Recent PhDs
Sarah K. Miles
Education
PhD – University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
MA – University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
BA – University of Oklahoma
Research Interests
I am a historian of global francophone history in the 20th century with a particular interest in empire and decolonization, intellectual history, and print and reading culture. My previous work has focused on the social history of ideas and the role of print media in postcolonial identity formation as well as transnational revolutionary movements, global solidarity, and the role of intellectuals and writing as part of both Marxism and decolonization.
Recent Publications
Patricia Dawson
Education
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
Research Interests
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.
Samee Saddiqui
Education
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
Research Interests
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.
Zardas Shuk-man Lee
Education
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
Research Interests
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.
Recent Publications
- Lengzhan guang ying: Diyuanzhengzhi xia de Xianggang dianying shencha shi 冷戰光影: 地緣政治下的香港電影審查史 [Geopolitics and Film Censorship in Cold War Hong Kong]. (Taipei: Monsoon Zone, 2019) (ISBN: 9789869745819)
- “From Cold War Warrior to Moral Guardian: Film Censorship in Hong Kong.” In From a British to a Chinese Colony? Hong Kong before and after the 1997 Handover, edited by Gary C.H. Luk, 143–65. (Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, 2017)
- Review of Television and the Modernization Ideal in 1980s China: Dazzling the Eyes, by Huike Wen (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2014). Media History 21, no. 4 (2015): 499–502
Craig Gill
Education
MA History, University of Glasgow, 2016
MLitt American Studies, University of Glasgow, 2017
PhD, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2023
Lindsay Ayling
Education
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
Research Interests
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.
Baiquni Baiquni
Education
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
Research Interests
My research interests are in Islam and Politics of Indonesia and Turkey.
David Dry
Education
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
Research Interests
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.
Justin Wu
Education
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)
Research Interests
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.