Alumni
2009:Rebecca Adelman, PhD
PhD Dissertation (Advisor, Ruby Tapia): The Shadow Rules of Engagement: Visual Practices, Citizen-Subjectivity, and America's Global War on Terror
Current position: Assistant Professor, Media Studies, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Tracy Carpenter, PhD
Phd Dissertation (Advisor, Amy Shuman): Recovering Women: Intersectional Approaches to African American Addiction MA Thesis (2004, Advisor, Sabra Webber: Thesis (Advisor, Sabra Webber): Beyond Crack Mother: Narratives of Drug Addiction and Recovery
Current position: Lead Faculty, College Unbound, Providence, Rhode Island
Alana Kumbier, PhD
Phd Dissertation (Advisor, Maurice Stevens): Ephemeral Material: Developing a Critical Archival Practice
MA Thesis (2000, Advisor, Jennifer Terry): Resignifying AIDS: Locating Agency in the Context of the Epidemic
Current position: Women’s Studies Librarian, Wellesley College
Kennedy Waliaula, PhD
PhD Dissertation (Advisor, Nina Berman): The Incarcerated Self: Narratives of Political Confinement in Kenya
MA Thesis (2006, Advisors Nina Berman and John Conteh-Morgan): Writing as Defiance: Two Prison Writers and the Kenyan State
Current position: Assistant Professor, African Languages and Literature, University of Wisconsin, Madison
Carlotta Blackmon, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Kwaku Korang): Routed Sisterhood: Black American Female Identity and the Black Female Community
Andrew Culp, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Eugene Holland): Producing Pacification: The Disciplinary Technologies of Smart Bombs and National Anti-war Organizing
Currently pursuing PhD, Comparative Studies, OSU
Sumiko Eguchi, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Thomas Kasulis): Being a Person: the Ethics of Watsuji Tetsuro and Immanuel Kant
Nicole Rearick, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Maurice Stevens): "Food Is Something That We Gather Around": Foodways among Arab Americans in Columbus, Ohio
2008:
Esin Düzel, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Philip Armstrong): Toward an Anthropology of the State: Unsettling Effects of the September 12 Coup on the Ulkücü Movement in Turkey
Currently pursuing PhD in Anthropology, University of California, San Diego
Natsumi Hirota, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Thomas Kasulis): A Study and Translation of Nihon No Katekizumo (A Catechism for Japan, c. 1581)
Alice Noonan, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Thomas Kasulis): Sound, Spirit, and Synapses: Mysticisms (Tantrism, Sufism) in Light of Contemporary Cognitive Science and Ethnomusicology
Timothy Smith, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Eugene Holland): Frontier of Freedom: Berlin in American Cold War discourse from the Airlift to Kennedy
Rita Trimble, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Tanya Erzen): Valuing Families or Family Values: The Citizen Family in the Religious and Cultural Imagination
Currently pursuing PhD Program in Comparative Studies, OSU
2007:
Catherine Dean-Haidet, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Thomas Kasulis): Narratives of Women Healers: Spirituality, Subjectivity, and Care of the Dying
Currently pursuing PhD Program in Comparative Studies, OSU
Jennifer Delaney, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Tanya Erzen): Symbolic Terrorism: The Impact and Culture of Christian Confrontational Evangelism
Currently attending Moritz College of Law, The Ohio State University
Calvin Johns, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Eugene Holland): Rhetoric of the Human and Representations of Artificial Intelligence in Science-Fiction: Pulling the Bed Sheets off the Ghost in the Machine
