In the Spotlight Archive:
History PhD Candidate, José Baeza-Zúñiga, was accepted from a highly competitive pool to participate in the Mark Claster Mamolen Dissertation Workshop at Harvard University in May. This fully-funded workshop is hosted by the Afro-Latin American Research Institute and will provide an intellectual space for discussing a chapter from his dissertation in progress, "A Far-Reaching Diaspora: The Routes of Blackness Across Twentieth Century Chile, 1960-1990."
Congratulations to Professor Shobana Shankar, who was recently elected to the Board of the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora, the premier international scholarly organization for researchers, educators, practitioners, and those seeking further understanding of Africa and the African diaspora. ASWAD has strong representation from the humanities and social sciences and increasing engagement with STEM disciplines, medicine, public health, information science, and museum studies. Learn more about ASWAD.
History major Sheila Argueta led an exceptional discussion on Colonial American material culture and the representation of women's bodies at the Long Island Museum Carriage Hall. 120 people attended the event and participated in a lively Q&A session following the talk and a documentary. Congratulations, and thank you to all who participated!
Megan Knighton (PhD Student) has recently spearheaded an effort with the Lloyd Sealy Library Special Collections at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and The Fortune Society, a non-profit that supports the formerly incarcerated, to make available a series of oral historiesshe conducted with New York City criminal justice advocates. This involved support for the creation of a finding aid for The Fortune Society's manuscript collection and an expansion of the Sealy Library's digital collections. Knighton received the Barbara Swartz Endowed Research, Travel, and Professional Development Award from the History Department to preserve and present her oral history research, which was then featured at the 2025 Oral History Association Annual Meeting in Atlanta.
Professor Emerita Brooke Larson was recently recognized for her book, The Lettered Indian: Race, Nation, and Indigenous Education in Twentieth-Century Bolivia (Duke University Press, 2024). The Conference on Latin American History (CLAH), which is the leading organization for U.S.-based Latin American Historians, just announced that Brooke was a co-winner of the most prestigious Bolton-Johnson Prize, which will be conferred at the AHA Conference in Chicago in early 2026.
Please welcome our newest faculty to the History Department, Nurlan Kabdylkhak and Riga Shakya!
Congratulations to George Osei and Donal Thomas for being named by the College of Arts and Sciences (CAS) as IDEA Grads! They will receive specialized training from CAS and support for their amazing accomplishments!
Congratulations to our very own Tamara Fernando, named 2025 ACLS Fellow!
Congratulations to Huzaifa Dokaji (PhD candidate in African history) for being recognized as a "special educator who went above and beyond to encourage, inspire and students," according to a citation he has received from Stony Brook University's Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT).
Associate Professor Robert Chase was recently interviewed for Barcelona's El Punt Avui on the history of Alcatraz island prison. In "Alcatraz: Torna la Disputa" Chase discusses why Trump's declaration about reopening Alcatraz as a federal prison is an inefficient and costly proposal, and what it means for this culturally, symbolically, and historically important site to be mobilized as a symbol of "law and order" America under Trump.
Edward Guiliano '78 PhD Global Fellowship Programprovides students with the opportunity to broaden their perspectives by engaging with the world beyond Stony Brook University and their local communities. 2025 Recipients pictured; Huzaifa Dokaji, History Graduate Recipient & Chloe Maloy, History Undergraduate Recipient.
Debjani Chakrabarty (PhD student in South Asian history) has been awarded the Adrienne Arsht Internship in the Asian Art Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for Summer of 2025. As part of her internship, she is going to help prepare an exhibition on 19th-century religious chromo-lithographs from the Bengal Presidency. She is also hoping to use this experience to incorporate and analyze visual sources in her own dissertation.
A huge congratulations to Peter Joyce for being awarded the Chancellor's Award for Student Excellence, the highest-level of award offered in the SUNY system! Peter was a History/Political Science double major in the Honors College, and is now pursuing a Masters in Public Policy at Stony Brook. He has held leadership positions with College Democrats and the Model UN, Environmental Club and Debate Clubs, while also working in the Student Government. Congratulations!
Congratulations to Professor Lori Flores, whose book Awaiting Their Feast: Latinx Food Workers and Activism from World War II to COVID-19 has won the International Labor History Association's Book-of-the-Year Award for the best book of working-class history for 2024. In the words of the ILHA, "Flores has written a creatively conceptualized, rigorously researched, and broadly accessible study...[It] greatly enriches our understanding of the contemporary moment of danger for immigrant workers."
