Information for Current Students

• Program Requirements
• Doctoral Qualifying Examinations For Hagley Fellows
• Biographies of Current Hagley Fellows

What are the Program Requirements?

All Hagley Fellows are required to complete 30 credits (ten classes). Some of these classes must be selected to fulfill History Department requirements. Hagley Fellows must also take two Hagley courses which reflect student and faculty interests. Ph.D. students take a written comprehensive examination and write a dissertation. A thesis is optional for M.A. students. About half of all Hagley students also chose to complete a museum studies certificate.

Doctoral Qualifying Examinations For Hagley Fellows

--The doctoral qualifying examinations for Hagley Fellows will consist of a written examination followed by an oral examination. Their purpose is to assess a student's knowledge of four diverse and broadly defined reading fields to be framed by each student in conjunction with the faculty.

--Toward the end of the fourth semester of coursework (or at least six months prior to taking examinations), it will be the responsibility of each student to consult with his or her adviser and to ask four professors to direct the individual reading fields and to serve as an examining committee. At least three of those professors will be members of the History Department faculty, and the student's adviser will serve as coordinator of the committee. If the adviser is not part of the examining committee, then a coordinator will be chosen by the consent of the committee. The student should then submit a completed Ph.D. Exam Planning Sheet (pdf) to Pat Orendorf, the Graduate Chair, and the UD-Hagley Coordinator at least two months prior to the exam date.

The student will then consult with each faculty member of the examining committee to define his or her individual fields and to begin compiling reading lists. The length and organization of reading lists may vary, depending on the field and discussions between the student and the faculty member directing the field.

-- Individual faculty members on the examination committee will help students prepare in each of the four fields. It is the responsibility of the examining committee as a whole to ensure that the student's four fields are sufficiently broad, diverse, and distinct and to approve all four final reading lists. The entire examining committee will also approve all questions for the written examination.

Hagley Fellows in American history will follow the general format for the American history exam. Students who identify primarily as non-US historians may substitute exams on non-American nations or regions for the first two fields below, or may follow the format of the qualifying exam in European history. Students planning a transnational or comparative dissertation will make modifications as needed.

--The four fields will include:

1) A field in early American History (Pre-Columbian to mid-nineteenth century) divided into three broad and diverse themes. (Examples might include consumption and material life; political culture and political economy; religion; and slavery.)

2) A field in modern United States History (mid-nineteenth century to the present), also divided into three broad and diverse themes. (Examples might include the Civil War and Reconstruction; industrialization; reform movements; popular culture; African-American history.)

3) An outside field in non-American history, in non-American/American comparative history, or in a relevant discipline. That field may or may not bear upon the student's dissertation interests, but it must not simply duplicate the fourth field. (Examples might include modern nationalisms; comparative slave systems; the Atlantic World in the early modern period; Africa from colonialism to independence; comparative industrialization in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; literary theory; historical geography.)

4. A broad topical or chronological field in a particular area of interest bearing on a possible doctoral thesis. A student may also choose comparative or transnational themes in defining this field.

--Format for Doctoral Qualifying Examinations

Examinees will begin the examination process four weeks before Thanksgiving week on a date set by the Graduate Studies Committee. Students will select the order in which they wish to write their four examinations, and they will receive serially (on a weekly basis) the questions set by the members of their examining committee for each of their four fields.

Examinees will write two take-home essays in each of their four fields, choosing among three to five questions for each field. They will have five days to complete their essays in each of the four fields and to submit those essays to the examining committee in hard copy or by e-mail. Each essay will consist of no more than 3000 words.

Examinees may use books, professional journals, and other resources in writing their essays. Throughout the examination process, students may not discuss their essays with faculty or other students; examinees are responsible for doing their own work in accordance with the code of academic conduct set forth on the website www.udel.edu/stuguide/06-07/code.html (and as updated).

Members of the examining committee will read the student's essays in all four fields. The entire committee will then make a preliminary evaluation of the written examination as a whole. Except when a student is judged clearly to have failed the written examination, he or she will proceed, within two weeks, to the oral examination.

