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 the graduate administrative assistant, 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 09/2010)

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 exploring why and how people change their homes through repair, renovation, and remodeling for her dissertation. She comes to UD with a B.A. in History from Florida State University, a M.S. in Historic Preservation from the University of Pennsylvania, and has also received a M.A. in History from the University of Delaware. Her degrees allow her to combine archival evidence with extant material in exciting ways. Her research interests include American social and cultural history of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, urban development, vernacular landscapes, building technology and material culture.  When she’s not rummaging around basements, attics, or archives, Amanda works as a historian for the National Park Service in the National Historic Landmarks Program through the Student Temporary Employment Program.

Lucas R. Clawson is working toward a Ph.D. in the Hagley Program.  His research focuses on the meaning of brass bands and popular music in pre-Civil War America.  He earned both a B.S. and M.A. in Appalachian State University’s Public and Applied History Program.  Lucas spends his copious spare time doing public interpretive programs with the National Park Service and Maryland State Parks as well as cycling throughout the
beautiful Brandywine Valley.

Stephanie Corrigan is a 2006 graduate of the College of William and Mary with a B.A. in Anthropology and History.  She is an M.A student also working toward a Museum Studies Certificate.  Her research interests focus on the seventeenth and eighteenth century history of Native American and European contacts. She is particularly interested in the social and cultural changes that arose from the new trade networks and trade goods.  She plans to pursue a career as a museum curator or in museum education.

Jennifer Fang earned her B.A. in History from Reed College and M.A. from the University of Delaware. Her research interests include constructions of ethnic identity and citizenship in twentieth-century America, 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. In 2009, Jennifer was a recipient of a Graduate Research Fellowship in Material Culture Studies by the Center for Material Culture Studies at the University of Delaware. She was recently awarded a 2010-2011 doctoral fellowship by the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation for International Scholarly Exchange. Based in Taiwan with offices in North America and Europe, the Chiang Ching-Kuo Foundation awards grants and fellowships to scholars around the world who are conducting research related to China.

Della Hall received her B.S. in History, Technology, and Society with a minor in French from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2011. While there, she wrote her undergraduate thesis on the Navajo concept of Wind, which she presented at the Southwestern Historical Association annual conference. She is an M.A. student working toward a Museum Studies Certificate. Her research interests lie in 19th-century U.S. technology, the American West, and urbanization.

Ai Hisano is a Ph.D. student in 20th-century U.S. history, with particular focus on food history. Before joining the Hagley program in 2009, she received her B.A. (2004) and M.A. (2006) in American Studies at the University of Tokyo, Japan. Her research explores into the relations between food marketing and the development of “taste” in the U.S. by specifically exploring the political and cultural role of advertising, technological artifacts, and color. In her previous project, Ai examined gender politics in food marketing by focusing on Betty Crocker. Her articles on Betty Crocker were published in several academic journals. She has also conducted research on the alcohol industry. In 2010, as a summer intern at the Hagley Museum and Library, she examined Joseph E. Seagram papers and Ernest Dichter papers, Hagley’s two major collections related to the alcohol and food industries. Two articles in preparation based on the internship – one focused on the wine industry and the other broadly tracing the significance of food marketing research in the current food history scholarship – explore the making, embodiment, and negotiation of taste.

Jennifer Matthews earned a B.A. in American Studies and English with a minor in history from the University of Maryland, Baltimore County in May 2008. During the fall of 2008, she served as a curatorial intern at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. She is pursuing a M.A. in History as well as a Museum Studies certificate. Her research interests focus on 19th and 20th-century American history, with an emphasis on the social history of the Industrial Revolution. She is especially interested in transportation, mass production and distribution of consumer goods, advertising, and material culture studies. In the future, she plans to work as a museum curator or special collections librarian.

Michael Pospishil received his B.A. in History from Washington University in St. Louis in 2003. He spent several years at work including a year spent in transit between North America's largest factories and distribution centers as a tractor trailer driver for Schneider National Inc. – the largest private trucking company in the world. He returned to school and was awarded an M.A. in History from SUNY Albany in 2010. His thesis analyzed the interplay between technical needs and social expectations in the evolution of New York's steamboats, 1807-1840. Michael enters the Hagley program with a special interest in the proliferation of steam power in the 19th Century, the concomitmant materials shift from wood to coal and iron, and the relationship between technological development and environmental change. He spends his summers hosting natural history tours in Denali National Park in Alaska.

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).

John Vanek earned a Bachelor of Science in History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2008. While there, he hosted a radio show and worked on a committee to bring distinguished speakers to campus. After graduating, he interned at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History, working with both public outreach and organizational aspects of Jazz Appreciation Month. More recently, John served as a researcher and the go-to music guru for the Minnesota Historical Society’s “1968 Exhibit,” including developing an interactive multimedia music quiz and producing a documentary radio program to air on 89.3 The Current.

John joined the Hagley Program in the fall of 2011 as a Ph.D. student. He intends to focus on the history of American popular music, specifically the transmission of ideas among the US, UK and other world cultures throughout the 20th century. Other historical interests include New World immigration patterns and the impact of technology and education on historical awareness. Outside of school, John enjoys spending time with his new wife, writing a music blog, biking, and cheering on the Minnesota Twins.

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.