Ben Abel is an M.A. student in modern American history and also serves as an editorial apprentice at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture. His thesis, ‘Richard Nixon’s religious philosophy and its impact on the political landscape,’ considers the development of Richard M. Nixon's thought over time, with an emphasis on Nixon's religious philosophy. His other research interests include the Cold War and political philosophy.

Seth Archer is a first-year student in early American history. His current research focuses on sixteenth- and seventeenth-century encounters between native North Americans and Europeans. In 2006 he published an article about the lynching of Laura Nelson and her son in Oklahoma and subsequent attempts to respond to the incident by folk singer Woody Guthrie. Other work has recently been published in Southwest Review, Marlboro Review, Southern Humanities Review, Whiskey Island Magazine, Roanoke Review, and Fourth Genre.

Becky Barnhart received her BA in history from Loyola University-Chicago.  Her minor there was peace studies.  She is currently researching her master’s thesis.  She plans on working in the area of gender and the American Revolution.  More specifically, she would like to investigate the role of women in paving the way for revolution.  Although Becky spent the last ten years in the Midwest, eight of those in Chicago, she is from the Hampton Roads area and is excited to be back.  Becky has had a variety of jobs before settling comfortably into professional studenthood.  She has tried (and rejected), actress, stage and film director, café manager, screenwriter, wedding photographer, stage manager, and film producer.  Although film director was the most fun, historian should prove to the most fulfilling.

Libby Bond grew up in the South East of England.  She received her BA in International History from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 2004.  Her research is focused on the history of medicine and mental health in Britain and America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.  A first year PhD student at William and Mary, Libby is currently working to complete her MA thesis, an exploration of the medical and political writings of Royall Tyler and Mary Palmer Tyler. 

received his B.A. in Anthropology from The College of William and Mary in 1996 and his M.A. in History/Historical Archaeology from The University of Massachusetts at Boston in 2001. His master’s thesis, “`…to the Place Where it Began’: Seventeenth-Century Settlement Patterns in Abingdon Parish, Gloucester County, Virginia, History, GIS, and Archaeology,” focuses on community formation and development along the early colonial frontier. He is currently in his sixth year of the History Ph.D. program. His research interests include the rise and fall of the plantation system in the New World, the interaction of native and colonial cultures in the seventeenth century, and African-American tenant farmers in nineteenth century Virginia.  In addition, he is co-director of the Fairfield Foundation Inc., a non-profit archaeological and historical research group in Gloucester County, Virginia, as well as a founding member of the Werowocomoco Research Group, currently studying the site of Werowocomoco, the principal residence of the Virginia Algonquian chief Powhatan from 1607-1609.

Born and raised on the genetically-enriched croplands of central Illinois, Carroll graduated with a bachelor's degree in history from Northern Illinois University. Fleeing snow drifts, frostbite and family, he worked nine years as a newspaper reporter in North Carolina and Virginia before earning a master's degree in American studies at William and Mary. He abandoned his journalism career after concluding that he preferred to deal with lawyers and politicians who were deceased. Carroll's research interests focus on black and southern history. Concerning his dissertation topic, Carroll is open to suggestions and offering a cash reward.

Amelia Davis, more often known as Molly, is enrolled in the Comparative M.A. program.  Her plan for her thesis ls to focus on the processes of dismantling the constructs of segregation and apartheid in education in the United States and South Africa.  Molly started her undergraduate work at University of Delaware in Art and Political Science.  After a short stint in the land of cubicles she returned to school at Delaware State University where she discovered her abiding love for research rooms and archives.  She finished her B.A. in History in 2006. 

recieved his BA in history from Mary Washington College in Fredericksburg, Virginia in 2002. He finished the coursework for his MA in Contemporary History at the college in May 2004. Beginning in the summer of 2004, he served for one year as an AmeriCorps member with Habitat for Humanity of Wake County, NC, where he worked in construction and volunteer supervision. He completed his MA thesis on the 1924 Leopold-Loeb case and its role in creating a distinct American criminal narrative during his year off.   He became ABD in the spring of 2007 and has since taught the first half of the US survey course.  He is currently at work on further researching the Leopold-Loeb case for his dissertation. 