Currently pursuing PhD in Anthropology/ Folklore and Public Culture, University of Texas, Austin
Joseph Marino, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Hugh Urban): The Will to Chaos and a Dancing Star: Aleister Crowley, Neo-Paganism and the Technologies of the Selves
Phillip Newman, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Tanya Erzen): Abu Ghraib, Abjection and American Exceptionalism: from Theory to Empathy
Peggy Reynolds, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Brian Rotman): The Divi(n/d)ing Line: Life on the “Cusp between Physical and Semiotic Constraints”
Currently pursuing PhD in Comparative Studies, OSU
2006:
Elizabeth Coggeshall, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Heather Webb): Interdiscursivity, Religious Myth, and Claims to Truth in the Libro Della Scala and the Commedia
Currently pursuing PhD in French and Italian, Stanford University
Sandra Garner, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Lindsay Jones): Eyaya Hoye Wayelo - I Am Sending a Voice: Conversations from an American Indian Powwow
Currently pursuing PhD in Comparative Studies, OSU
John Gossom, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Barry Shank): Making the “Safe” Choice on CAFE: Regulatory Science in Cultural Politics and Political Culture
MS in Agricultural Education and Economics (2008), The Ohio State University
Melanie Maltry, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Maurice Stevens): The Work of Queer: Sexuality, Race, and Subjectivity in Late Capitalism
Krista Paradiso, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Brenda Brueggemann): Manic-Depression in America: Gendered and Narrative Constructions of Mental Health and Illness
Currently pursuing PhD in Comparative Studies, OSU
Kennedy Waliaula, (see 2009)
2005:
Sheila Bock, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Sabra Webber): From Harem Fantasy to Female Empowerment: Rhetorical Strategies and Dynamics of Style in American Belly Dance
Currently pursuing PhD in English/Folklore, The Ohio State University
Olivia Caldeira, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Amy Shuman): Who are the Irish Travellers?: A Comparative Analysis of Representations
Currently pursuing PhD in Folklore, Memorial University of Newfoundland.
Connie DeJong, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Amy Shuman): Global Gallery: Revolutionary Re-Localization through Fair Trade International Handicrafts, Tourism, and Cultural Eduation
PhD in Art Education, The Ohio State University (2008)
Dissertation: (Re)focusing Global Gallery's Educational Programs: A Guide toTransforming Vision to Action for Fair Trade Organizations
Daina Dickman, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Amy Shuman): "I'd Created My Own Truths by Printing my Zine": Women-Written Perzines as a Narrative Form for Disclosure and Advice Giving
Kristen Hassen, MA Thesis (Advisor, Barry Shank): Gentrification and Mixed-Income Housing: A Comparative Analysis of Two Changing Urban Neighborhoods
Wamae Muriuki, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Thomas Kasulis): This Very Body The Buddha: The Reworking of a Common Tradition in the Thought of Kukai and Dogen
Currently pursuing PhD in Comparative Studies, OSU
Brian Murphy, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Barry Shank): “Banyoles loves you El Negro, don't go!”: Affect, Commodities, and the Repatriation of El Negro
Currently pursuing PhD in Comparative Studies, OSU
Sarah Vargo, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Sabra Webber): The Embodied Storyteller: Emerging amidst Tensions of Body, Culture, and Medicine
2004:
Tracy Carpenter, MA
Beyond Crack Mother: Narratives of Drug Addiction and Recovery
See 2009.
