxiety and the Burden of Originality for the Theatrical Biographer/Historian (1620-1820)”
Current Position: Adjunct Associate Professor of English, Hope International University
Justin Clark
2012-2013 Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of History
Project Title:
“Training the Eyes: Romantic Vision and Class Formation in Boston, 1830-1870”
Current Academic Affiliation: Associate Professor, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore
Penelope Geng
2012-2013 Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of English
Project Title:
“Popular Jurisprudence in Early Modern Literature”
Current Academic Affiliation: Associate Professor of English, Macalester College
Meghan Davis Mercer
Summer 2012 Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of English
Project title:
“Slow Reading in Elizabethan England: Sidney, Spenser, Marlowe, and Shakespeare”
Current Position: Writer
Matthew Smith
Summer 2012 Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of English
Project title:
“Grounds of Belief: The Appearance of Religion in Renaissance Performance”
Current Position: President, Hildegard College
Jeanne Eller McDougall
2011-2012 Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of History
Project Title:
“‘Fit to be sung in Streets‘: the Mobilizing Power of Political Song in Pre-Revolutionary British Colonial America, 1750-1776″
Jeremy Glatstein
2011-2012 Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of Art History
Project title:
“The Watching Night: Print, Power and Jewish Vision in Early Modern Italy”
Current Position: Professor of Art History, Saddleback College
Laura S. Fauteux
2010-2011 Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of English
Project title:
“Living Her Narrative: Eighteenth-Century Women Writers, Writing Heroines, and the Developing Novel”
Current Position: Office Manager, Stracker Physical Therapy, Inc.
Anne Reid
2010-2011 Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of History
Project title:
“Medics of the Soul and the Body: Disease, Environment, and Death in Alta California, 1769-1850”
Current Academic Affiliation: Assistant Professor of History, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo
Natasha Alvandi
2010 Summer Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of English
Project title:
“Exhibition Effects: Seeing and Hearing Working-Class Spectators in the Early Victorian Novel”
Current Position: Independent Scholar & Novelist
Penelope Geng
Summer 2010 Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of English
Project title:
“Legal Chatter in English Renaissance Drama”
Current Academic Affiliation: Associate Professor of English, Macalester College
Laurie Fisher
2009-2010 Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of English
Current Academic Affiliation: Assistant Professor (Teaching) of Writing, USC
Michael Block
2008-2009 Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of History
Project Title:
“New England Merchants, the China Trade, and the Origins of California”
Current Position: Lecturer, History, California State University, Dominguez Hills
Rory Lukins
2008-2009 Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of English
Project Title:
“The Ethics of Form: Politics, the Passions, and Genre Formation in the English Renaissance”
Current Position: Associate Professor (Teaching), USC
Alison Tymoczko Jeffries
2007-2008 Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of English
Project Title:
“The Politics of Eros: Writing under the auspices of Ovid’s Cupid in early modern English Literature”
Current Position: Adjunct Professor, Pasadena City College
Amy Braden
2006-2007 Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of English
Project title:
“As She Fled: Women and Movement in 16th-Century English Poetry and Drama”
Current Position: Director of Programs, USC-Huntington Early Modern Studies Institute
Hillary Brown
2006-2007 Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Project title:
“Eighteenth-century British and French Sculpture”
Lucia Hodgson
2005-2006 Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of English
Project Title:
“The Children’s Table: Childhood Studies and the New Humanities”
Current Position: Researcher in History, Department of Cultural Sciences, Linnaeus University
Kevin Laam
2005-2006 Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of English
Project Title:
“Borrowed Heaven: Early Modern Devotion and the Art of Happiness”
Current Position: Associate Professor of History, Oakland University
Kathryn Strong Hansen
2005-2006 Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of English
Project title:
“Dress and deception: Women’s dress and the eighteenth-century British novel”
Current Position: Associate Director of Multimodal Communications Programming, Colby College
Alice Villaseñor
2005-2006 Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of English
Project Title:
“Women Readers and the Victorian Jane Austen”
Current Position: Associate Director of Civic and Community Engagement, Buffalo State University
Tillman Nechtman
2003-2004 Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
Department of History
Project Title:
“Nabobs: Defining the Indian empire and the British nation in the late eighteenth century”
Current Position: Professor of History, Skidmore College