Ninenteenth-century America; African Americans; slavery; race relations; evangelicalism; abolitionism

Myra is a candidate for the comparative MA, with a thesis on southern African leaders and their political climate during the Cold War.  She grew up in Botswana and Namibia and attended high school in Texas before leaving for college.  At Ouachita Baptist University in Arkadelphia Arkansas (population:  5,000 or 10,000 with college in session, one Wal-Mart and a beautiful lake) she majored in history, mass communications, and Russian and was involved in writing for newspapers at the school, in the city, and in Arkansas.  She hopes to pursue a Ph.D, possibly studying American diplomacy during the Cold War and how the U.S. developed relationships with nations in Africa and Latin America.

Peter hails from Clearwater, FL, but he has been living in Virginia for the past 5 years. He earned a B.A. in American History and Music at Washington and Lee University in 2006 and is currently working on his M.A. in American History at William and Mary. His primary academic interests are 20th Century American, African-American, and Southern History. He plans to explore the integration of schools in Roanoke, Virginia for his thesis work. Outside of the library, Peter enjoys hiking, rock climbing, ultimate Frisbee, and just being outdoors. He will also play the bass guitar on occasion if anyone wants to jam.

Jeffrey W. Kuckuck graduated with highest honors from the University of Chicago in 2004.  His primary research interests include early America, early modern Britain, and compartive colonialism.  He is currently examining New England political ideology and political culture in the wake of the Glorious Revolution.  Jeff spent his childhood on the move, but currently calls Washington, DC home.    

Stephen J. Legawiec graduated with honors from Boston College in 2006.  His primary research interests include the nineteenth-century American South, the Civil War, and Southern memory studies.  He is currently researching the effects of agricultural reform, developing infrastructure, and the Civil War on mastery and slave life in Fluvanna County, Virginia.  Steve is a native of Rochester, New York and is a devotee of bluegrass music and an avid outdoorsman.

Jade Leszkowicz is a first-year student in Early American history. Her current work focuses on the New York State Commission for Detecting and Defeating Conspiracies during the American Revolution. She is interested in nation-state formation, processes of citizenship identity creation, and the extra-legal bodies that shaped these processes during the war. In addition she is interested in Dutch colonial history and the influence of Dutch culture on up-state New York leading into the Revolution. Amidst all this Early Americanism she maintains her interest in modern foreign policy and environmental history. She received her B.A. in History with honors from Binghamton University in 2006.

earned B.A. degrees in History and English from Michigan State University in 2001, and is currently a PhD candidate specializing in late nineteenth and twentieth century U.S. history.  Her research interests include popular culture, travel/tourism, women's history, and material culture. She completed her MA at William & Mary in 2003, with a Master's Thesis titled "They've All Come to Look for America: Constructing Self and Nation in Women's Travel Narratives 1870-1890," and is now in the midst of a dissertation examining cultural identity and tourism in the mid-twentieth century U.S.  Sarah taught History 122: the U.S. since 1877, in the fall of 2005 at William & Mary, and has spent four summers as an instructor with the National Institute of American History and Democracy (NIAHD) Pre-collegiate program (through which she has honed her 12 passenger van driving skills).  This year, she will be working in the History Writing Resource Center.

Heather McLees Frazier received her B.A. from Bryn Mawr College in 1998, with a double major in Russian and Anthropology.  After working in the non-profit and education sectors for eight years and taking a year off to start a family, she began the Comparative History M.A. at William & Mary in September 2007.  Heather's areas of interest include medieval and Renaissance Britain, and twentieth-century Ireland and Russia.  Her thesis research focuses on Elizabeth I's participation in the creation of her portraits, and how her self-representation compares with her representation in modern popular media.  Heather lives in Richmond with her husband and one-year-old son, who is primarily responsible for the oatmeal and yogurt she regularly sports on her clothes, sunglasses, and hair.

