Personal Statement:

My research examines how America’s conflicts with the Barbary States (Algiers, Morocco, Tripoli, and Tunis) from 1784-1815 shaped the development of the U.S. political party system, ideas about gender and race, and nationalism.

Diplomatic History, the flagship academic journal of U.S. foreign relations, published my article about the controversial visit of Tunisian Ambassador Sidi Soliman Mellimelli to the United States during Thomas Jefferson’s presidency:  “‘As Proud as Lucifer’:  A Tunisian Diplomat in Thomas Jefferson’s America,” Diplomatic History 41, no. 1 (January 2017), 155-182.

I presented research papers at the annual conferences of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) and the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR) and was interviewed by the French edition of Slate magazine:  http://www.slate.fr/story/163187/trump-jefferson-histoire-premier-ramadan-etats-unis.

In 2015, the UCSB History Department honored me with the DeConde/Burns Prize for the best History graduate student in U.S. foreign relations.  In 2014, I won the Wilbur Jacobs Prize for the best History graduate student in colonial, Native American or frontier studies.

Dissertation Title:"The United States and the Barbary Pirates: Adventures in Sexuality, State-Building, and Nationalism, 1784-1815"Faculty Advisor(s):Patricia Cohen, John Majewski, Salim Yaqub, Mhoze Chikowero