Next stop: doctorate!

We recently caught up with four students who have decided to continue their learning in prestigious doctoral programs on both sides of the Atlantic.  Karen Burch will be heading off to the Royal Holloway, University of London; Carl Ewald to the University of Illinois, Chicago; Devin Leigh to the University of California, Davis; and Katya Maslakowski to Northwestern University.  We asked them to share with us why they made this decision, what stands out from their time at Loyola, and where they see themselves ten years from now.

Karen Burch

What program are you off to in the fall?

Royal Holloway, University of London, School of History, Classics and Archaeology, PhD in the Histories.

Committing to a doctoral program in history is a big choice. Tell us about your research interests and where you hope to take them?

My research interests lie primarily in family, social, and gender history in Quattrocento Florence. In the future, I hope to work on the history of emotions in Renaissance Italy, especially the emotions regarding family and patriotism.

Now that you are wrapping up your time at Loyola, what stands out from your education here?
The professors in particular have had a huge impact on my time at Loyola. They - especially Drs Rosenwein and McManamon - pushed me to find my limits and surpass them, and to make the very most of myself and my work.

Looking into your crystal ball, where do see yourself ten years from now?

My biggest desire is to write - both history and fiction - so hopefully whatever I'm doing will include quite a bit of that.

Carl Ewald

What program are you off to in the fall?

I will be attending The University of Illinois at Chicago’s (UIC) doctoral program this fall.

Committing to a doctoral program in history is a big choice. Tell us about your research interests and where you hope to take them?

I feel like I know less and less about my research interests, the more and more I try thinking about them. I applied to the program at UIC because of the work that Jeffery Sklansky and Leon Fink are doing regarding the history of capitalism and new labor history. I can say broadly that I am interested in 20th century social and labor history and the ways these subfields connect with the emergent work on the new history of capitalism. I am interested in understanding capitalism and the structures it supports. I’ve completed a lot of research regarding community activism in the Coal River Valley of West Virginia. I believe there is a great deal of work left to be done regarding the relationship between the mining industry, the state, and current strands of historical memory in West Virginia. That being said I see my research looking more broadly at the relationship between industry power, federal energy policy, and labor policy.

Now that you are wrapping up your time at Loyola, what stands out from your education here?

I came to Loyola with a pretty clear sense that I lacked not only the skills as a historian but also a real perception of what it means to be a professional historian. Loyola’s History Department helped me develop these research, writing, and critical thinking skills but also challenged me to think more broadly about how my own interests might fit into the field. Loyola’s faculty represents a diverse group of scholars with varied professional interests who all simultaneously instill a deep sense among the graduate students of the importance of rigorous scholarship, and diligence in education.

Looking into your crystal ball, where do see yourself ten years from now?

Employed…I love teaching but I also want to research & write. I would like to be hired into an environment that supports and cultivates these passions. I don’t have a desire to work somewhere in particular or to be apart of some specific department. I do however hope to be apart of a lively history department at the University level, one where scholarship is encouraged and the classroom experience is valued. I really do believe Loyola sets this kind of example and simultaneously prepares students for such an environment. 

Devin Leigh

What program are you off to in the fall?

The History Department at the University of California, Davis, where I will be majoring in American History and minoring in Latin American History.

Committing to a doctoral program in history is a big choice. Tell us about your research interests and where you hope to take them?

For the past five years, I have been actively engaged in researching my passion project on the Atlantic legends of Black Caesar, an enslaved West African chief who turned to piracy after his ship wrecked in the upper Florida Keys during the early-eighteenth century. The Black Caesar legends have an evocative, multicultural, and nuanced history that covers over four hundred years and four separate continents. To this date, no historian has ever written a book about them.

In the vein of Scott Reynolds Nelson’s Steel Drivin’ Man (2008), which traces the history of the legends of the incarcerated African-American railroad worker John Henry, my dissertation will trace the Black Caesar legends throughout their historical development, taking seriously the motivations of the diverse cast of actors who shaped and reshaped them to order to meet their specific, contextual needs. Rooted in the wider Atlantic world, the environmental history of southeast Florida, the urban history of Miami, and the storied history of the African diaspora, this dissertation will use the Black Caesar legends to explore the often frustrating relationship between historical fact and cultural imagination. It will take as its primary thesis the idea that, when the histories of legends are taken seriously, they can reveal deep psychological and cultural truths that might otherwise remain hidden from traditional historical sources.  For a sample of my ongoing research, please see one of my earliest explorations of the topic, “Ghost of the Gallows: the Historical Record of Black Caesar,” published in the 2012 volume Creating Knowledge: The LAS Student Research Journal of DePaul University.