Caroline Morris graduated with a B.A. in History and Italian from the University of Virginia in 2003. She earned her M.A. from William and Mary in 2006 with a thesis entitled "'Down Where the South Begins': Virginia Radio and the Conversation of Nationhood." Having made it over the comprehensive exam hurdle, Caroline has begun research on small and large southern radio stations from 1925 through the 1950s. For her dissertation, she plans on exploring the position of localized audiences and broadcasters in an era of so-called nationalization. Expert zoologists have also recently spotted Caroline preparing lectures for her survey course on modern U.S. history, and driving precollegiate smarties all over Virginia as an instructor for the National Institute for American History and Democracy.

Ed was born and raised in Rochester, Minnesota, and received his BA in History and American Studies from Saint Olaf College.  His historical interest is the political and cultural history of Colonial America in the eighteenth century and the American Revolution.  In April 2007, Ed completed his MA thesis, which examined the journals of Philip Vickers Fithian through the subjects of diary writing, education, travel, and politicization.  Although he misses Minnesota winters, he loves the tidewaters and mountains of Virginia, and is gradually being turned into a bluegrass fan.  Someday he will jump in his car and take Route 52 back home to MN and write a song about his experience on the road.

Raised in historic Chester County, Pennsylvania, CJ completed his Bachelors of Arts in Atlantic history from Duke University in 2002.  His time in North Carolina also reinforced his interests in both barbecue and business. Following a three year stint with the Comcast Corporation, CJ returned to the ivory tower for the polishing of his demonstrative skills. His tenure in major market television advertising fused his passion for business with his ardor for history.  His research interests revolve around consumerism, social rituals, the objects inhernetly necessary for them, conspicuous consumption, and material displays of wealth in the eighteenth-century British Atlantic world.  Forging archival research generated through the York County Records Project and artifacts fresh from Williamsburg's infamous sandy loam, his thesis examines the material displays and ritual use of home furnishings of three artisan families in Williamsburg between 1725 and 1763.  Using this combination of knowledge sources, he argues that inventories and trash pits can show us how families presented themselves to their own and to others through social rituals. Now back in the private sector, CJ operates three consumer shows for dmg world media, the world's largest exhibition company and a subsidiary of the Daily Mail Group, a struggling British publishing conglomerate.  His master's thesis often functions as a release from the inanity of the workplace.

was born and raised in the friendly confines of Middletown, Connecticut.  In 2001 he received his B.A. in history from Carleton College, located in the decidedly more arctic confines of Northfield, Minnesota.  There he wrote his senior thesis on the breakdown of parietal social rules on the Carleton campus in the late 1960s.  While in Northfield, he also met his wife, a next-door neighbor in his freshman dormitory who was improbably swept off her feet by the awkward courtship skills of a budding academic.  For several years after his undergraduate years, he worked as a research coordinator for the Columbia University School of Social Work's doctoral program.  Now entering his fourth year at William and Mary, Jason has served as a teaching assistant for both the Western Civilization survey course and the introductory survey to U.S. history.  He also completed an editorial apprenticeship at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture.  His research interests include American Indian history and the commercialization of Indian folkways during the early national period, as well as the history of American higher education.  Jason's master's thesis, "Rise of the 'Indian' Doctors: Charity Shaw and the Marketing of Indian Medicine," charts the development of the American industry in purportedly "Indian" patent medicines during the first decades of the nineteenth century.  He will be teaching History 121, United States History to 1877, in Fall 2007. Jason and his wife currently reside in Williamsburg with their lively standard poodle, Daisy.



    As the current president of the History Graduate Student Association, Jason graciously welcomes all new and prospective students to contact him with their queries concerning the William and Mary program.  He could do no less for the patient soul that actually read this page all the way down to its final entry.