Madhavi Gore, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Maurice Stevens): Performing Activism, Agency, Citizenship: Thinking through the Legacy of Gandhi and Safdar Hashmi in Search of a Vocabulary for Critical Intervention in an Age of Globalization
Crystal Kürzen, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Julia Watson): Collaboration, Collectivity, and Trans/nationality: Intersectional Affiliation in Child Of The Dark by Carolina Maria De Jesus, Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia, and Imaginary Parents by Sheila Ortiz Taylor and Sandra Ortiz
Currently pursuing Ph.D. in English/Mexican American Studies, University of Texas, Austin
Michael McVicar, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Hugh Urban): An Experimental Heuristic for Exploring the Relationship between the Church of God and the Practice of Serpent Handling in Appalachia
Currently pursuing PhD in Comparative Studies, OSU
Nancy Yan, MA
Thesis (Advisors, Amy Shuman and Judy Tzu-Chun Wu): Chinese Restaurants and the Interpretation of Food
Currently pursuing Ph.D. in English/Folklore, The Ohio State University
2003:
Diego Benegas, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Jill Lane), Strategies of Embodiment in the Activism of H.I.J.O.S. in Argentina
Currently pursuing PhD in Performance Studies, New York University
Natalie Corvington, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Jill Lane): Transcoding the Madwoman in International Surrealist Texts
Currently pursuing PhD in English, Kent State University
Thomas Dodson, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Eugene Holland): The Politics of Impossibility: A Socio-Symbolic Analysis of Society, Identification, and Ideology
Maren Nelson Elliott, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Julia Watson): Border Aesthetics: The Photograph as Fictionalized Document in Norma Cantú's Can´icula, Art Spiegelman's Maus, and ReaTajiri's History and Memory
2002:
Ipek Celik, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Dorothy Noyes): Spectacular Regimes and Political Drama: A Comparative Study of Greek and Turkish Theatre in the 1960s and 1970s
Currently pursuing Ph.D. in Comparative Literature, New York University
Sean Scheiderer, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Brian Rotman): Mass Consumption: Scientific Fact-(un)making in Popular Diet Literature
April West, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Hugh Urban): Alien to Ourselves: UFOS in American Culture
Master of Arts in Teaching (2005), Bennington College
Jessica Wienhold, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Julia Watson): Negotiating Borders of Post-National Subjectivity in Slavenka Drakuli'c's Testimonial Journalism
Currently pursuing Ph.D. in Comparative and World Literature, University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana
2001:
Jeff Bickerstaff, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Eugene Holland): The Death of God and the Commodification of Existentialism
Currently pursuing Ph.D. in English, Miami University
James Donahue, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Thomas Kasulis): Modern German Theology at the Crooked Crux: Theological Foundations of the Protestant Kirchenkampf during National Socialism
Currently pursuing Ph.D. in History, Notre Dame University
Ariane Fischer, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Jennifer Terry): Decode-ing the Vikings : the Icelandic HSD, Population Genomics, and Scientific Discourse on Progress, Disease, and Race
Currently pursuing Ph.D. in Human Sciences, George Washington University
Susan Hanson, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Sabra Webber): Symbolism in the Suburbs: A Study of the Relationship of the "Postcard" Image to Reality in Worthington, Ohio
Currently pursuing Ph.D. in English/Folklore, The Ohio State University
Jeff Motter, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Thomas Kasulis): Inward Christian Soldiers: American Protestant Fundamentalist Rhetoric from the Great War to the Scopes Trial
Currently pursuing PhD in Communication, Indiana University
2000:
Arthur Eaks, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Eugene Holland): Technology and Male Escape in the American Horror Film: Four Horror Films, 1931-1935
Jenrose Fitzgerald, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Jennifer Terry): Rationalizing Welfare Reform: Citizenship, Knowledge, and the Politics of Transparency
Ph.D. in Science Studies (2006), Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
Dissertation: Citizens, Experts and the Economy: The Grassroots Takeover of Kentucky's Agricultural Future