Andrés Acosta de la Cruz (PhD student in Latin American/US history) was accepted into the prestigious Dominican Studies Institute's summer research internship at City College in New York. He will use the opportunity to continue his research on Puerto Rican-Dominican relations.
Congratulations to PhD students Donal Thomas, recipient of the Graduate School's prestigious Alumni Association's Dean's Choice Award for Leadership, and Huzaifa Dokaji, who has been awarded the Edward Guiliano Global Fellowship in support of his thesis, "The Making of a Muslim Minority: Dissent, Gender, and Transnationalism in Nigeria's Emerging Shi'a Community, 1979–2015." The fellowship will support three weeks of archival research at the Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University.
Congratulations to Debjani Chakrabarty (PhD student, South Asian history) who has won a dissertation planning grant from the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies to carry out her project, “Vagrant Empire: Crime, Labor and Mobility in Colonial South Asia, 1830-1940.”
Professor Shobana Shankar recently published an essay, "The Indian Question in Afrocentric Politics," in a special issue of Public Culture commemorating the 50th anniversary of the expulsion of Asians from Uganda.
Professor Lori Flores' new book, Awaiting Their Feast: Latinx Food Workers and Activism from World War II to COVID-19, is hot off the press. Awaiting Their Feast traces how our dual appetite for Latinx food and Latinx food labor has evolved from the World War II era to the COVID-19 pandemic, using the US Northeast as an unexpected microcosm of this national history.
Congratulations to Professor Mohamad Ballan, who has been awarded the "Best Article in Critical Race Studies" Prize by the Medieval Academy of America for his recent article in the MAA flagship journal: "Borderland Anxieties: Lisān al-Dīn ibn al-Khaṭīb (d. 1374) and the Politics of Genealogy in Late Medieval Granada", Speculum 98, no. 2 (2023): 447-495.
Congratulations to history majors Beth Gatto and Jake Cavalli, who participated on a panel at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association this past January. The panel, "What Can You Do with Your Undergraduate Research? Examples from Undergraduate History Journals and Community Engagement Projects" offered a chance for Beth and Jake to showcase the student-run publication, Stony Brook Undergraduate History Journal.
Jocelyn Zimmerman, who earned her PhD in December 2023 and is an historian of European empires, has landed a tenure-track job in Early Modern European History at Butler University as well as fellowships with the Royal Historical Society and Leibniz Institute of European History.
José Baez-Zúñiga (PhD candidate in Latin American History) will be presenting a paper at the upcoming Organization of American Historians conference in Chicago in April. His paper, "Shaping Blackness at the Diaspora's Peripheries: Black Hemispheric Migration in Chile, 1950-1989," which draws upon his dissertation, is part of the panel "The (Latin) American Dream: African American Immigration to Latin America in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.
On Friday, January 31st, Professor Shobana Shankar is giving a keynote for the Black Diversities seminar organized by South Carolina State University and the University of West Indies. This virtual seminar highlights the diversity within the Black experience with a focus on cultural and political solidarities, and social histories.
Rachel Otheguy’s (PhD ’16) first book, Black Freedom and Education in Nineteenth-Century Cuba is being published in January of 2025 by the University of Florida Press. In this book, Raquel Otheguy argues that Afro-descended teachers and activists were central to the development of a national education system in Cuba.
Juan Pablo Artinian (PhD, 2013) was awarded a diploma by the City of Buenos Aires, for this book Genocidio y Resistencia: Destrucción de los armenios por el Imperio Otomano y la búsqueda de la justicia, declaring the book of interest for the city's culture and social communication.
Nicolas Allen, PhD candidate in Latin American History, has won the Samuel Flagg Bemis Dissertation Research Grant from the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) for his project, “The Master’s Voice: The US Recording Industry in Vargas-Era Brazil (1930-1950)." He will use this funding to carry out research in Brazil next summer.
Congratulations to Ricky Tomczak (PhD '21) for the publication of his first book, available February 2025. Ricky has also been selected to speak at the 250th Anniversary of Lexington and Concord! The event is hosted by the American Philosophical Society, David Center of the American Revolution, Concord Museum, and Massachusetts Historical Society.