Graduate Resources

The American Studies Alumni Research Fund at Saint Louis University offers financial support for research travel undertaken by current American Studies graduate students and undergraduate majors. This support is made possible in large part through the generosity of SLU American Studies alumni donors.

Grants totaling up to $1,000 per year, with a maximum per recipient of $500, are awarded. The department faculty reviews applications in the fall and in spring. Awards are made in the spring semester only if the fund has not been exhausted during the preceding fall semester's application cycle.

Preference is given to applications proposing research travel with a clear relationship to a significant requirement within the applicant's program of study (e.g. senior capstone project, M.A. thesis, pre-dissertation exploratory work, or Ph.D. dissertation research).

Application Deadlines

• October 1: Fall-semester award cycle
• February 1 Spring-semester award cycle

If a listed due date falls on a weekend or a University holiday, applications will instead be due on the University's next regular business day.

Applications are considered on a competitive basis. To apply, send the department chairperson a proposal containing:

• Your name and contact information
• The title of your research project, a brief abstract, and an explanation of the project's relationship to your trajectory through your American studies degree program
• Projected dates of travel
• The archive(s) you will visit or the other research activity requiring travel
• Which collections you expect to examine, or what other primary sources you expect to consult or collect, and an explanation of these sources' relevance to your project
• An itemized funding request, along with a basic budget showing cost estimates for travel, lodging and research expenses
• Travel expenses are on a reimbursement basis. Coordinate with the department administrative secretary before incurring any expenses for which you expect reimbursement. All funded travel must be completed within six months of your original application due date. Recipients must submit a one-page report to the department chairperson within one month of the completion of the funded travel.

Each year the University offers a limited number of 11-month dissertation fellowships for doctoral candidates whose work "demonstrates outstanding academic achievement and whose dissertation will significantly extend the body of knowledge within their discipline." Recipients are chosen by the Graduate Education Office on a competitive basis. Among other Graduate Education Office eligibility criteria, applicants must have completed the dissertation proposal process.

Every SLU department may put forward two nominees for this annual award. Eligible American studies doctoral candidates wishing to be considered should express interest to a department faculty member in writing at least 14 days ahead of the Graduate Education Office's announced deadline. They should also furnish the department faculty with draft versions of the documents required of nominees by that office, though such documents need not be the final versions that would accompany an eventual nomination packet. 

American studies faculty will select the department's two annual nominees from among those eligible doctoral candidates who express interest and provide the requisite documents in a timely fashion. The department's selection criteria include promise, creativity and rigor of the dissertation project and the nature of the research or writing progress made thus far. However, faculty may also take into account relevant factors unrelated to the quality of the student's dissertation work; particularly, the Graduate Education Office's stated policy that students who have formally proposed during the preceding two semesters will be given preference during the University selection process.

Learn More About the Dissertation Fellowship

In addition to graduate assistantships as assigned by Department of American Studies, Saint Louis University awards several fellowships on a competitive basis: the Dissertation Fellowship, Diversity Fellowship and the Presidential Fellowship.

Learn More About Graduate Fellowships at SLU

Alan Blair

"Super Sonics: Audio Technologies and American Culture in a New Millennium"
Adviser: Emily Lutenski

Kate Boudreau

"You're Too Smart for That! Federal Education Legislation and the Changing Image of the Public High School Teacher in American Culture and Society, 1944–2001"
Adviser: Benjamin Looker 

Adam W. Kloppe

"Orientalism in U.S. Children's Culture, 1898–1989"
Adviser: Emily Lutenski

Mark A. Koschmann

"Religion in the Midst of Change and Urban Upheaval on Chicago's Near West Side, 1945–1970"
Adviser: Heidi Ardizzone

Susan Lee

"Nationalizing the Frontier: The American Western's Impact on Twentieth-Century Gauchesque Literature and Film"
Adviser: Emily Lutenski

Eva Navarijo

"Building (Bay) Bridges: A History of Pan-ethnic Student Activism and the Third World Liberation Front in the California Bay Area, 1968–1999"
Adviser: Emily Lutenski

Nicholas Porter

"The Significance and Symbolism of Wrestling in and across the American Cultural Landscape, 1877–1920"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

Anna E. Schmidt

"American Poetry as a Transcultural Spiritual Practice, 1960–Present"
Adviser: Emily Lutenski

Karen Smyth

"The Errand of Angels: Feminism, Gender, and Sexuality in the Mormon Church, 1978–2014"
Adviser: Kate Moran

Cathryn Stout

"A Mighty Hard Row: Racism and Resistance in the Postwar British Caribbean and U.S. South"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

