yale phd american studies

American Studies

For more than 75 years, American Studies at Yale has promoted scholarship on the cultures and politics of the United States. We emphasize the interdisciplinary study of history and culture, national identity, and the construction of local, indigenous, borderland, and diasporic communities.

American Studies offers a broad-ranging curriculum to introduce students to critical scholarship and methods from multiple disciplines.  The program has a national and international reputation for its faculty and graduates and its commitment to public humanities.

Jacinda Tran recent Ph.D. graduate co-authors piece in Time

PhD Alumna Tina Post Wins National Book Critics Award

Ned Blackhawk discusses key takeaways on WDET from his national-award-winning book and how growing up in Detroit influenced him to pursue a career in history

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Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Programs and Policies 2023–2024

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American Studies

Current edition: graduate archive . click to change..

Humanities Quadrangle, 203.432.1186 http://americanstudies.yale.edu M.A., M.Phil., Ph.D.

Chair Laura Barraclough (HQ 314, 203.432.1186)

Director of Graduate Studies Greta LaFleur (HQ 304, 203.432.1186)

Professors Jean-Christophe Agnew ( Emeritus ), Laura Barraclough, Ned Blackhawk, Daphne Brooks, Hazel Carby ( Emerita ), Michael Denning, Wai Chee Dimock ( Emerita ), Kathryn Dudley, John Mack Faragher ( Emeritus ), Roderick Ferguson, Glenda Gilmore ( Emerita ), Jacqueline Goldsby, Inderpal Grewal ( Emerita ), Scott Herring, Daniel HoSang, Matthew Jacobson, Kathryn Lofton, Lisa Lowe, Mary Lui, Joanne Meyerowitz, Charles Musser, Tavia Nyong’o, Stephen Pitti, Sally Promey, Ana Ramos-Zayas, Marc Robinson, Paul Sabin, Alicia Schmidt Camacho, Caleb Smith, Robert Stepto ( Emeritus ), Dara Strolovitch, Kalindi Vora, John Harley Warner, Tisa Wenger, Laura Wexler

Associate Professors Crystal Feimster, Zareena Grewal, Greta LaFleur, Albert Laguna, Elihu Rubin

Assistant Professors Julian Posada, Madiha Tahir

Senior Lecturer James Berger

Lecturer Leah Mirakhor

Fields of Study

Fields include American literature, history, the arts and material culture, philosophy, cultural theory, and the social sciences.

Special Requirements for the Ph.D. Degree

During the first two years of study students are required to take twelve term courses; at least half of these courses must be in American Studies. Two courses, both graded Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory, are required: AMST 600 , American Scholars, taken in the first year, and AMST 602 , Field Studies, taken in the second year. The student’s program will be decided in consultation with the adviser and the director of graduate studies (DGS). In each of the two years, the student should take at least one seminar devoted to research or requiring a substantial original paper, and must achieve two grades of Honors, with an average overall of High Pass.

Students are required to show proficiency in a language other than English; they may fulfill this requirement by (1) conducting substantial research in the chosen language as part of the course requirements for one of the twelve required seminars, (2) passing a translation test, offered each term by various language departments, or (3) receiving a grade of B or higher in a Yale College intermediate- or advanced-level language course or in a Yale language-for-reading course, such as French for Reading or German for Reading.

Upon completion of course work, students in their third year of study are required to participate in at least one term of a monthly prospectus workshop ( AMST 902 ). Intended to complement the work of the prospectus committee, the workshop is designed as a professionalization experience that culminates in students’ presentation of the dissertation prospectus at their prospectus colloquium.

Students should schedule the oral qualifying examinations in four fields, in the fifth term of study. Preparation, submission, and approval of the dissertation prospectus should be completed by the end of the sixth term, with a final deadline at the end of the seventh term with permission from the DGS. Students are admitted to candidacy for the Ph.D. upon completion of all predissertation requirements, including the prospectus. The faculty in American Studies considers training in teaching to be an important part of the program. Students in American Studies normally teach in years three and four.

Combined Ph.D. Programs

American studies and african american studies.

