Graduate Faculty in the Transatlantic History Program

The graduate faculty involves 21 professors who work on various topics within the field of transatlantic history.

Thomas Adam’s teaching and research are focused on German-American history before World War I and the history of philanthropy for social, cultural and educational institutions in a transatlantic context. He also specializes in the travel and travel literature of Americans traveling to Germany throughout the nineteenth century. The history of Germans in the Americas from 1500 to the present time and questions of defining identity and citizenship in nineteenth-century multi-ethnic societies such as the United States are of particular interest to him. He currently serves on a dissertation committee on mapping Europe in the Cold War.

 Stephanie Cole specializes in U.S. nineteenth-century social history with emphasis on gender, race and the history of women and work. Past and present research covers domestic service and the construction of race in the nineteenth-century South, domestic violence, and the creation of a biracial social order in multiracial Jim Crow era Texas . She currently serves on a dissertation committee on women and the transatlantic antislavery movement. She would be willing to supervise dissertations related to any aspect of nineteenth-century women’s history, those touching on the construction of race and/or gender in the nineteenth or early twentieth centuries, and certain topics within African American history.

 Elisabeth Cawthon has done research in English legal history, comparative English/U.S. legal history, and medico-legal history. She has developed sub-fields of scholarly interest in the history of forensic medicine and the law concerning mental health. She recently has done research on comparative legal history related to imprisonment during wartime and the prosecution of treason cases under British law during the twentieth century. She has directed honors theses and M.A. theses on a variety of topics in medieval, early modern and modern English and comparative Anglo-American history; most of these works were related to legal history or public policy. She directed the Ph.D. dissertation of Jennifer Hudson-Allen on the British-American actress and businesswoman Lillie Langtry.

Robert B. Fairbanks is an urban historian who works in the fields of urban policy and planning in twentieth-century United States . Recently he has focused on cities of the Southwest. He has some expertise in Anglo-American urban/planning history and would be willing to serve or direct dissertations in this area. He has supervised the dissertation of Thomas Hill-Aiello on "Dallas, Cotton, and the Transatlantic Economy, 1885-1956." It examined the important role Dallas played in the cotton trade between England and the United States and traced the transatlantic linkages in Dallas that resulted.

Richard V. Francaviglia works in the field of cultural/historical geography. His interests include the history of exploration and discovery, the history of cartography, and landscapes of encounter in transatlantic history. He is currently supervising two dissertations on the following subjects: (1) the use of maps in the early Cold War, and (2) Alexander von Humboldt’s role in early nineteenth-century American borderlands history. He welcomes working with students interested in transatlantic dimensions of mapping, natural history/science illustration, and exploration-discovery.

John Garrigus is a historian of the Caribbean, Latin America , and the Atlantic World. He is interested in working with students on Caribbean and colonial Latin America . His research focuses on the Haitian Revolution (1791-1804) and involves using legal records to offer a new perspective on the social impact of the revolution on the lives of free and enslaved people in what was once the most profitable colony in the New World .

Joyce S. Goldberg’s research and teaching fields are U.S. foreign relations (any era) and U.S. military history (any era). She is currently directing the dissertation of Diane DeWaters on the World War Two conferences of Roosevelt and Churchill.

George N. Green’s fields of research are the economic and political histories of the American South and Southwest since the late nineteenth century.

Sam W. Haynes specializes in early nineteenth-century U.S. history, with a particular emphasis on American expansionism in the Jacksonian era. He is currently completing a book on anti-British sentiment in the United States during the 1815-1850 period, and is directing a dissertation on the role of British and American women in the transatlantic free produce movement. He would be willing to supervise students in all aspects of nineteenth-century U.S.-British relations.

Alusine Jalloh’s fields of research and areas that he would like to supervise Ph.D. theses on are Africa and the African Diaspora. To date he has supervised one Ph.D. dissertation: Emmanuel Mbah, "Land/Boundary Conflict in Africa: The Case of Former British Colonial Bamenda, Present-Day North-West Province of the Republic of Cameroon ca. 1916-1996.”

Stephen Maizlish’s research focuses on Antebellum United States, the American Civil War and Reconstruction, and nineteenth-century American political history. He has helped to supervise one Ph.D. thesis (Tim Grammer’s “Wellington and Lee: Anglo American Images of the Victorian Hero”) and would be interested in working with any student who wishes to focus on American political history, the history of nineteenth-century reform, the politics of slavery, the Civil War, nineteenth-century expansion, Reconstruction, nineteenth-century African American history, or any aspect of nineteenth-century sectional conflict.