Now that you are wrapping up your time at Loyola, what stands out from your education here?

Looking back on my time at Loyola, I most recall the History Department as an inclusive community of scholars, lifting each other up as each person climbed higher toward their own unique career goals. I participated in many great activities with the History Department, including the HGSA conference, the basketball team, and the soccer club. But perhaps my first and fondest memory upon joining the program was participating in the English Atlantic Writing Group (EAWG), a monthly paper series that brings teachers and students together outside of the classroom to discuss each other’s essay drafts in the field of Atlantic History. I met many of my fellow colleagues for the first time at an EAWG meeting at the Waterfront Café in Berger Park. The group readily accepted me as one of their own, and I continued coming to the meetings (when I was able) over the next two years.

For me, The EAWG epitomized the idea of Loyola as an inclusive community of scholars. The EAWG provided a safe intellectual space for students and teachers to interact with one another as equals, outside of the conventions of academia. The casual atmosphere of the group reassured me that my professors and student colleagues truly cared about my intellectual development. The group helped me understand that my esteemed professors were practicing historians, just like myself. Many of them were wrestling with the same problems that confused their students. The group also reminded me that researching, writing, and disseminating history is a collaborative process. Finally, the group instilled in me the greatest lesson about higher education: going to class and doing homework is only a small portion of the graduate school experience. The rest of the experience involves what students choose to do with their time and interest outside of the classroom. How they create new opportunities for themselves and for their colleagues. This is a lesson that I will take with me to UC Davis.

Looking into your crystal ball, where do see yourself ten years from now?

Ten years from now, I see myself working as an Assistant or Associate Professor of History at an American University with core values in equal opportunity, popular education, social justice, and youth empowerment. Hopefully, I will have published my dissertation on the history of the Black Caesar legends of Biscayne Bay as a book, and I will be collaborating on new and exciting projects with passionate teachers, undergraduate students, and graduate professionals. I will use cutting-edge scholarship to develop innovative courses on such topics as the Black Atlantic World, the History of Maritime Piracy and Marronage, Non-Literary Sources, and the Science of Environmental History.

I strongly believe that both free access to scholarly information and integrated community spaces are essential to improving our world’s understanding of its collective past and potential future; and I feel that every History student and teacher is only as effective as his or her ability to articulate ideas across mediums and audiences. For these two reasons, I plan to develop and facilitate Public Speaking, Presentation, and Performance workshops for History students and teachers, and I plan to partner with local community centers, artistic organizations, and cultural institutions so that professional historians and lay community members can explore their mutual love of studying humanity through studying the past, outside of the classroom and beyond the margins of the page.

Katya Maslakowski

What program are you off to in the fall?

Northwestern University, History Department, where I will be a Mellon Interdisciplinary Cluster Fellow in British Studies, and affiliated with the Science Studies Cluster. I will be working with the amazing Deborah Cohen. 

Committing to a doctoral program in history is a big choice. Tell us about your research interests and where you hope to take them?

My focus in on the history of medicine, morality, religion and popular culture in late nineteenth to early twentieth century Britain. 

Now that you are wrapping up your time at Loyola, what stands out from your education here?

The most important take away from my time at Loyola is the people I've worked with. Michelle Nickerson's ability to execute both her work and life with grace and skill has been a valuable lesson I've needed about achieving that difficult work/life balance in my own career. She is a fantastic mentor who really has transformed the Grad Program in History into a legible set of requirements while also paying attention to what her students need for their careers. I'm very grateful to have both her care and advice in my life. Alice Weinreb's uniquely effective teaching style has also been transformative for me. She turned an ordinary intro to Women and Gender History course into one of the best and most analytically vibrant set of discussions I've ever experienced. She forged a class community which has, I think, stayed with those of us who took the course, and created a collaborative environment which stimulated real critical thinking and creative ideas. My career goals include developing a teaching style like hers for my own classes. Aidan Forth, of course, as my main adviser helped introduce me to a larger community of British studies in Chicago and across the country.  He's served as a perfect sounding board for my ideas, helping me scale back articles that threaten to become dissertations and to focus my out-of-class readings on the major movers and shakers of Modern British History. His advice and support was instrumental in helping me get into my PhD program.