Oral examinations of about two hours in length and administered by the examining committee will take place in the first half of December at a date set by the Graduate Studies Committee. Those examinations may include questions about the essays submitted for the written examination, the themes designated by the student's reading lists, and his or her plans for the dissertation.

Upon a student's completion of both the written and oral examinations, the entire committee will evaluate each student's performance as passing or failing the doctoral qualifying examination.

Those students who fail the examination will have one opportunity to repeat the examination process during the spring semester of their third year.

Passing the doctoral qualifying examination will constitute the final step before a student submits his or her portfolio to the Graduate Studies Committee for advancement to candidacy.

Bios of Current Hagley Fellows (as of 09/2009)

Jennifer J. Armiger is currently completing her dissertation, entitled "The Gender of Industrial Decline: Reconsidering Sex Discrimination and Class-Action Litigation at Western Electric, 1965-1985." She has held the American Association of University Women's American Dissertation Fellowship; the Rovensky Fellowship in American Business and Economic History; the Smith Dissertation Fellowship from the New Jersey Historical Commission; the Little-Griswold Research Grant in American Legal History from the Organization of American Historians; and the University of Delaware Women's Studies Dissertation Fellowship. Jennifer's specialized areas of interest include industrial decline; women and work; women's history; legal history; business and economic history; New Jersey history; and modern Chinese history. Jennifer has given papers at the Organization of American Historians' annual conference; the North American Labor History Conference; and the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians. She is a regular attendee of the Business History Conference and will be participating in the "Business History as Critique" workshop at the Hagley Museum and Library in May of 2009. Jennifer holds a B.A. in History, with departmental honors, from The College of New Jersey, and an M.A in American History and the History of Technology and Industrialization from the University of Delaware. She expects to receive her doctoral degree in 2009.

Andy Bozanic received his B.S. in History, Technology and Society with a minor in Music from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2003 and his M.A. from the University of Delaware in 2005. He is currently at work on his dissertation, "The Acoustic Guitar in American Culture, 1880-1970," which examines the interplay between makers and users in the social construction of the acoustic guitar, an object that became the instrument of choice for the American masses in the 20th century. Andy is the winner of the 2008-2009 John Munroe Memorial Award for Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching, and he will take up residence as a Smithsonian Predoctoral Fellow, for the 2009-2010 year at the National Museum of American History, Washington D.C. Among his other research interests are music recording technology, and historic preservation in the American Southwest. Andy's previous projects include studies in the sociology of music technology, the history of the recording industry in Atlanta, and the consumer culture of coal company stores. He also has a background in archaeology and has taken part in excavations in Italy as well as research projects for the National Park Service. After being awarded an E. Lyman Stewart internship with the Delaware Division of Parks and Recreation, Andy is currently contributing to a forthcoming institutional history of the Delaware State Parks. Outside of grad school he is an avid musician (voice, saxophone, guitar, bassoon, piano), tennis player, and softball coach.

Amanda Casper is currently pursuing a PhD in History.  In 2007 she received a MS in Historic Preservation from the University of Pennsylvania.  While there she focused on architectural conservation and for her thesis conducted a qualitative analysis of statements of significance for National Historic Landmark designations in Philadelphia.  In 2004 she received a BA in History from Florida State University.  Her research interests include American social and cultural history of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, urban development, vernacular landscapes, building technology and the transfusion of technology and symbology through immigration.  She aims to combine her background of historic preservation with her historic studies to better facilitate preservation goals, preferably by working within the federal preservation framework.

Lucas R. Clawson spends a tremendous amount of time pondering the meanings of brass bands, music, and popular culture for early nineteenth-century Americans.  He holds both a B.S. and M.A. in Public and Applied History from Appalachian State University.  When he is not in the midst of a research project or some other scholarly activity, Lucas participates in public interpretive programs with the National Park Service.

