B.A. Union University, 2013
M.A. University of Oklahoma, 2017
M.A. Thesis: “The Weapon of Dress: Identity and Innovation in Cherokee Clothing, 1794-1838”
Ph.D. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2023
Patricia Dawson studies Native American history and early North America. Her dissertation focuses on Cherokee clothing and identity in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
BA The University of Kent, Canterbury (UK), 2008
MA The School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, 2009
MA Thesis: “The Institutionalization of Islam in Japan”
MA University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2017
MA Thesis: The Career of Muhammad Barkatullah (1864-1927): From Intellectual to Anticolonial Revolutionary
PhD University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2023
PhD Thesis: Debating Origins at the End of Empire: Anticolonial intellectuals, Pan-Asian Networks, and World Religions in Japan, 1905-1945
My dissertation explores the ideas, activities, and relationships of religious reformers and intellectuals from British India and Ceylon who used Japan as a base for their political projects between 1905 and 1945. I uncover and highlight the radical reformulations of religious traditions like Buddhism, Hinduism, and Islam in South Asia by exploring conversations in Japan that included not only Hindus, Muslims, and Buddhists from South and East Asia, but also Euro-American Orientalist scholars and religious figures. The central argument of my dissertation is that while South Asian and Japanese figures were involved in projects of Pan-Asian solidarity and challenged many of the Eurocentric assumptions of Western thinkers, they were unable to escape thinking along civilizational lines that divided Asia based primarily on religious ‘origins.’ In doing so, my project will highlight alternative visions for understanding our societies and religious identities through excavating the messy genealogies of debates about religion, Asia, solidarity, and belonging.
B.A. University of Hong Kong, 2010
M.Phil. University of Hong Kong, 2014
M.A. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2017
PhD University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2023
My dissertation, entitled “Surviving in Great Power Politics: Transnational Anticolonialism of British Malaya,” is a cultural and intellectual history of South and Southeast Asia. It examines Malayans’ contribution to the transnational political movements based in Asia and Europe during and after the Second World War. It also explores how the circulation of political and religious ideas across the Indian Ocean significantly shaped the anticolonial discourses in late colonial Malaya. My broader research interests include twentieth-century South and Southeast Asian history; global history of (anti-)colonialism; migration and identities formation; gender history; cultural and intellectual history.
MA History, University of Glasgow, 2016
MLitt American Studies, University of Glasgow, 2017
PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2023
B.A. George Washington University, 2012
M.A. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2016
M.A. Thesis: “State Power, Popular Resistance, and Competing Nationalist Narratives in France, 1791-1871”
PhD The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2023
My dissertation, “Fractured Nationalism and the Crises of French Identity, 1789-1906,” discusses polemical discourse surrounding major uprisings and cultural flashpoints in modern France. I propose that in producing rival narratives of these events, ideologues created irreconcilable images of the French nation and French identity.
B.A. State Institute for Islamic Studies Ar-Raniry, 2009
Indonesia-Canada Youth-Exchange , 2007 – 2008
M.A. Ankara University, 2012
M.A. Thesis: “Ace Krallığı ve Osmanlı İmparatorluğu arasındaki İlişkileri[The Relationship of Aceh Sultanate and Ottoman Empire]”
Ph.D. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2023
My research interests are in Islam and Politics of Indonesia and Turkey.
PhD., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2023
M.A.Ed., Ottawa University, 2012
M.A., University of Florida, 2010
B.A., University of Florida, 2009
Dissertation: “Unnatural Naturalization: The Ottawa Indians and U.S. Citizenship, 1854-1978.”
Examining the history of the Ottawa Tribe of Oklahoma, this dissertation looks at U.S. citizenship as a complex site of Native activism from the mid-nineteenth century through the late twentieth century. It assesses how the Ottawa harnessed U.S. citizenship in their struggle for power with the federal government. By bringing to the fore a political tradition of subversive Native engagement with U.S. citizenship, Ottawa perspectives challenge dominant progressive narratives of U.S. citizenship that obscure the place of the United States as a settler colonial state.
B.S. University of Wisconsin-Madison, 2013 (History, Psychology)
M.A. University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 2016 (History)
PhD University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 2022-2023 (History)
My research interests include nationalism, identity formation, and social movement in 20th century Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan, Okinawa, and China. I am also interested in themes such as pan-Asianism, (anti-)colonialism, popular culture, and global connections. My dissertation explores the dispute over the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands in the East China Sea since the 1970s.
BA Furman University, 2015
M.A., Chinese History, UNC
PhD, UNC-CH, 2023
Since graduating with a Ph.D. in 2023, Donald has been deploying his research and language background as an Open Source Intelligence Analyst, answering diverse questions about Chinese politics, military, and culture for national security and corporate clients. Donald’s ongoing research interests revolve around propaganda, media systems, and newspaper culture in recent Chinese history. His dissertation engaged with the Chinese-socialist media landscape through a variety of lenses, including consumption of material in public “newspaper reading groups,” the analysis of Chinese-socialist advertising culture in the People’s Daily newspaper, and the practice of amateur journalism and journalistic practices across local newspaper bureaus in Anhui province. His research leverages ‘sinological garbology’ to acquire difficult-to-locate historical documents from flea markets and rare book shops, challenging the narratives of media production often posed by more traditional repositories of historical information, such as state-controlled archives.
Recent Public Engagements
Ph.D. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2022
M.A. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2018
My research interests include 20th Century Europe, the interwar period, Germany, Spain, Nazism, Fascism, dictatorships, culture, ideologies, propaganda, language, and the transnational movement of ideas and people.
DISSERTATION TITLE: “The Transmission of Fascism: Spanish Understandings of National Socialism, 1931-1939”
ABSTRACT: In the early 1930s, Spain’s newly established Second Republic quickly proved that it was no exception to the general fragility of democracy in interwar Europe. The growing state of disarray encouraged many Spaniards to search for alternative political models to remedy their nation’s political and social ills. For the Spanish right, the unexpected rise of Nazi Germany in 1933 highlighted a possible solution in fascism, which now seemed capable of spreading outside of its Italian birthplace. From that point until the downfall of the Third Reich, a small minority of intermediaries in Spain and Germany would actively work to promote National Socialism in a Spanish context. This dissertation focuses on the ways in which the German variant of fascism was transformed to make it more suitable for a Spanish audience in the pre-WWII years, as well as on the intermediaries who sought to strengthen the fascist ties between the two disparate nations.
