Assistant Instructors
Kerry Knerr
Doctoral Student
Interests: Food studies, cocktail culture, economic history and geography, the erotics of consumption, representations of cannibalism, and affect and embodiment
Joshua Kopin
Doctoral Student
Interests: 20th century cultural history, comics studies, affect studies, popular cultural studies, American religious history, political art, historiography, fame, men's style, writing pedagogy
B. Duncan Moench
Ph.D. Candidate
Interests: American politics and intellectual history. Louis Hartz and the comparativist historical approach
Robert Oxford
Doctoral Student
Interests: South Texas fracking communities, ethnography, eco-critisism, petrol-politics, neoliberalism, and climate justice.
Edwin Whitewolf
Doctoral Student
Interests: Cinema Studies and Media Studies, Native American Studies, Museum Studies, Critical Race Theory, Pop Culture and Spectacle, National Memory, 19th Century American History
PhD Candidacy
Christine Capetola
Doctoral Student
Interests: queer theory, black studies, gender studies, sound studies, affect theory, performance studies, 80's pop and r&b, contemporary synthpop
Caroline Pinkston
Doctoral Student
Interests: history of education, schools & community identity, collective memory & history, textbook studies, memorials & memorializing, education & curricular philosophy
Emily Roehl
Doctoral Student
Interests: environmental humanities, environmental justice, oil culture studies, new media studies, history and theories of photography, social practice and activist art, performance studies, visual anthropology, cultural geography
Natalie Zelt
Doctoral Student
Interests: contemporary art of the United States, photography and its histories, critical race and gender studies, American cultural history, visual culture studies, material culture studies, curatorial practice
PhD Students
Anneleise Azua
Doctoral Student
Interests: Ethnic Studies, Latinx Studies, Medical Anthropology, ethnography, higher education, health and healthcare in the United States and Mexico, and the history of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands
Andrew Bahna
Doctoral Student
Interests: Intimacy, affect, technology, gaming, social media, digital cultures, digital humanities, Vietnam and Cold War, Native American history, Latin American history, and pedagogy.
Judson Barber
Doctoral Student
Interests: Public memory, public history, prison and carceral studies, restorative justice, human geography and affect, architecture and urban design, postmodernism, hyperreality, amusement, leisure, gaming, and cultures of American recreation.
Nicholas Bloom
Doctoral Student
Interests: 19th and 20th century US history; Atlantic slavery; the US South; early history of North America and the Caribbean; migration and diaspora; colonialism and modernity; critical theories of race and racism; critical theories of gender; intellectual history and political theory; radical political imaginary/the black radical tradition; Marxism; anti-colonial/postcolonial political projects; resistance literature; sports and popular music.
Zoya Brumberg
Doctoral Student
Interests: The American west, migration, historiography, myth-making, public space, historic and environmental preservation practices, travel memoirs, landscapes as literary characters, 1960s-70s foraging and DIY guides, road trip movies, natural history museums, communicating on these topics heuristically
Leah Butterfield
Doctoral Student
Interests: Transnational Feminism, Queer Theory, Memoir and Personal Essay, Tourism Studies, Immigration Studies, Digital Humanities
Caroline Johnson
Doctoral Student
Interests: Images and visual culture, popular culture, comics and political cartoons, youth culture, consumer history, speech play and verbal art, gender theory
Anna Lyon
Doctoral Student
Interests: US cultural history, medical history, reproductive technologies, critical race studies, queer studies, materialist feminism
Andrea Remoquillo
Doctoral Student
Interests: Asian-American studies, transnational feminism, Filipino/a postcolonial studies, Filipino/Filipino-American diaspora, gender and sexual identity formation in the contemporary U.S., popular culture studies, ethnography.
MA Students
Christine Castro
Masters Student
Interests: Chican@ Studies, Social Epistemology, Agricultural Labor & Immigrant history in California, Violence & incarceration in rural spaces, Collective memory
Kate Grover
Masters Student
Interests: American musical cultures and communities, 20th and 21st century cultural history, critical race and gender studies, feminist histories and practice, popular culture studies, performance studies, media studies, women in rock culture, the 1990s, historical memory and meaning-making processes, fandom, nostalgia, the politics of taste, stardom and celebrity studies, "cool"/"coolness" in the US.
Gaila Sims
Masters Student
Interests: Public History, Slavery, Museums, Public Memory, African American History, Black Feminism, Museum Education, Archives