Tom Kitson, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Eugene Holland): Unity and Universalism: A Comparison of Vladimir Solov’ev and SlavoJ Zizek, Knowledge, and the Politics of Transparency
Currently pursuing PhD in Slavic Languages and Literatures, Columbia University
Alana Kumbier (see 2009)
Joseph Alexander Snow, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Daniel Reff): Acquiring Feathers: Crow Indian Appropriation of the Shoshone Sun Dance in 1941 and the Agency of their Performative Worldviews
Currently pursuing Ph.D. in Religion, Syracuse University
Kimberley Spring, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Sabra Webber): Quests for Healing and Redemption: Locating the Celtic Moment in Imagined Histories
MA in International Development and Anthropology, Elliott School for International Affairs, George Washington University
Currently pursuing PhD in Sociology, New School for Social Research
Sriram Sridharan, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Patrick Mullen): Expressive Culture in Caribou Coffeehouses: A Study in Organizational Folklore
Master of Labor and Human Relations (2000), The Ohio State University
1999:
Anne Dabb, MA
Thesis: An Ethics of Enchantment: The Poetics and Politics of Nature and Science in Discourses of Development
Mahalakshmi Jayaram, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Jennifer Terry): Between the Lines: An Analysis of the Epistemology of Development Discourse in Mainstream Press Reports of Suicides by Indian Cotton Farmers
Currently Instructor, Asian Media Institute, India
Miles Rosenberg, MA
MA Thesis (Advisor, Jennifer Terry): Specters of Race, Discourses of Color: The Rise of Spectral Science in Early Modern Europe
Brian Saharack, MA
Thesis: Revolution and Restoration, Resolution and Revelation: Authority and Social Change among Zionists and Japanese Nativists
Currently pursuing PhD in Political Science, La Sapienza University of Rome
Donald Jason Slone, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Thomas Kasulis): Money, Merit, and Luck: A Comparative Cultural Interpretation of the Religious Practices of the Cult of King Chulalongkorn Rama V
PhD in Religion (2002), Western Michigan University
Dissertation: Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn't: Explaining Theological Incorrectness in South Asia and America
1998:
Doug Dupler, MA
Advisor, Eugene Holland
Terry Eisele, MA
Advisor, Sabra Webber
Nels Highberg, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Jennifer Terry): The Subject of AIDS and the AIDS Subject: Author(iz)ing the Gay Male AIDS Celebrity
PhD in English (2003), University of Illinois, Chicago
Dissertation: Needing a Second Opinion: Theories and Practices of Autobiography, Narratives of Disease and Composition Pedagogy
Currently Assistant Professor of Rhetoric and Composition, University of Hartford
Mara Bell Mancini, MA
Thesis: Columbus Cooks Italian: Locating Ethnicity in a Compiled Community Cookbook
Kimm Marks, MA
Thesis: Nakedness in Contemporary Performance: The Naked Body in Three Works by Bill T. Jones, Ann Carlson, and Ron Athey
1997:
Mayumi Nakano, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Barbara Rigney): Teaching Women's Studies in Literature: A Study of Feminist Literary and Pedagogical Revolutions in the United States
Michael Weems, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Patrick Mullen): Brazilian Candomblé and the Legitimization of African Religion
PhD in Education (2007), The Ohio State University
Dissertation: The Fierce Tribe: Body Fascists, Crack Whores, and Circuit Queens in the Spiritual Performance of Masculine Non-Violence
1996:
Robert Preissle, MA
Thesis: Genre, Film Noir and Red Rock West
PhD in English (2002), The Ohio State University
Dissertation: Impossible Adaptations: Virginia Woolf and Henry James in the 1990s
Kathleen Riemenschneider, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Sabra Webber): The Celtic Peasantry and the Spiritual in the Early Works of W. B. Yeats and Paul Gauguin
Catherine Spaeth, MA
Thesis: F. C. Sessions' On The Wing through Europe: Narrative Form and The Describing Eye
1995:
Maria Bettaglio, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Sebastian Knowles): La Pelle Del Cane: An Annotated Translation of W. H. Auden's and Christopher Isherwood's The Dog Beneath The Skin
Phd in Italian (2008), SUNY Buffalo
Dissertation: Gestating a Text, Delivering a Mother: Maternal and Textual Bodies in Carme Riera and Lucia Etxbarria
Robert Eckhart, MA
J.D. (2001), Moritz College of Law, The Ohio State University
Jennifer Nakayama, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Thomas Kasulis): The Sexual Categorization of Women and Reproductive Limitation in Japan
Michael Scarce, MA
Thesis (Advisor, Jennifer Terry): Urban Bums and Rough Rides: A Bad Case of Gay Bowel Syndrome