Sabrina Davis

"Adapting Identity: Jewish American Narratives from the Page to the Screen"
Adviser: Heidi Ardizzone

Trevin J. Jones

"African American Prison Writers: Masculinity, Identity, and Spirituality"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

Melissa Ford

"A Bible in One Hand, a Brick in the Other: African American Working Women and Midwestern Black Radicalism during the Great Depression, 1929–1935"
Adviser: Heidi Ardizzone

Lou W. Robinson

"White Women, Race, and Rape: Narratives of Mob Violence in the Midwest, 1880–1930"
Adviser: Heidi Ardizzone

Maurice Tracy

"Seeing Unseeable Things: Blackness, Queerness, and Homonormativity in U.S. Popular Culture, 1989–2016"
Adviser: Emily Lutenski

Brandy C. Boyd

"Keep Your Chin Up and Your Skirt Down': Female Country Artists' Struggles for Respectability within the Nashville Music Industry, 1952–Present"
Adviser: Benjamin Looker

Nicole Haggard

"Race, Sex, and Hollywood: The Illicit Representation of the Black Man–White Woman Pair in American Cinema"
Adviser: Heidi Ardizzone

Laura A. Shields

"Fighting for Animal Rights: A U.S. History, 1900–1996"
Adviser: Cindy Ott

Corinne Mary Wohlford

"Putting Government in Its Place: Cultural Racism, Sentiment, and Neoliberalism in Contemporary U.S. Responses to Natural Disasters Abroad"
Adviser: Heidi Ardizzone

Brian W. Greening

"Representing New Orleans: Race, Space, and the Spectacle of Progress in the Crescent City since 1965"
Adviser: Benjamin Looker

Rebecca Preiss Odom

"Negotiating Hyphenated Identities: Transnational Identity Formation of the German-American Residents of St. Charles, Missouri, during World War I"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

Alexander Bayard Clark, III

"Forgotten Eyewitnesses: English Women Travel Writers and the Economic Development of America's Antebellum West"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

Jaclyn H. Kirouac-Fram

"Yellow Rolling Cell Blocks': The Urban Bus and Race in the United States"
Adviser: Benjamin Looker

Robert L. Hawkins, IV

"Natural Born Ease Man?: Work, Masculinity, and the Itinerant Black Musician"
Adviser: Jonathan C. Smith
Winner of the 2011 ASA Ralph Henry Gabriel Dissertation Prize

Joshua M. Roiland

"Engaging the Public: Toward a Political Theory of Literary Journalism"
Adviser: Jonathan C. Smith

Jody L. Sowell

"Divided Discourse: The Kerner Report & Stories of Separate and Unequal"
Adviser: Jonathan C. Smith

Jamie Schmidt Wagman

"Our Pill, Ourselves: American Anxieties Surrounding Oral Contraception, 1956–2000"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

Robert Pittman

"The St. Louis Movement in Education: Public Education Reform in the Gilded Age"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

David J. Suwalsky

"North of Yankee Country': Antebellus Kansas and the Missourians of the Platte Purchase County"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

Gregory F. Taylor

"Picturing the Enemy: The Use of Visual Metaphors in Photography of the Japanese American Immigrant"
Adviser: Wynne W. Moskop

Richard D. Marshall

"The Grapes of Wrath': John Steinbeck's Cognitive Landscapes as Commentary on 1930s Industrialization"
Adviser: Cindy Ott

Henry T. Brownlee

"Keeping Their Memory Green: The Pleasant Green Baptist Church in St. Louis, 1866–1950"
Adviser: Jonathan C. Smith

Angela K. Dietz

"Spectacles of Labor: Visualizing a Nation at Work, 1850–1920"
Adviser: Jonathan C. Smith

Robin A. Hanson

"The National Cemetery: Race and Sectional Reconciliation in a Contested Landscape"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

Patricia Checkett Rooney

"Re-presenting WWII, Reviving Neo-classicism, Reaffirming Super Power in a Post–9/11 Era: The Anomalous 2004 American National World War II Memorial"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

Elizabeth Schroeder

"The Chicago Black Renaissance: Exercises in Aesthetic Ideology and Cultural Geography in Bronzeville, 1932–1945"
Adviser: Jonathan C. Smith

Alicja K. Syska

"Eastern Europe in the Making of American National Identity"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

Kimberly M. Curtis

"Black Consciousness is the Cornerstone of Liberation: The Black Arts Movement in African American Literature and Visual Culture, 1966–1976"
Adviser: Shawn Michelle Smith

