This award is given to incoming students or current students who have exhibited exemplary academic achievement

Current Recipients:

Paulina Rodriguez

Paulina is a doctoral candidate in History and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, pursuing minors in Latina/o Studies and Kinesiology. She is currently writing a dissertation titled, “Deportistas! Mexican American Women, Sporting Citizenship, and Belonging in the Twentieth Century,” which recovers the overlooked history of Mexican American women athletes and demonstrates the meaning of their athletic participation for understanding American history, borderlands, the American West, and citizenship. Paulina has taught courses in Latina/o Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and led workshops on oral history for members of the Penn State community. Additionally, she serves as a grad student coordinator for Em-Hoc in the Department of History.

Heather Walser

Heather Carlquist Walser is a doctoral candidate studying the intersection of United States politics, culture, and law in the 100 years following the Constitutional Convention. Her project, “Amnesty’s Origins: Federal Power, Peace, and the Public Good in the Long Civil War Era,” explores the roots of the amnesty crisis which occurred at the conclusion of the American Civil War. It examines how Americans understood and used amnesty—or the pardon and oblivion of past acts granted by a government—to resolve conflict, negotiate the meaning of “public good,” and shape the development of the nation-state across the long nineteenth century. Her work has been funded by the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, the Kansas Historical Society, and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. She is currently a Fellow at the Center for Democratic Deliberation within The McCourtney Institute for Democracy. 

This award is given to recognize outstanding graduate students who are a candidate for a graduate degree in History

Current Recipients:

Ugyan Choedup

Ugyan is a fourth-year History doctoral candidate in China subfield. Born and raised as Tibetan refugee in northern India, he has a master’s degree in political science from Panjab University in India, and a master of philosophy degree in China studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University in India. His doctoral dissertation is titled “History of Modern Exile Tibetan Nationalist Thought: Tibet’s Forgotten Past and Alternative Nationalist Imaginations (1940s–1980s).”

Current Recipients:

Carolyn Levy

Carolyn Levy is a dual-title doctoral candidate in History and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies working under the guidance of Dr. Lori Ginzberg. Her dissertation, “Benevolent Surveillance: Prison Matrons and Women’s Prison Reform in Nineteenth-Century America,” focuses on the influence of women’s prison reform on the carceral system in the United States. She has received fellowships from the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College and the Library Company of Philadelphia and Historical Society of Pennsylvania in support of her research.

Megan Kessler Hildebrand

Megan is a fifth-year doctoral candidate in U.S. History and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Her dissertation considers the relationship between women’s reform and Christian egalitarianism in the early Woman’s Christian Temperance Union.

This award is given to enrich the College of the Liberal Arts by providing monies for support of graduate research and/or travel expenses related to research in the Department of History

Current Recipients:

Tashi Namgyal

Tashi Namgyal is a doctoral student in the Department of History at Penn State. He holds a master of arts degree in international affairs from The George Washington University and a bachelor of arts degree in journalism from University of Madras. Tashi’s research interests broadly center on late imperial and modern history of China within the framework of multiculturalism and borderland administration.

Richard Yoder

Rick is a second-year doctoral student in the early modern global area. His work focuses on the history of French Jansenism, Catholic missions, and the supernatural in the early modern world; he has also written on Catholicism and gender in the same period. Recently, he received two awards from the History Graduate Student Association for his papers “Hysterical Knowledge: Gender, Miracles, and Authority at Saint-Médard,” and “Holy Entanglements: The Recent Historiography of Jesuit Accommodation in South India.”

Current Recipients:

Moyra Schauffler

Moyra is a first-year doctoral student studying the nineteenth-century United States. Her research focuses on veterans’ welfare, including institutional care, prosthetic device programs, and pensions. Central to her interests are considering the organization and construction of spaces dedicated to care and objects related to veterans and disability. Before coming to Penn State, Moyra earned a master of arts degree in history from Villanova University and a bachelor of arts degree in international studies from Dickinson College. In addition to being affiliated with the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center, Moyra is also a Center for Black Digital Research Fellow.

