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