Carnegie Mellon University

Recent Dissertations in History

Bennett Koerber, 2022
Liberal Arts Football: Athletics, Academics, and American Higher Education, 1906-1948
Advisor: Scott Sandage

Amanda Katz, 2021
Miracle Miles: From Roadbuilding to American Highway Engineering, 1893-1933
Advisor: Scott Sandage

Levi Raymond Pettler, 2021
A History of History From Below: Race, Class, & Gender
Advisor: Nico Slate

Bradley Sommer, 2021
Tomorrow Never Came: Race, Class, Community, and the Making of a Postindustrial City, Toledo, Ohio, 1930-1980
Advisor: Joe Trotter

Laura Bradshaw, 2020
The Kilowatt Kingdom: Gender, Race, and Public Power in the South, 1917-1958
Advisor: John Soluri

Zhaokun Liu, 2020
Forgotten War, Unforgotten Bodies: Locating, Repatriating, and Identifying the Remains of American Servicemen Missing in Korea, 1950-2018
Advisor: Jay Aronson

Jonathan Stepp, 2020
The Party and the Filmmakers: DEFA-SED Interactions 1945-1971
Advisor: Donna Harsh

Anna-Christine Grant, 2020
Model Colonies: a transnational study of penitentiary agricultural colonies for young detainees in France, Russia, and the Soviet Union, 1839-1937
Advisor: Kate Lynch

Alissa Bellotti, 2019
‘Change the World’ Meets ‘No Future’: The Politics of Youth Culture in Late Divided Germany, 1968-1989
Advisor: Donna Harsch

David Busch, 2019
A New Higher Learning in America: Students, Citizenship, and the Moral Politics of Education, 1950-1985
Advisor: Nico Slate

Susan Grunewald, 2019
German Prisoners of War in the Soviet Gulag: Life, Law, and Memory, 1941-1956.
Advisor: Wendy Goldman

Mark Hauser, 2019
All the Comforts of Hell: Doughboys and American Mass Culture in the First Wold War
Advisor: Scott Sandage

Matthew Ryan Nielsen, 2019
Unruliness at the Margins: Environment and Politics in the Lower Orinoco River Basin, 1600s-1700s
Advisor: John Soluri

Clayton Vaughn-Roberson, 2019
The Prism of Labor: The National Negro Congress and the Anti-Fascist Movement, 1936-1947
Advisor: Nico Slate

Michael Gallen, 2018
Ethiopia Shall Stretch Forth Her Hands unto God: Christianity and the Development of Liberian Society, 1820-1920
Advisor: Scott Sandage

Takashi Michael Matsumaru, 2018
Reordering a White City: Blacks and Asians in Seattle, 1963-1997
Advisor: Joe Trotter

Jonathan Neu, 2018
From Civil War to Civic Engagement: Grand Army Veterans and Progressive Reform, 1890-1920
Advisor: Scott Sandage

Dawn Winters, 2018
'The Ladies Are Coming!': A New History of Antebellum Temperance, Women’s Rights, and Political Activism
Advisor: Lisa Tetrault

Rachel Oppenheimer, 2017

Of Prisons and Polities: The Black Panther Party, Irish Republican Army and Radical Socio-Political organization, 1966-1983
Advisor: David Miller


Avigail Oren, 2017
Adjusting to Change: The Jewish Community Center Movement in Postwar Urban America, 1945-1980
Advisor: Caroline Acker


Meredith Soeder, 2017
Jazz in a Transatlantic World: Legitimizing American Jazz in Germany, 1920-1957
Advisor: Donna Harsch


Matthew McGrath, 2017
The Decline of the New Deal Fishery: Labor, Environment, and Independence in the Western Alaskan Fisheries, 1930-1980
Advisors: Joe Trotter and John Soluri


Cassie Miller, 2016
The Changing Parish: Catholics and the Urban Crisis in Twentieth Century Brooklyn and Greater Long Island
Advisors: Joe Trotter and David Miller


John Weigel, 2016
Enlightenment Work: West German Rural Community Development Projects in West Africa, 1961-1980
Advisor: Donna Harsch


Laurence M. Burke II, 2015
What To Do With the Airplane? Determining the Role of the Airplane in the US Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, 1908-1930
Advisor: David Hounshell


Robert Hutchings, 2015
Consuming Nature: Fresh Fruit, Processed Juice, and the Re-Making of the Florida Orange,1877-2014
Advisor: John Soluri


Jiacheng Liu, 2015
Players, Performance and the “Theatrical Public” in Late Qing and Republican Cities
Advisor: Donald Sutton


Andrew E. Masich, 2015
Civil Wars in the Southwest Borderlands: Cultures in Conflict, 1861-1867
Advisor: Joe Trotter


Syed Kaazim Naqvi, 2015
Building an Urban Umma: African American and Immigrant Muslims in Chicago, 1965-1980
Advisor: Joe Trotter


Andrew Ramey, 2015
A Watershed Movement: The Chesapeake Bay Foundation and the Environmental Politics of Restoring the Largest Estuary in the United States
Advisors: John Soluri and Joel Tarr


Jay Roszman, 2015
'Outrage' and 'Justice': Irish Moral Economy, British Reform, and the Development of the Modern State in Ireland, 1835-1841
Advisor: David Miller


Amund Rennesund Tallaksen, 2015
Junkies and Jim Crow: Drugs, Race, and Incarceration in New Orleans, 1880-1980
Advisor: Caroline Acker


Germaine Williams, 2015
(Re)Culturing the City: Race, Urban Development, and Arts Policy in Chicago, 1935-1987
Advisors: Joe Trotter and Judith Schachter


Russell Pryor, 2014
Work, Nature, and the American Dinner Plate: Making Chicken in the Twentieth Century United States
Advisor: Joe Trotter


Ruth Kittner, 2013
Becoming Buff and Blue: Identity Transformation in the Mediatized Territories, The Case of Uberlingen 1790-1820
Advisor: Donna Harsch


Jessica Klanderud, 2013
Street Wisdom: African American Cultural and Community Transformations on the Street in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1918-1970
Advisor: Joe Trotter


Andrew T. Simpson, 2013
Making the Medical Metropolis: Academic Medical Centers and Urban Change in Pittsburgh and Houston, 1945-2010
Advisor: Caroline Acker