Graduate Student Bios and Research
Jacob Anderson Armstrong
M.A. Student
![]() |
Advisor: Dr. Scott Marler Email: jrmstrn3@memphis.edu Research Interests: cultural history, U.S. political history, and social history.
|
Harry Barber
Ph.D. Student
![]() |
Advisor: Dr. Stephen K. Stein Email: hcbarber@memphis.edu Research Interests: 20th Century US History/Military History Tentative Dissertation Tittle: Alan Goodrich Kirk: Admiral and Ambassador |
Morgan Ingram Bentley
M.A. Student
![]() |
Advisor: Dr. Sarah Potter Email: mlingram@memphis.edu Research Interests: student experiences at Indian Boarding Schools. |
Chelsea Buggs
Ph.D. Student
![]() |
Advisors: : Dr. Aram Goudsouzian and Dr. Beverly Bond Email: cbuggs@memphis.edu Research interests: late 19th-early 20th century southern African American History with an emphasis on women and gender studies, Black feminism, and identity. Currently, exploring late 19th-early 20th century middle-class Black women Memphians’ intellectual-activism, their identity construction and demonstration, and the connections between Black liberation and white supremacy via identity construction and demonstration. Tentative Dissertation Title: I am Me: Middle-Class Black Women Memphians’ Intellectual-Activism, Identity, & Black Liberation and White Supremacy in the Jim/Jane Crow Era, 1880-1930 |
Macon Bullock
M.A. Global
![]() |
Email: mwbllock@memphis.edu Research Interests: U.S. Colonial History, U.S. in the Age of Jackson, African-American History, American Civil War, The Word Wars, and U.S. Historiography. |
Danyel Clark
Ph.D. Student
![]() |
Advisor: Dr. Susan O’Donovan Email: drclark4@memphis.edu Research Interests: Nineteenth century, African American Women, Reconstruction era, Racial Violence My dissertation topic will examine the Ku Klux Klan and its founding in Pulaski, Tennessee during Reconstruction. While the early members of the KKK are important to my study, I intend to center the experiences of African Americans in Pulaski and surrounding counties. How the community responded to the violence and life before the formation of the Klan will be explored. |
Amber Anna Colvin
Ph.D. Student
![]() |
Advisor: Dr. Daniel Unowsky Email: aacolvin@memphis.edu Research Interests: Early Modern Britain, Material Culture, Portraiture, Celebrity, The Atlantic World Dissertation Title: (Tentative) 'Annihilated in his presence': Legitimacy, Family, Change, and Power in the Portraiture of Henry VIII, James II, and George II Currently working as Associate Director of Community Engagement and Part-Time Faculty Member at Lausanne Collegiate School |
Taylor Deane
Ph.D. Student
![]() |
Advisor: Dr. Peter Brand Email: mdeane@memphis.edu Research Interests: New Kingdom, Eighteenth Dynasty Officials, Non-royal Theban Tombs, Memory Sanctions Dissertation Title: 'Official' Obliteration: Defaced Images and Texts in Eighteenth Dynasty Non-Royal Theban Tombs |
Katie Wiggins Fincher
Ph.D. Student
![]() |
Advisor: Dr. Peter Brand Email: knwggins@memphis.edu Research Interests: Ancient Egyptian religious thought and cosmology, Egyptian gods and goddesses, Nubian religion and history, museum practices and collections management, and historiography and theories of history. Dissertation Title: Beyond Cosmogony: A Reassessment of the Egyptian Ogdoad and its Role in Egyptian Religion and Magic |
Aniya Andrea't Gold
M.A. Student
![]() |
Email: aagold@memphis.edu Research Interests: African American history in the 20th century with a focus in Black popular culture, Black social movements, and Black feminism. |
Haleigh Graham
M.A. Student
![]() |
Email: hgraham3@memphis.edu Research Interests: Southern history, American history, history of minority groups |
Damarius Harris
Ph.D. Student
![]() |
Advisor: Dr. Susan O’Donovan Email: dhrris42@memphis.edu Research Interests: U.S. History to 1877 - South during the Reconstruction Era; Elite white Mississippians’ efforts to undermine Reconstruction Era reforms to protect their class and political power; Exploring how elite whites continued to hinder socioeconomic and citizenship reforms for poor black and white Mississippians. Tentative Dissertation Title: A Way of Life: The Struggle to Reconstruct Class and Citizenship in America. |
Wesley Hoag
M.A. Global
![]() |
Email: whoag@memphis.edu Research Interests: U.S. colonial history, the experiences of rural southerners in the 19th century, military history
|
RaSean Jenkins
Ph.D. Student
![]() |
Advisor: Dr. Aram Goudsouzian Email: rjjnkins@memphis.edu Research Interests: 20th Century American History, African American History, racial inequality, and demographic change Tentative Dissertation Title: A City Transformed: Citizens to Preserve Overton Park v. Volpe |
David Larson
Ph.D. Student
![]() |
