Professional Summary
I am currently a Ph.D. student studying intersections of religion (Protestantism and Judaism) and the body in the British Atlantic with Dr. Erika Gasser. This year (2022-2023) I am being funded by the Dean's Dissertation Completion Fellowship. My research encompasses themes of gender, disability, medicine, death, burial and personal religious practice.
I previously received a master's degree from the University of Cincinnati (2017). My thesis, “With a Mother’s Hand: A Study of First World War Chaplains, Religion and Gender Identity,” was awarded first place for the 2017 Zane Miller Award for original graduate research and writing. I also defended my thesis with distinction. In 2004, I graduated with a B.A. in history from Mount Vernon Nazarene University. I have also taken courses in German language at Columbus State, and the Reformation at The Ohio State University.
As a graduate assistant, I have had the pleasure of serving as a teaching assistant in the courses Nazi Germany and the Holocaust, The History of Show Business, Themes in World History: Immigration, Drugs in the Americas, Human Rights and Security, and U.S. Survey I.
I have also conducted research for other historians including Dr. David Stradling (University of Cincinnati, for his monograph In Service to the City: A History of the University of Cincinnati In Service to the City: A History of the University of Cincinnati, 2018), Dr. Susan Longfield Karr (University of Cincinnati), Dr. Gary Zola (Hebrew Union College), and for popular history author Karen Abbott (for her book The Ghosts of Eden Park: The Bootleg King, the Women Who Pursued Him, and the Murder That Shocked Jazz-Age America, 2019). Researching for others has been an exciting opportunity to expand my exposure to areas outside of my immediate foci, including the history of education, legal history, American Jewish history and crime respectively.
I have been the grateful recipient of several academic awards. Not only did I receive the Zane Miller Prize for my master’s thesis, but I placed first the next year as well for my paper entitled “Hearing the Gospel in a Silent Word: Disability, Gender and Religion in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, 1630-1684.” In 2018, the Department of History awarded me the Niehoff Fellowship, which granted me a no service year as well as providing funding for my research.
I have presented this research at several conferences, including the above papers at the Queen City Colloquium (University of Cincinnati graduate student conference) in 2017 and 2018, respectively. I also delivered a version of “Hearing the Gospel in a Silent World” at Calvin College in 2018 at the Faith and History Conference and at the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife “Living with Disabilities, 1600-1900.” in June of 2021. In 2019 I presented my paper, “Not Cutting Covenant: Circumcision, Rhetoric and Nonconformity in the Early Modern Atlantic” at QCC. I have also been a guest lecturer in the Department of Sociology, presenting on religion and gender, and an invited panelist at the Midwest American Academy of Religion Conveference (2021).
As a member of the Department of History, I have had several opportunities to participate in university service. During the 2017-2018 academic year, I was treasurer for the History Graduate Student Association and helped plan and execute the Queen City Colloquium. The following year I helped spearhead a new, interdisciplinary course entitled Public Fellowship for the Humanities. During the 2018-2019 academic year, I was the graduate student representative to the faculty, and in that capacity assisted in reviewing our curriculum and helped propose reforms. In that year as well, I was invited to serve on the committee conducting the headship search for t