Sharon E. Grimes

"Women in the Studios of Men: Gender, Architectural Practice, and the Careers of Sophia Hayden Bennett and Marion Mahony Griffin, 1870–1960"
Adviser: Joseph Heathcott

John Hensley

"Dreadful People: Historical Representations of Ozark Folks"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

Diana F. Pascoe-Chavez

"Pragmatism and the Frontier Narrative in 'It Is': A Magazine for Abstract Art"
Adviser: Joseph Heathcott

Charles (Rob) Wilson

"The Disease of Fear and the Fear of Disease: Cholera and Yellow Fever in the Mississippi Valley"
Adviser: Candy Brown

Ying Ye

"Black Initiative in Black Education prior to and during the Civil War"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

John I. Kille

"Re-mediating Racial History: Representations and Interpretations of the Amistad Incident (1839–1842) in the 20th Century Texts"
Adviser: Jonathan C. Smith

David R. McFarland

"Virtuous Yeoman or Ignorant Farmer? Rhetorical Ambivalence in the Illinois Agrarian Reform Movement 1840–1860"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

Jennifer A. Price

"Middling Desires: P.T. Barnum and the Visual Culture of the American Middle Class, 1840–1865"
Adviser: Shawn Michelle Smith

Rhonda J. Armstrong

"Rural Women and Cultural Conflict in Contemporary American Literature"
Adviser: Shawn Michelle Smith

Valerie Padilla Carroll

"Re-presenting and Representing on Girl Power TV: Examining Portrayals of Resistance and Domination from Dark Angel, Charmed, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer"
Adviser: Kathryn Kuhn

Teresa B. Holden

"Earnest Women Can Do Anything': The Public Career of Josephine St. Pierre Ruffin, 1842–1904"
Adviser: Wynne W. Moskop

Kristine R. Smith

"Following Buster Brown's Footsteps: Leading Families into the Middle-Class Consumer Society"
Adviser: Joseph Heathcott

Burton St. John III

"The Trail of Tension Between Public Relations and Journalism: The Unfinished Business About Using Propaganda to Move Crowds"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini 

Stephen A. Gibson

"How Green is Hollywood? Nature and Environmentalism in American Cinema, 1970–2002"
Adviser: Shirley M. Loui

Bryan M. Jack

"Bridging the Red Sea: The Saint Louis African-American Community and the Exodusters of 1879"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

Eileen R. Solomon

"Kosher in the United States: An Examination of American-Jewish Adaptation"
Adviser: Elizabeth Kolmer 

John Glen

"How Shall We Remember Them?': Pearl Harbor in Private, Public, and Historic Memory"
Adviser: Shirley M. Loui

Victoria York

"Defining Moments: Narratives of the 1834 Burning of Mount Benedict"
Adviser: Shirley M. Loui

Kent B. Bunting

"The Koan of Seiwa En: History and Meaning in the Japanese Garden at the Missouri Botanical Garden"
Adviser: Matthew J. Mancini

George R. Carson

"Teen Challenge and the Development of Social Concern Ministries in the Assemblies of God"
Adviser: Elizabeth Kolmer

Miriam E. Joseph

"Perceived Cultural Influences on Generativity Identified by Childless Women"
Adviser: James H. Korn

Robert M. Lee

"Henry Adams and the Construction of Intellectual Unity"
Adviser: Lawrence F. Barmann

James P. Dohle

"JROTC: A Study of Two St. Louis Schools"
Adviser: Wynne W. Moskop

Jane F. Ferry

"Flavors of Culture: A Semiotic Reading of Food in Film"
Adviser: Kathryn Kuhn

Christine F. Harper

"The Water Wizard: John F. Wixford and the Purification of the St. Louis Water Supply in 1904"
Adviser: Shirley M. Loui

Carole L. Knight

"Survival of the Forest: The Evolution of Forest Park as a Reflection of the Social and Cultural Dynamics of St. Louis"
Adviser: Shirley M. Loui

Mark H. Kruger

"The Influence of the 1960's Countercultural Values of Individualism, Anti-materialism, and Community on a Contemporary Intentional Community"
Adviser: Elizabeth Kolmer

Rodney G. Stephens

"Richard Harding Davis and American Culture"
Adviser: Elizabeth Kolmer

Mary D. Blixen

"David Rowland Francis: Missourian and Progressive Public Servant"
Adviser: Lawrence F. Barmann

Regina M. Faden

"The German St. Vincent Orphan Home: The Institution and its Role in the Immigrant German Catholic Community of St. Louis 1850–1900"
Adviser: Elizabeth Kolmer