Jennifer Fang earned her B.A. in Hisublic and Applied History from Appalachian State University.  Her research interests include twentieth-century Asian American identity and citizenship, and American and global consumer culture.  She is currently working on her dissertation entitled, “Beyond Chinatown: Negotiating Chinese American Identity in Mainstream America, 1943-1982,” which examines the emergence of a middle-class, non-Chinatown-based Chinese American identity during the Cold War era.  Her previous research projects have examined topics such as: tourism, identity, and the commodification of race in the American Southwest, public festivals and tourism in mid-twentieth-century Chinatowns, and the construction of hybridized Asian American identities after World War II.  While at the University of Delaware, Jennifer has also held internships at the Hagley Museum and Library and the Oregon Historical Society.

Ai Hisano received her B.A. (2004) and M.A. (2006) at the University of Tokyo, Japan.  Her particular interest is in twentieth-century mass consumer culture and American food marketing.  Her M.A. thesis focused on Betty Crocker, a fictional figure created by General Mills in 1921, and sought to examine how narratives of food and households entailed certain ideologies.  For further research including Ph.D. dissertation, Ai plans to investigate relations between production, marketing, and consumption of food in the U.S. She is interested in examining the relations between creation and transitions of food advertisements and socio-political issues, and in the globalization of brand images in twentieth-century consumer societies.  Her research aims to illuminate not only the historical transformation of advertising images and American consumer society, but also globalization, Americanization, and localization of “foodways.”

Anna Rusk earned her B.A. in History and Museum Studies from Beloit College in 2008, graduating with departmental honors. While at Beloit, she participated in the Gettysburg Semester at Gettysburg College. She is currently pursuing an M.A. in History and a Museum Studies certificate. In the summer of 2009 she held an internship at the Historic Indian Agency House in Portage, Wisconisn. Her interests include nineteenth-century American social history, particularly the Civil War, and material culture. She is also especially interested in outdoor and living history museums and public history. In her spare time she enjoys cooking and rock and roll.

John Sharpe is a 1993 distinguished graduate of the United States Naval Academy at Annapolis, Maryland, where he received a Bachelor of Science degree with honors in English, and emphases in political thought and history. Upon graduation he was awarded the Van Dyke Prize for standing highest in courses required to complete an English major, and received the Nancy R. Wicker Award for his Honours Essay on T. S. Eliot’s The Wasteland. Following graduation from Annapolis, he graduated from Naval Nuclear Power School (Orlando, Fla.), Naval Prototype Training (Charleston, S.C.), and Naval Submarine School (Groton, Conn.). He then served aboard the Los Angeles class nuclear-powered submarine USS Atlanta (SSN 712), where he filled various officer duties, and obtained certification as a Nuclear Engineer Officer.

Sharpe’s research interests focus upon anti-industrial social criticism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries (with a focus on England and the United States), interwar Catholic social and political movements in the English-speaking world, anti-Marxist socio-economic alternatives to liberal capitalism, and the evolution of the idea of property ownership in Western political and economic thought since ca. 1750.

Cristina Turdean holds a M.A. degree in History Museum Studies from Cooperstown Graduate Program, State University of New York, Oneonta and an M.A in American History and the History of Technology and Industrialization from the University of Delaware. Cristina is currently working on her dissertation, entitled "Betting on Computers: Digital Technology and the Rise of the Modern Casino Industry in the U.S." Cristina's research interests include the history of computers, high-tech entertainment, and communication technology. Since joining the Hagley Program in 2004, Cristina has been involved in numerous research, exhibit, and archival projects at Hagley Museum and Library. Most recently, Cristina presented papers at the annual meetings of the American Historical Association (2007) and the Society for the History of Technology (2006).

Jamin Wells received both his B.A. and M.A. in History from the University of Rhode Island. His masters research project, “Professionalization and Cultural Perceptions of Marine Salvors, 1850-1950,” sought to combine his interests in maritime history and underwater archaeology. He has also worked on numerous archaeological projects in Lake Huron, Long Island Sound, and Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island. Since joining the Hagley Program in 2007, Jamin researched and wrote "Building the Lydonia II," a digital exhibit for the Hagley Museum and Library. His current research interests include modern America’s relationship to the sea; particularly the relationship between the environment, culture, and shipwrecks. Jamin is a recipient of a 2009-2010 University Competitive Fellowship.