Christopher Morris regularly teaches the graduate course on theory and method, and he has recently taught colloquiums on trans-Atlantic slavery and U.S. environmental history. At present he is completing a book-length survey of the ecological history of the Mississippi Valley from early Native Americans through the Army Corps of Engineers. His next project will compare the European colonial experience in four river environments, the Mississippi in North America, the Senegal in West Africa, the Kaveri in India , and the Pearl in China .

David E. Narrett is a specialist in the American colonial and revolutionary eras. His recent research focuses on North American frontiers of the seventeenth through mid-nineteenth centuries. He would be willing to supervise Ph.D. students in the fields of the American (U.S.) colonial, revolutionary, and early national eras; North American frontiers; and comparative frontier history.

Stanley Palmer is an expert in the field of Irish history and has developed an interest in the study of the interactions between Indians, Anglos, and African Americans in America before 1860. His current interests center on native and settler history in the Atlantic world (specifically, Ireland , the USA , and South Africa ) but he works with doctoral students on a variety of subjects from the British Isles to the English-speaking regions of the Atlantic basin and hinterlands. He has supervised two Ph.D. theses (Tim Grammer’s “ Wellington and Lee: Anglo American Images of the Victorian Hero,” and Steven Butler’s “Away O’er the Waves: The Transatlantic Life and Literature of Captain Mayne Reid.” He is currently working with Liam Iwig-O’Byrne on a study of transatlantic Wesleyan Methodism, Charles Brazell on the life and legacy of a Presbyterian minister in Ireland and America , and Todd Holzaepfel on the British influence on the American and Canadian West, 1870-1900.

Kenneth Philp’s field of research is twentieth-century Native American History. He supervised the dissertation of Paul Moore on “Kiowa Changes: The Transatlantic Outcomes of Euro-American Contact.”

Steven G. Reinhardt’s primary field is Early Modern French history with specializations in Old Regime legal history and the history of popular culture, religion, and magic. He is currently supervising the dissertations of Alex Hunnicutt, “Anglo-American Representations of Execution and Executioners in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries”; Michael Downs’ work on the imperial vision of John Dee, the court astrologer of Elizabeth I; and Andrea Haga, who is researching maritime rivalry and naval conflict between the Spanish and English in the Americas during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He would be prepared to supervise doctoral candidates researching the topic of French colonial Louisiana history.

Dennis P. Reinhartz is a Russian, East European, and Eurasian historian and a specialist in the history of cartography and discovery, exploration, and empire and will accept students in these fields. He has supervised a doctoral dissertation entitled “French Mapping of the Illinois Country 1650-1719:  A Cartobiligoraphy of Printed Maps.” He has also directed dissertations on early Belgian attempts at empire as well as cannibalism and cartography.

Douglas W. Richmond’s primary field of research is Mexico . He also works in the areas of Colonial/Modern Latin America, Spain and Portugal , and World War Two. He is willing to supervise dissertations on any Latin American topic as well as Iberia and World War Two. He currently directs dissertations on Spanish captivity narratives and Mexican independence.

Jerome L. Rodnitzky has taught graduate courses on the 1960s in America , twentieth-century American popular culture history, and transatlantic popular culture. His research and writing has centered on 1960s political activism, the 1960s counterculture, protest and topical music, and the ways popular music and film have both reflected and caused social change.

Gerald Saxon’s fields of research include the history of Texas and the Southwest, cartographic history of the Gulf of Mexico and the Americas , archival enterprise, and oral history methods and methodology. He has served on numerous dissertation committees, including “Discovering Lillie Langtry: Aestheticism and the Development of a Transatlantic Market in Beauty, 1880-1927” by Jennifer Allen and “Dallas, Cotton, and the Transatlantic Economy” by Thomas Hill-Aiello. He would be willing to supervise dissertations in history of Texas and the Southwest, and in the cartographic history of the Gulf of Mexico and the Americas .

Roberto Treviño’s research interests revolve around the impact of religion and ethnicity in United States history, particularly in the later nineteenth and twentieth centuries and especially as related to the history of Mexican Americans and other U.S. Latinos. He is interested in supervising theses that examine the interaction of religion and other aspects of U.S. life and culture—i.e., religious ideas, practices, groups, individuals, and so forth—and the ways these have shaped national development.