American Studies

Current Ph.D. Students

Learn more about our current graduate students

  • Amir Adem

  • Istifaa Ahmed

    Research Interests Minoritarian performance and aesthetics, Queer/trans subjectivities, The human/inhuman, The erotic/body/flesh, Fugitivity, Speculative fiction, Black feminisms, Queer of color critique, Performance studies
  • Erin Aoyama

    Dissertation Title: "Remembering is Just Another Way of Knowing': Place, Culture, Hauntings in the Afterlives of Japanese American Redress."
    Research Interests Asian American Studies, Relational Ethnic Studies, Public Humanities, 20th Century Intellectual and Cultural History, Memory Studies
  • Bryant Brown

    Research Interests 20th and 21st century Black diasporic literature, Experimental aesthetic praxes, Anticolonial cultural production, Timbre and sound studies, Queer theory, Abolitionist movements
  • Alexander Chun

    Research Interests Queer of Color Critique, Asian/American studies, Media Studies, Performance Studies, Speculative Fiction, Queer Sexualities
  • Looghermine Claude

    First Year Student
  • Samia Cohen

    Dissertation title: "Watershed Metropolis: The Providence River and Its Lifeworlds"
    Research Interests Environmental humanities, Feminist science and technology studies, U.S. built environment , Infrastructures , Autoethnography
  • Caroline Cunfer

    Dissertation title: "Unthinking Sex: Cultural Sites of Compulsory Sexuality and the Politics of Desire"
    Research Interests Feminist Theory, Queer Theory, Cultural Studies/Theory, Science And Technology Studies, Critiques Of Sex-Positive Feminism, Asexuality, Politics Of Sex And Desire
  • Thomas Dai

    Research Interests Contemporary nonfiction and poetry, Queer theory, Asian American studies, Literature of space and place
  • Liam Dean-Johnson

    Research Interests Queer theory and queer of color critique, Performance studies, Affect theory, Popular music and sound studies, Metaphysics and ethical philosophy, Esoterica and the occult
  • Jennifer Dolan

    Dissertation title: "The Embattled Self: Willpower and Self-Making in 20th Century American Culture"
    Research Interests Cultural History, Self-Help Literature, Gender, Middle-Class Culture, History of Psychology, Narrative
  • Isaac Essex

    Research Interests Trans Studies; Environmental Humanities/Ecocriticism; Affect Theory; Madness; Poetry & Poetics; Disability Studies; Decolonial Thought and Methodologies; Aesthetics and Visual Culture; Queer of Color Critique.
  • Yuanyuan (Angela) Feng

    Dissertation title: "Chinese/American Writers as Transpacific Public Intellectuals"
    Research Interests Asian American community politics and culture, Asian American literature, Chinese diaspora in the Americas
  • Matthew Kateb Goldman

    Dissertation title: Transiting Metropolitan "Man" : Queer Infrastructures of Human Being in the New York City Subway
    Research Interests Cities and built environments, Queer of color and minoritarian critique, Politics of knowledge, Aesthetics and the "human", Infrastructures
  • Sherente Harris

    Research Interests Indigenous History, Cosmology, Art, & Semiotics Twospirits Narragansett People, Lifeways, and Sovereignty.
  • Ellen Huggins

    Masters Student in American Studies
    Research Interests Cultural Studies, Queer Studies, Digital Humanities, Oral History, Race/Gender/Sexuality in The Archives, Reparative Archival Work
  • Kristen Iemma

    Dissertation Title: Archival Dispossessions: Record Keeping and U.S. Empire in the Early Twentieth Century
    Research Interests Science and Technology Studies, Critical Archival Studies, and Twentieth Century U.S. History
  • Jacquelynn Jones

    Research Interests 19th and 20th century visual and material culture, Black feminist theory, Racial-mixture, History of photography, Public humanities
  • Makana Kushi

    Research Interests Race in Hawaiʻi, Comparative ethnic studies, Indigenous education
  • Allyson LaForge

    Research Interests Native American and Indigenous studies, Histories of the native northeast, Decolonizing methodologies, Public humanities, Material culture
  • Carolyn Lau

    Research Interests Asian/American Studies, Urban Studies, Race and Ethnic Politics
  • Jonathan MacDonald

    Dissertation title: "Expert Advice: Mediating Social Science's Public Aspirations, 1930-1965"
    Research Interests Cultural and Intellectual History, Science and Technology Studies, Media studies, The History of Social Science, Educational and Prescriptive Media
  • Claritza Maldonado

    Research Interests Caribbean sStudies, Afro-Latinx studies, Sound and aesthetics, Poetry and spoken word, Puerto Rico and diaspora
  • Karen Marks

  • Anna Marti

    Masters Student in American Studies
    Research Interests Education Studies, Access to Higher Education, Deafness and Disability, Settler Colonialism, Feminist and Queer Studies.
  • Edwin Rodriguez

    Research Interests Central American studies, El Salvador, Transnationalism, displacement, and migration
  • Nicole Sintetos

    Research Interests Asian American studies, Science, technology and society, 20th century immigration history, Environmental history, Public humanities
  • Mark Tseng-Putterman

    Research Interests Transnational Asian American studies, Cold War studies, U.S. militarism, social movements, comparative ethnic studies
  • Katharina Weygold

    Dissertation title: "African American Women and Haiti During the U.S. Occupation, 1915 – 1934"
    Research Interests Black Internationalism, U.S. empire, Women’s and Gender Studies, Transnational American Studies, Public Humanities
  • K Yin

    Research Interests Queer and Trans of Color Critique, Minoritarian Aesthetics, Asian/American Cultural Production, Affect, The Speculative, The Transpacific, Flesh, Ghosts, and Monsters