Let’s take a moment to celebrate the recent achievements of our amazing students and alumni!!

 

Israel Benporat (PhD 2024) had two articles accepted: “Moral Equity: Mosaic Law in Plymouth Colony,” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal (forthcoming, Summer 2026); and “Legislating the Lord’s Day: Sabbatarianism in Seventeenth-Century New England,” Journal of the Bible and Its Reception (forthcoming). He also published “Psalm 144: The Power of Faith Over Arms,” in Shaina Trapedo, ed., The Soul’s Refuge: Meditations on the Psalms(Yeshiva University Press, 2026), 241-245. In July 2026, he will present a paper at the annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association.

 

Kristopher Burrell (PhD 2011) has been promoted to Full Professor at Hostos Community College. The new title will take effect on August 26, 2026. He also wrote the entry on “Lynching in New York State,” for Lynching in the United States: An Encyclopedia, forthcoming with Fortress Press to be released on August 11, 2026. Furthermore, he also contributed a chapter to the Routledge Handbook of American Violence, forthcoming with Routledge to be released by the end of 2026. His chapter is titled, “Forged through the Crucible of Interracial Violence: New York State Lynchings and the Formation of a Northern White Identity in the Late-Nineteenth Century.”

 

Nicole A. Burrowes’ (PhD 2015) new book, Seeds of Solidarity: African-Indian Relations and the 1935 Labor Rebellions in British Guiana, is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press in July 2026.

 

Edward Charnley was awarded the $20,000 EP Thompson Dissertation Fellowship for the 2026-2027 academic year. 

 

Megan J. Elias (PhD 2003) has been hired as the Winiarski Curator of Food and Wine History at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. 

 

Kathy Feeley (PhD 2004) co-authored an article with Jennifer Frost, “‘Of Inestimable Value to All of Us’: Olivia de Havilland, the Studio Contract, and the Screen Actors Guild, 1943-1945,” LABOR: Studies in Working Class History 23:1 (March 2026).

 

Scott Gac (PhD 2003) received a CIC/Mellon Legacies of American Slavery Grant for After Slavery, Contested Rights: Black Hartford’s Civic Worlds, 1800–1830. The project, developed in collaboration with Rev. Dr. John Selders and Erika Slocumb of the Stowe Center for Literary Activism, explores Black civic life, institution building, and resistance in early Hartford. The grant supports archival research, including work with the account books of Jeremiah Jacobs, a Black shoemaker and cobbler, to recover stories that have long been marginalized in Hartford’s history.

 

Julian Gonzalez De Leon Heiblum’s (PhD 2021) book is in production by Routledge. It’s titled Britain under the Shadow of Arthur: the Arthurian Myth as a Political Theory of Empire (1461–1612).

 

Jameel Haque (PhD 2016) recently published his book, Baghdad Dispatches: The City of Peace in World War One with Bloomsbury Press.  Dr. Haque runs the Abbas Kessel Peace Institute and has recently been promoted to full professor in the Department of History and Gender Studies at Minnesota State University, Mankato. 

 

Ted Knudsen has helped lead and co-develop the NYC Revolutionary Trail public history initiative with the Gotham Center for NYC History here at the Grad Center since 2018. Since 2024, he has also co-created Echoes of Revolution: NYC, a new immersive augmented reality experience developed with Ubisoft (the creators of the Assassin’s Creed video game franchise) and Sugar Creative that allows visitors to experience Revolutionary-era New York at the historic sites where events unfolded. The broader project also helped inspire the Museum of the City of New York’s new exhibition The Occupied City. The Graduate Center recently featured the work here. 

 

Angela Kun-Gazda was awarded the $20,000 Miles Gerstein Dissertation Fellowship for the 2026-2027 academic year. 

 

Stephanie Makowski (PhD 2024) accepted a tenure track job in British History at the University of North Alabama starting in the fall. 

 

Logan McBride (PhD 2018) received a 2026 Teaching Excellence Award from CUNY’s Office of Faculty Affairs for her instructional work as a Distinguished Lecturer at Macaulay Honors College. A documentary she co-produced about the successful organizing of women incarcerated at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility to bring higher education back to the prison in the mid-1990s, Degrees of Freedom, recently won best long-form film at the 2026 CUNY Film Festival.

 

Blake McGready (PhD 2026) will be a Visiting Senior Fellow at the John Nichols Brown Center for Advanced Study at Brown University in 2026–2027. 

 

Marta Millar received an IRADAC (Institute for Research on the African Diaspora in the Americas and the Caribbean) Fellowship for 2026/2027. She is also the recipient of the Open Knowledge Fellowship run through the Mina Rees Library. This summer, she will be conducting archival research for her dissertation at the Basel Afrika Bibliographien (Switzerland) with support from a Graduate Center Doctoral Student Research Grant. 

 

Sato Moughalian was awarded a Fulbright Research Fellowship to conduct dissertation research in Armenia for the 2026-27 academic year.  She also received a Hamilton Lugar Scholarship to study Russian at Indiana University’s 2026 Summer Language Workshop. 

 

Phillip Papas (PhD 2003) authored an article, “In Any Character Except that of a British Subject: The Staten Island Diplomatic Peace Conference of 1776,” published in Gotham: A Blog for Scholars of New York City History, January 22, 2026. Another one of his articles, “An Unfriendly Disposition Towards the Liberties of America: Local Conditions and Political Choices on Staten Island during the American Revolution,” is forthcoming in NYC 250th Commemorative Journal. He is also a Board Member for the Conference House Association in Staten Island, NY, which preserves and promotes the history of the Billopp House (Conference House), the site of the September 11, 1776, peace conference between delegates from the Continental Congress John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Edward Rutledge, and British Admiral Richard Lord Howe. Additionally, Papas is a Historical Consultant for “Founding Principles: The Declaration of Independence, Civics, and Staten Island” (forthcoming exhibit at Historic Richmond Town, Staten Island, NY), as well as “Making History: Staten Island” (forthcoming exhibit at the Staten Island Museum, Staten Island, NY). Furthermore, he was asked by the New York State 250th Commemorative Committee to select two sites on Staten Island, NY, for 250th Commemorative Markers. He  also wrote the text for the signage on the markers. Beyond that, Papas is a Member of the Author Awards Committee of the New Jersey Studies Academic Alliance (NJSAA).

 

Bradford Pelletier’s (PhD 2025) article, “An Ill-bred Culture of Experimentation: Malaria Therapy and Race in the United States Public Health Service Laboratory at the South Carolina State Hospital, 1932-1952,” has won the 2025 Stanley Jackson Prize for the best article published in the last three years in the Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences.

 

David Pultz was awarded the fall 2026 Caroline Brown Dissertation Fellowship from the National Society of Colonial Dames in the State of New York. 

 

Rina Rossi recently published a book review for the North American Congress on Latin America. She also received a 2026 CLACLS Summer Research Fellowship and will conduct archival work this summer at the Archivo de Indias in Sevilla, Spain. In April, Rina presented her research at the UCLA Center for the Study of Women’s Thinking Gender Conference. She has a forthcoming publication in the Volume 3 of the Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies Reportage as part of the 2025 Reportage Fellowship. 

 

Maggie Schreiner was awarded a Dissertation Year Fellowship and a Connect New York summer research fellowship.

 

Marybeth Tamborra was awarded the $25,000 Judith Stein Dissertation Fellowship for the 2026-2027 academic year.