Your Clem History Writing Center Consultants

The consultants for the 2024-2025 Academic Year are Tim Case, Thalia Chryanthis, Jen Motter and Peighton Young

We are advanced Ph.D. Candidates in the William & Mary History Department. We are very familiar with history research and writing and are prepared to help you with any type of history writing assignment. We look forward to meeting you!  

We look forward to meeting you! Learn more about us below:

Tim Case

Tim Case is a 6th year PhD candidate at the College of William and Mary. Tim has M.A. degrees in History from San Jose State University and William and Mary and an M.A. in Educational Leadership from Santa Clara University. His research interests include the memory of the Civil War and emancipation with a specific focus on the intersection of race and space in the post-war South. He is particularly interested in late nineteenth and early twentieth century commemorative traditions and the role of educational institutions and cemeteries as landscapes of memory and sites of contestation and politics. His research has earned commendation, including the Southern Historical Association’s William F. Holmes Award. Prior to pursuing his PhD, Case was a high school history teacher and administrator for fifteen years.

Thalia Chrysanthis

Thalia Chrysanthis is a sixth year, History PhD candidate at W&M. She previously completed her M.A. at William and Mary in 2021, and she received her B.A. with Highest Honors in 2018 from the University of Michigan, majoring in History with a Creative Writing minor. She earned the Stephen J. Tonsor History of Ideas Award for her undergraduate thesis on the Ninth Amendment in the Supreme Court’s birth control cases of the 1960s and ‘70s. Since she’s been at William & Mary, she has served as an apprentice in the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, as a TA for Global History, and as a TA for the history of Witch Hunting in Early Modern Europe. In Fall 2023, she taught the course History 121: American History to 1877.

 Thalia’s interests include U.S. legal history, histories of women and gender(s), and how these intersect at moments of social and cultural change throughout U.S. history. Currently, Thalia is working on her dissertation that examines women and other female-assigned soldiers of the U.S. Civil War era armies.

 In her spare time, Thalia enjoys reading epic fantasy.

 or Thalia, the best part of the writing process is analyzing primary sources, and explaining why the words of people in the past are important for us to notice and understand.

Jen Motter

Jennifer received her BA from the University of Pittsburgh where her undergraduate thesis used the papers of Jeremias and Maria van Rensselaer to examine the interplay of authority and gender in Dutch New Netherland on the eve of the English takeover in 1664. Following graduation, she studied the Dutch language at Leiden University and went on to get her Master’s degree in History from William & Mary in 2020. Her research portfolio explored the role of knowledge in the commodification of salt from the Dutch ABC islands (Aruba, Bonaire, Curaçao) and questioned the nature of the broader Dutch Atlantic empire.

Jennifer is currently a fourth-year PhD candidate in the History Department at William & Mary. Her dissertation, tentatively titled “Knowledge and Commodification in the Early Modern Dutch Atlantic,” examines how individuals working with the West-Indische Compagnie (WIC) used environmental, tacit, and mercantile knowledge in the commodification of natural resources in the Dutch ABC islands and New Netherland. Her research uses a History of Knowledge approach to investigate how WIC directors, councilmen, employees, and enslaved laborers acquired knowledge, put various forms of expertise to use for commercial purposes, and distributed the information required for these practices.

Fun Fact: Prefers Wawa over Sheetz.
Jen's favorite part of the writing process is coming up with a clever title.

Peighton Young

Peighton Young graduated from Virginia Commonwealth University with a B.A. in Art History in 2017, earned their M.A. in History from the same institution in 2020, and received their second M.A. in History from the College of William & Mary in 2021. Peighton has been a professional public historian and genealogist for seven years, working with historical sites and African American communities located throughout the state of Virginia. Their research and professional interests include the history of the African American experience, American media culture, American politics, genealogy, spatial and community social histories, memory studies, and public historical education. Peighton is currently working on their dissertation, which seeks to illustrate the importance of music within specific African American communities that were located in different parts of the eastern and midwestern United States between 1880 and 1920.

Fun Fact: I own about 800 vinyl records.

Best Writing Tip: Outlines are your best friend! Outline each section of your essay, research paper, or project in order to identify how you want to organize the information you need to cover.