History Graduate Student Association
HGSA Agenda Committee Members
Laura Arata
Graduate Studies Representative
HGSA President
I am a Ph.D. candidate in the public history program, studying with Dr. Robert Bauman. My research interests center around Virginia City, Montana, a remarkably well preserved nineteenth century mining town that hosted many of the characters made famous as hallmarks of the American West—including Buffalo Bill and Calamity Jane. Using the life of a former slave named Sarah Bickford, I am unraveling how race, gender, and material culture influenced and were influenced by the legendary myths of the West that still characterize this region. My article on Virginia City, "Beyond the 'Mongolian Muddle': Reconsidering Virginia City, Montana's China War of 1881," was recently published in Montana: The Magazine of Western History. I am honored to serve as HGSA president and look forward to working with both graduate students and faculty to make this the best year it can be. When not reading, writing, or editing something, I enjoy playing guitar, singing, cooking, coffee, and discovering rural Washington in my really, really big truck.
Michelle Winmill
Ph.D. Representative
HGSA Vice President
I am a second-year Ph.D. student focusing on urban history and the application of spatial analysis to historical study. I earned my B.A. in history from Idaho State University, where I also completed an M.A. in historical resources management. I am the Ph.D. representative for HGSA, and in this role I hope to be a point of contact for any graduate students with questions, concerns, or suggestions that we in HGSA could address.
Dulce Kersting
Colloquium Representative
HGSA Secretary
Dulce is in her second year of graduate school, and she is pursuing an M.A. in public history. Dulce hails from central Iowa and completed her undergraduate work at Linfield College in McMinnville, Oregon. Her research interests include U.S. West and environmental topics, and her thesis will focus on the experiences of open range era cowboys. When not in the archives or classroom, Dulce enjoys hiking, listening to music, and cooking. As the HGSA colloquium representative, she is looking forward to an exciting year of professional development programming and providing a space for her colleagues to prepare for upcoming conferences and presentations.
Brett Bell
Faculty Representative
HGSA Treasurer
I am currently a second-year Ph.D. student in the history department. I completed my B.A. from the University of California at Davis and my M.A. from the University of Alabama. My general research interests are southern identity construction/culture in the antebellum period and early American ways of war. Currently, I am looking at southern opposition to the Mexican War.
Alex Marris
Master's Representative
Alex Marris is a second-year master's student. He is a lifetime resident of Washington state and received his B.A. from the Evergreen State College. Alex is currently writing a thesis about the Sikh immigrant nationalist movement in the United States at the turn of the twentieth century, exploring how the United States government reacted to the presence of this movement during the First World War after Sikh nationalism became involved in the military strategies of the German and British Empires. He is the master's student representative within the HGSA in charge of keeping the channels of communication open between M.A. students and their student government.
Sikang Song
GPSA Representative
My name is Sikang Song and I am currently 3rd year PhD student in the Department of History. In general, my academic interests include Modern China, World, and Environmental History. Specifically, having grown up in the Northern China, my research will focus on the establishment of tobacco industry on the Northern China Plains during the early twentieth-century, led by American-based multinational tobacco companies, and how this historical process influenced this region economically, socially, and environmentally. As a GPSA representative, I will do my best to make sure that everyone is kept informed of news from the GPSA.
Dongjo Shin
GPSA Representative
Hi, my name is Dongjo Shin. I study modern Chinese history, working with Professor Wang. My research topic centers on Han Chinese nationalism as it was embodied during the Cultural Revolution. I am currently getting very interested in family history as a microcosm study of China–Korea relations during the stormy period of the first half of the twentieth century.
Hans-Petter Grav
Vancouver Representative
I am a second-year Ph.D. student focusing on U.S. race and ethnicity. I grew up in Norway, but earned my academic degrees in the United States. I did my M.A. at Montana State University, Bozeman, where I received the history department's Best Paper by an M.A. student award, in 2010, for a paper entitled "The First and the Sixth Pearl Harbor: Norwegian-American Identity at the Onset of World War II." In Pullman, I offered a poster presentation on "Bleached Dresses Only: The Absent Ethnic Dimension in the Vineland Irrigation Project" at the 2012 Academic Showcase. I also served as a student curator on this topic for MASC's exhibit "Vineland: Shaping Paradise – Lewiston–Clarkston Improvement Company Records, 1890–1920," which opened in April 2012. I recently published the paper "When the Beast Saved the Day and Yellow Jack Got Lost: The Story of General Butler and the Yellow Fever Epidemic That Never Took Place" in the spring 2012 issue of the Southern Historian. I am currently a GTA for the RCI program at the Vancouver campus, and I serve as the Vancouver HGSA representative.
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