Advisor: Dr. Peter Brand Email: pdlarson@memphis.edu Research Interests: dirt and impurity in Ancient Egypt; ritual purity in Ancient Egypt; Egyptian foreign relations; New Kingdom Egypt history and culture; Tentative Dissertation Title: Dirtiness in Ancient Egypt: A Lexical Approach |
Sabrina Lee
M.A. Global
![]() |
Email: slee31@memphis.edu Research Interests: military history, cultural history, and etymology. |
Brittany Lyles
Ph.D. Student
![]() |
Advisor: Dr. Scott Marler Email: bmlyles@memphis.edu Research Interests: Religious and intellectual history - finding the place where ideas and faith meet action. Dissertation Title: Incarnate Faith in the Crescent City |
Meridian McDaniel
Ph.D. Student
![]() |
Advisor: Dr. Aram Goudsouzian Email: mpnkrtnm@memphis.edu Research Interests: 20th Century American History, African American History, Southern Primary and Secondary Education, Mississippi in the 20th Century, School Desegregation and Resegregation, the Civil Rights Movement, and White Flight. My intended dissertation topic will explore the desegregation and subsequential resegregation of the Hattiesburg, Mississippi Public School system from the 1960s until 2000. This project will explore legal battles that helped to finally desegregate schools in the 1990s, white flight in response to school desegregation and the formation of suburbs in medium sized southern cities, and the legacy of school desegregation and the resegregation of the school district. It aims to further studies on the legacy of school desegregation and resegregation, the impact of white flight on public education, and explore a prolonged timeline of desegregation in the South in non-urban cities and their instances of school resegregation in the South. |
Larry Bradford Pitts
M.A. Global
![]() |
Advisor: Dr. Andrew Daily Email: lbpitts@memphis.edu Research Interest: military history, Native American studies, US history, European history |
Joshua Ringer
M.A. Global
![]() |
Advisor: Dr. Andrew Daily Email: jdringer@memphis.edu Research Interests: American Military History, Georgia State History with a focus on the Civil War, World Religion and Culture |
Cristina Rose
Ph.D. Student
![]() |
Advisor: Dr. Peter Brand Email: clrose1@memphis.edu Research Interests: epigraphy of ancient Egypt, New Kingdom & Ramesside art & architecture, archaeology of ancient Egypt, the Roman Republic and early Roman Empire, Museum Studies with a focus on Collections. Dissertation Title (in-progress): De-Activating Seth: Using Iconoclasm to Contain
an Unruly God |
Stephanie Sellers
M.A. Global
![]() |
Advisor: Dr. Andrei Znamenski Email: ssllers3@memphis.edu Research Interest: Reconstruction, African American History, Long Civil Rights Movement Tentative Thesis Title: A Red Dream Deferred |
Brandon Stewart
Ph.D. Student
![]() |
Email: bstwrt15@memphis.edu Research Interests: The Long Nineteenth Century and 20th Century Authoritarianism; Revolutions, Nationalism, Socialism, Antisemitism, and Imperialism; Religion and Warfare in the Ancient World My intended dissertation topic will explore the internal and external events, philosophical, intellectual, cultural, and political developments that led to the emergence of the spirit of the "Volk" and National Socialist ideology, prior to and after German unification. My primary research field is Modern Europe with secondary areas in Global History and Ancient History. What brought me to the University of Memphis is the structured flexibility of the Ph.D. program to cover such broad areas of interest of chronological and geographic diversity, while still focusing on my primary field of social-political developments within Europe and in particular Germany. |
Preston Tilghman
M.A. Global
![]() |
Email: pttlghmn@memphis.edu Research Interests: I have always found the connection between World War I, the rise of Fascism in Europe, and World War II to be incredibly fascinating, not merely because of its extreme gravity to our own present day, but also in how we still see its impact in the cities of Europe today, such as places like Munich, Germany. I am also interested in Romantic era figures such as Frederic Chopin, and in the rise and fall of Napoleon Bonaparte. |
Daniel Warne
Ph.D. Student
![]() |
Advisor: Dr. Suzanne Onstine Email: dmwarne@memphis.edu Research Interests: The focus of my current research is on the iconographical classification and ritual function of a particular type of largely royal imagery of the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms. I am also currently a digital epigrapher for the Theban Tomb 16 Project (tomb of Panehsy and Tarenu) at Dra abu al-Naga, directed by Dr. Suzanne Onstine. My recent research projects include the analysis of a mummy dating to the Ptolemaic Period, the study of the coffin of Ankhefenmut (an Egyptian priest of the 21st Dynasty, Bab el-Gasus cache), Egyptian Revival sphinxes, and an Egyptian collection in the Finger Lakes region of Upstate New York, where I currently serve as advising curator. |