Patricia L. Gregory

"Women's Experience of Reading in St. Louis Book Clubs"
Adviser: John J. Pauly

Loftin Woodiel

"William C. Quantrill: Deviant or Hero?"
Adviser: John J. Pauly

Kamau Kemayó

"An Afrocentric Critical Theory and Its Application to Three African American Novels"
Adviser: Elizabeth Kolmer

Maureen Murphy

"Daughters of Sam Spade: The American Private Eye"
Adviser: Kathryn Kuhn

Thomas C. Barnett

"A Utopian-Mythopoesis Reading of American Puritan Jeremiads: A Reclassification of Selected Seventeenth Century New England Pulpit Literature"
Adviser: Shirley M. Loui

Brian R. Hohlt

"Laws of the Lord': The Political World of Peter Cartwright, 1824–1848"
Adviser: Mark E. Neely, Jr.

Jane Marie Holwerda

"Family and Social Class in Selected Novels of Edith Wharton and Theodore Dreiser"
Adviser: Elizabeth Kolmer

Alice C. Warren

"The Junior College District of St. Louis–St. Louis County, Missouri under the Leadership of Joseph P. Cosand, 1962–1971: A Study of the Impact of the Post–World War II Milieu on Policies That Shaped the Institution"
Adviser: Lawrence F. Barmann

Valerie J. Yancey

"Attending the Dying: William James, a Resource for Medical Ethics at End-of-Life"
Adviser: Belden C. Lane 

Michael L. Banks

"George S. Kaufman: American Social Critic on Stage"
Adviser: Thomas R. Knipp

Dawn L. Elmore-McCrary

"Culture in the Basic Writing Classroom"
Adviser: Buford E. Farris, Jr.

F. Terry Norris

"The Illinois Country, Lost and Found: Assessment of the Archaeological Remains of French Settlements in the Central Mississippi River Valley, 1673–1763"
Adviser: Elizabeth Kolmer

Paul D. Nygard

"Man of Maine: A Life of Robert P. Tristram Coffin"
Adviser: Lawrence F. Barmann

Timothy D. Uhl

"The Naming of St. Louis Catholic Parishes"
Adviser: James T. Fisher

Matthew S. Warshauer

"Andrew Jackson and the Politics of Martial Law"
Adviser: Mark E. Neely, Jr.

• Elizabeth Schroeder Schlabach (Ph.D. 2008), Along the Streets of Bronzeville: Black Chicago's Literary Landscape (Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2013).
• Burton St. John III (Ph.D. 2005), Press Professionalization and Propaganda: The Rise of Journalistic Double-mindedness, 1917–1941 (Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2010).
• Bryan M. Jack (Ph.D. 2004), The St. Louis African American Community and the Exodusters (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2007).
• Jane Ferry (Ph.D. 2001), Food in Film: A Culinary Performance of Communication (New York: Routledge, 2003).
• Matthew Warshauer (Ph.D. 1997), Andrew Jackson and the Politics of Martial Law: Nationalism, Civil Liberties, and Partisanship (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006).
• Kamau Kemayó (Ph.D. 1999), Emerging Afrikan Survivals: An Afrocentric Critical Theory (New York: Routledge, 2003).
• Michael J. Steiner (Ph.D. 1994), A Study of the Intellectual and Material Culture of Death in Nineteenth-Century America (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2003).
• Jeannette Batz Cooperman (Ph.D. 1996), The Broom Closet: Secret Meanings of Domesticity in Postfeminist Novels by Louise Erdrich, Mary Gordon, Toni Morrison, Marge Piercy, Jane Smiley, and Amy Tan (New York: Peter Lang, 1999).
• Kenneth C. Kaufman (Ph.D. 1996), Dred Scott's Advocate: A Biography of Roswell M. Field (Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1996). Winner of the 1997 Missouri History Book Award.
• Mary E. Young (Ph.D. 1990), Mules and Dragons: Popular Culture Images in the Selected Writings of African-American and Chinese-American Women Writers (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1993).
• W. Arthur Mehrhoff (Ph.D. 1986), The Gateway Arch: Fact and Symbol (Bowling Green, OH: Bowling Green State University Press, 1992).
• Milton S. Katz (Ph.D. 1973), Ban The Bomb: A History of SANE, the Committee for a Sane Nuclear Policy, 1957–1985 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986).
• Luther E. Smith, Jr. (Ph.D. 1979), Howard Thurman: The Mystic as Prophet(Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1981; repr. 2007).
• Roger Whitlow (Ph.D. 1975), The Darker Vision: A Socio-critical History of 19th Century Fiction Written by Black Americans (New York: Gordon Press, 1977).