Jamie Henton

Jamie Henton is a second-year doctoral student working with Dr. Christina Snyder. Jamie received her master’s degree in history and certification in public history at The University of Southern Mississippi in 2018. Influenced by her mixed heritage, Jamie’s research interests include race relations between African Americans and Native Americans in the Twentieth-Century U.S. South, Native American experiences with Jim Crow and the Civil Rights Movement, issues of blood quantum and mixed-blood experiences in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and Federal Indian education policy in the mid- to late-twentieth century.

Current Recipients:

Xiangyi Liu

Xiangyi is a second-year doctoral student in early modern global history. Her research focuses on French Jesuit missionaries in the eighteenth century, their scientific missions, and the cultural encounters between France and China during the same period. She is interested in the global circulation of science and technology, as well as the production of knowledge during the Enlightenment.

Matthew Douthitt

Matthew is a historian of early-twentieth-century China, specializing in the history of religion. His research focuses on popular Christianity and so-called “secret societies” and their interactions with the state. Prior to attending Penn State, he taught as an adjunct instructor for three years. A firm believer that education is a driving force of social change, Douthitt is particularly interested in expanding educational opportunities to incarcerated people.

Current Recipients:

Scott Doebler

Scott is a fifth-year Latin Americanist studying with Matthew Restall and Martha Few. He has a bachelor’s degree
from Gustavus Adolphus College, and master’s degrees in education from Valparaiso University and history from
Penn State. His dissertation is a social and environmental history of southern Yucatán and northern Guatemala
during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, with a tentative working title of “Connected Forests: Spanish,
English, and Maya Commodity Ecologies in Southern Yucatán and Northern Guatemala, 1517–1717″

Hayden Lamphere

Hayden Lamphere is a graduate student in the Department of History at Penn State and joined the Center for
Black Digital Research as a research scholar in the fall of 2020. She has a bachelor of arts degree from Beloit
College, where she studied history and museum studies. Hayden is interested in studying twentieth-century U.S. Black female activism and organizing.

Norma Watson

Norma is a graduate student studying Latin American History with a dual-title in African American Studies. Her
subfields are race and transnationalism. Norma received a bachelor of arts degree in Spanish studies from
Dominican University. Before coming to study at Penn State, Norma worked as a Spanish and English as a second language teacher for grades K–12. Norma’s research centers anti-Blackness in education systems and curriculum requirements in Brazil, Cuba, and the United States, providing theoretical pedagogy to combat racism rooted in education.

Current Recipients:

Heather Walser

Heather Carlquist Walser is a doctoral candidate studying the intersection of United States politics, culture, and law in the 100 years following the Constitutional Convention. Her project, “Amnesty’s Origins: Federal Power, Peace, and the Public Good in the Long Civil War Era,” explores the roots of the amnesty crisis which occurred at the conclusion of the American Civil War. It examines how Americans understood and used amnesty—or the pardon and oblivion of past acts granted by a government—to resolve conflict, negotiate the meaning of “public good,” and shape the development of the nation-state across the long nineteenth century. Her work has been funded by the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies, the Kansas Historical Society, and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. She is currently a Fellow at the Center for Democratic Deliberation within The McCourtney Institute for Democracy.

In 2002, Ann and George Richards made an outstanding contribution to the Civil War Era Center that has enabled it to permanently fund faculty and graduate student research as well as public programming. The University named the Center in honor of their generosity. In January of 2013, Ann passed away, and in her memory the Ann Richards Paper Competition Award was created to celebrate the best work that our graduate students have to offer. The award comes with an honorarium that serves as an enduring tribute to Ann’s passion for education and scholarship.

Current Recipients:

Best ABD- Research Category

First Place: Frank Lacopo

Second Place: Seonghek Kang

Best Historiography Category

First Place: Zac Clark and Rick Yoder

Best Pre-ABD Research Category

First Place: Rick Yoder

Second Place: Steven Casement