Current Students
Nalleli Guillen email
Education:
B.A., History and Anthropology, New York University (2009)
M.A., Winterthur Program in American Material Culture (2011)
Research Interests:
Late eighteenth and nineteenth century American social and cultural history, visual and material culture, race and ethnicity
Nicole Belolan email
Education:
B.A., American Studies, The Pennsylvania State University (2007)
M.A., Winterthur Program in American Material Culture (2009)
M.A., History, University of Delaware (2012)
Research Interests:
Eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American social and cultural history; material culture; the body in everyday life; the history of disability, print culture, and the history of collecting; textiles and needlework; and public history
Dissertation Topic:
Material culture and disability in early America
Academic Webpage:
http://www.nicolebelolan.org
Alyce Graham email
Education:
B.A., English Literature, Calvin College (2004)
M.A., History, Virginia Commonwealth University (2010)
Research Interests:
The early republic; theological doctrine; Masonic regalia; visible secrecy; print culture of the wondrous, fantastic, and eccentric; satirical taxidermy; and the other goods too tedious to mention...
Elizabeth Jones email
Education:
B.A., History, Wesleyan University (2005)
M.A., Winterthur Program in American Material Culture (2009)
Research Interests:
Material culture, food history, consumption, and consumerism.
Alison Kreitzer email
Education:
B.A., History and Art History, University of Delaware (2009)
Currently A.B.D. at University of Delaware
Research Interests:
Twentieth century social and cultural history focusing on topics of gender, technology, and sports.
Dissertation topic:
Dirt track auto racing in mid-20th century America.
Alessandra Wood email
Education:
B.A., History of Art, John Hopkins University (2006)
M.A., History of Decorative Arts and Design, Parsons, The New School for Design/ Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum (2009)
Currently A.B.D. at University of Delaware
Research Interests:
Nineteenth and twentieth-century design history and material culture.
Dissertation Topic:
Exploring the link between designers and department stores during the twentieth century to understand how those relationships contributed to the changing connotations surrounding design and the designer.
Anne Reilly email
Education:
B.A., History, Eastern Nazarene College (2008)
M.A., History, University of Delaware (2010)
Museum Studies Certificate, University of Delaware (2010)
Currently A.B.D. at University of Delaware
Research Interests:
The intersection of history and memoy; landscapes and memorials; national identity; children.
Dissertation Title:
"Birthplaces of a Nation: Public Commemoration of American Origins in the Early 20th Century"
Josh Probert email
Education:
B.A., Political Science, Brigham Young University (2001)
M.P.A., Public Administration, Brigham Young University (2003)
M.A. Religion, Yale University (2005)
Research Interests:
American decorative arts and design and material culture of religion
Dissertation Title:
"Gilded Religion in the Age of Tiffany, 1877-1932"
Laura Walikainen email
Education:
B.S., Social Science, Michigan Technological University (2005)
M.A.,
Winterthur Program in American Material Culture (2007)
Currently A.B.D. at University of Delaware
Dissertation Title:
"Private Spaces in Public Places: Exploring the Boundaries of Privacy, 1880-1930"
Elise Madeleine Ciregna email
Education:
B.S., Mass Communications, Boston University (1983)
A.L.M., History of Art and Architecture, Harvard University (2002)
M.A., History, University of Delaware (2004)
Currently A.B.D. at University of Delaware
Research Interests:
Material and visual culture of the US and Europe, 1700-1900, design history and decorative arts, 1700-1914.
Dissertation Title:
"The Lustrous Stone: White Marble in America, 1750-1865"
Dissertation Abstract:
Since Antiquity people have associated marble with iconic objects and architecture. In eighteenth and nineteenth-century America, marble became recognized as a fashionable and highly prized material for use in architectural decoration, interior ornamentation and commemoration. White marble cemetery monuments and architectural elements such as sculpted chimneypieces and elaborately colored and tiled floors reflected progressive taste as well as fashion and luxury. The ascendance of marble in the hierarchy of decorative stone was largely responsible for the organization, professionalization, and specialization of the stonecutting industry in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. The formation and organization of the marble industry preceded the development of an American school of sculpture based on marble classical and Renaissance models, and it established the “marble works” trade, an elite branch of the stonecutting industry. Marble workers were highly skilled carvers producing carved and sculptural work. To succeed marble workers also needed the varied skills of salesman, businessman, importer, designer, and retailer for a specific luxury good. Taste and sensitivity to a customer’s needs were crucial, particularly in the selection of funerary monuments. By the mid-nineteenth century, steam-powered equipment for marble work and the associated capital costs fostered the creation of mid- to large-sized firms, that could respond sensitively, flexibly and creatively to the high demand for white marble, the popularity of the rural cemetery movement, and grieving families that wanted monuments characteristic of those landscapes. The advent of even more powerful stonecutting machinery, capable of carving fine detail in highly durable granite later in the nineteenth century, was a significant contributing factor to the decline of marble and the ascendance of granite as America’s dominant ornamental stone, a situation that continues today.
Nancy Packer email
Education:
B.A., Fine Arts and Art History, College of William and Mary (1983)
M.A., Early American Culture, University of Delaware (1989)
Currently A.B.D. at University of Delaware
Dissertation Title:
"'Altho' and the Seas Divide:' American Travelers in Britain in the Late 18th Century"
Jaime Kuhns email
Education:
B.S., History, Radford University (1998)
M.A., History, James Madison University (2001)
Currently A.B.D. at University of Delaware
Research Interests:
Material Culture, Medical History, African American Studies, Southern History, and public history.
Dissertation Title:
"Asylum for Jim Crow: African American Mental Hospitals in the South Atlantic United States, 1865-1965"
Abstract:
