Adviser: Konrad H. Jarausch

Graduate Email: hillaker@live.unc.edu

Education

B.A. University of Florida, 2011
M.A. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2014
M.A. Thesis: ‘‘Half of the Picture: Representations of East Germany in GDR Review, 1958- 1989’’
Ph.D. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2019
Ph.D. Thesis: ““Presenting a Better Germany: Competing Cultural Diplomacies between East and West Germany, 1949-1990”

Research Interests

My dissertation is entitled: “Presenting a Better Germany: Competing Cultural Diplomacies between East and West Germany, 1949-1990.” My research interests include twentieth-century German and European history, media history, and the cultural history of politics. Methodologically, I am particularly interested in intermediality, the relationship between different kinds of media, and memory.

Adviser: Susan Dabney Pennybacker

Graduate Email: jhebert@alumni.unc.edu

Education

B.A. University of Alaska Anchorage, 2010
M.A. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2013
PhD University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2019

Research Interests

Britain and the British Empire after 1945, British political culture, decolonization, global and transnational history, African history, Canadian history

Recent Publications

“‘Sacred Trust’: Rethinking Late British Decolonization in Indigenous Canada,” Journal of British Studies, Vol. 58, Issue 3, 565-597.

Adviser: Konrad H. Jarausch

Graduate Email: pgengler@live.unc.edu

Education

B.A. University of Nebraska-Lincoln, 2007
M.A. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2013
M.A. Thesis: “Exhibiting Antifascism: Ravensbrück and the Ambivalences of East German Commemoration, 1945-1989”
PhD University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2019
PhD dissertation: “Constructing and Leveraging ‘Flight and Expulsion’: Expellee Memory Politics in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1944-1970”

Research Interests

Peter Gengler received his Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in May 2019. His dissertation, “‘Flight and Expulsion’: Expellee Victimhood Narratives and Memory Politics in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1944-1970,” was supported by the Berlin Program and the DAAD during the academic years of 2015 and 2016. Peter’s research examined the memory politics of West German refugee associations, who constructed a victimhood narrative that they instrumentalized in arguments for political and social claims. Through colonization of public discourse, they profoundly shaped how Germans remembered and continue to recall the Second World War and wartime traumata. Peter’s research generally focuses on postwar German cultural memories of war, dictatorship, the Holocaust, and West and East German political culture.

Adviser: Louis A. Pérez, Jr.

Graduate Email: maikelfb@outlook.com

Education

B.A. University of Havana, 2003
M.A. University of Havana, 2005
PhD University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2019
PhD dissertation: “Envisioning Capitalist Alternatives: Business Leaders and the Politics of Influence in Cuba, 1920-1940”

Research Interests

My dissertation, “Envisioning Capitalist Alternatives: The Emergence of Urban Entrepreneurs and the Politics of Influence in Cuba, 1920-1940” investigates the organization of urban entrepreneurs in voluntary associations, such as Rotary Clubs, and their transformation into civic power groups.

Adviser: Louis A. Pérez, Jr.

Education

B.A. University of Wisconsin at Madison
MA University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2013
PhD University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2018

Adviser: James L. Leloudis

Graduate Email: elundeen@email.unc.edu

Education

BA Wake Forest University, 2017
Honors Thesis: “Simon G. Atkins: Race Leader”
M.Phil. Cambridge University
M.Phil. Thesis: “The Accommodation Strategies of African American Education leaders in North Carolina, 1890–1930”

Research Interests

African American College Presidents and the Civil Rights Movement

Adviser: Louis A. Pérez, Jr.

Education

BA Alfred University
MA University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2013
MA Thesis: “Revolutionary Teachers: Women and Gender in the Cuban Literacy Campaign of 1961”
Dissertation Title: “An Army of Teachers: Cuban Women in Political Education, from the Literacy Campaign to Yo Sí Puedo”

Adviser: Fred Naiden and Richard J.A. Talbert

Graduate Email: devereau@live.unc.edu

Adviser: Jay M. Smith

Graduate Email: nbauer@live.unc.edu

Education

BA University of California at Berkeley
MA Yale University, 2011

Research Interests

My areas of interest are early modern Europe, pre-revolutionary France, especially the history of the Bastille, and cultural and intellectual history. I am particularly interested in political culture, the development of ideology, and the intersection between the evolving concepts of honor, secrecy, and transparency in eighteenth-century France. My dissertation includes but is not limited to Jesuits, cadavers in the Bastille, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, angry Jansenists, and a revolutionary press. I look at how secrecy was linked to honor, and how over the course of the century, attitudes towards secrecy changed as government transparency took on new importance.

Adviser: William L. Barney

Graduate Email: pjyoung@live.unc.edu

Education

BS Emory University, 2010
MA Emory University, 2010
MA Thesis: “Religious Coming of Age among Students at Antebellum Georgia’s Evangelical Colleges”

Research Interests

Pearl Young is particularly interested in religious culture and ideology and the ways in which they inform larger political and social trends. In particular, her dissertation explores the ways in which antebellum Southerners used evangelical theology to rationalize secession as a moral imperative. She traces the importance of theological ideas such as the “city on a hill”, the millennium, the individual, and providential design through the discourse of white Southern evangelicals in public and private arenas.