EMSI Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow, 2025–2026
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Classics
Dissertation Title:
The Classical Tradition, Latin Stylistics, and the Language of the Self in Epistolary Collections of Quattrocento Women Humanists
EMSI Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow, 2025–2026
Ph.D. Candidate, Van Hunnick History Department
Dissertation Title:
Agawam to Springfield: Society, Culture, and the Environment in a New England Town
EMSI Ph.D. Summer Research Fellow, 2025
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Art History
Dissertation Title:
Between Money and Medium: Goldwork in Early Modern Italy
EMSI Ph.D. Summer Research Fellow, 2025
Ph.D. Candidate, Department of English
Dissertation Title:
Amusement without Utility: Representations of the Cook Voyages in 18th-Century Print Culture, 1773-1784
2003-2025 EMSI Ph.D. Dissertation Fellows
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
Lina Nie
2023-2024 EMSI Ph.D. Dissertation Fellow
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
Department of History, USC
Dissertation Title:
“Cultural Kinfolk: Intercolonial Relations in the Revolutionary British West Indies”
Michael Benitez
2021-2022 EMSI Summer Ph.D. Fellow
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
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