The American Studies Program also offers, in conjunction with the Department of African American Studies, a combined Ph.D. in American Studies and African American Studies. This combined degree is most appropriate for students who intend to concentrate in and write a dissertation on any aspect of African American history, literature, or culture in the United States and other parts of the Americas. Applicants to the combined program must indicate on their application that they are applying both to American Studies and to African American Studies. All documentation within the application should include this information. For further details, see African American Studies .

American Studies and Film and Media Studies

The American Studies Program also offers, in conjunction with the Program in Film and Media Studies, a combined Ph.D. in American Studies and Film and Media Studies. Applicants to the combined program must indicate on their application that they are applying both to American Studies and to Film and Media Studies. All documentation within the application should include this information. For further details, see Film and Media Studies .

American Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

The American Studies Program also offers, in conjunction with the Program in Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, a combined Ph.D. in American Studies and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. This combined degree is most appropriate for students who intend to concentrate in and write a dissertation on any aspect of gender and sexuality; transnational politics and security regimes; citizenship and statelessness; public law and sexual violence; public policy and political representation; kinship, reproduction, and reproductive technologies; policing, surveillance, and incarceration; social movements and protest; indigeneity, racialization, and racism; literature, language, and translation; Islam and neoliberalism; colonialism and postcolonialism. Applicants to the combined program must indicate on their application that they are applying both to American Studies and to Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. All documentation within the application should include this information. For further details, see Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies .

Public Humanities Certificate

The Certificate in Public Humanities is granted upon the completion of all requirements. For more details on these requirements, as well as information on courses, projects, and teaching opportunities, see Public Humanities under Non-Degree Granting Programs, Councils, and Research Institutes.

Master’s Degrees

M.Phil. See Degree Requirements under Policies and Regulations .

M.A. Students may apply for a terminal master’s degree in American Studies. For the M.A. degree, students must successfully complete seven term courses, including a special writing project, and the language requirement. The project involves the submission of substantial written work either in conjunction with one course or as a tutorial that substitutes for one course. Students must earn a grade of Honors in two of their courses and an average grade of High Pass in the others. Candidates in combined programs will be awarded the M.A. only when the master’s degree requirements for both programs have been met. Doctoral students who withdraw from the Ph.D. program may be eligible to receive the M.A. degree if they have met the above requirements and have not already received the M.Phil. degree.   More information is available on the department’s website, http://americanstudies.yale.edu .

AMST 600a, American Scholars   Lisa Lowe

This required seminar for incoming first-year graduate students in the American Studies doctoral program focuses on varieties of scholarship and research methods employed in the field. The course aims to be both a history of the interdisciplinary American Studies field and an exploration of newer debates, approaches, and frameworks that engage and revise earlier objects, areas, historical timelines, methods, and periods. Beyond the narratives of United States exceptionalism, we engage American Studies scholarship that considers U.S. culture, history, and politics in relation to the histories of slavery, settler colonialism, capitalism, race, gender, sexuality, subcultures, war and empire. To explore the various kinds of approaches and projects, the seminar features visits from Yale scholars. Students will read 100 pages of visiting scholars’ work and collaborate on topical and thematic questions for discussion. Assignments include brief weekly writing assignments. This course is mandatory for first-year American Studies graduate students. W 3:30pm-5:20pm

AMST 602b, Field Studies   Laura Barraclough, Daniel HoSang, Kathryn Dudley, and Greta LaFleur

Students work with faculty to identify relevant field-specific literature (e.g., in preparation for oral examinations), formulate compelling research questions, explore appropriate interdisciplinary methods, and/or describe intended contributions to the field. On completion of the course, students are prepared to write competitive fellowship applications and to engage in full-time dissertation research (after their transition to candidacy). HTBA

AMST 620a, Pedagogy   Julian Posada and Madiha Tahir

Faculty members instruct their Teaching Fellows on the pedagogical methods for teaching specific subject matter. HTBA

AMST 622a and AMST 623b / CPLT 622a, Working Group on Globalization and Culture   Michael Denning

A continuing yearlong collective research project, a cultural studies “laboratory.” The group, drawing on several disciplines, meets regularly to discuss common readings, develop collective and individual research projects, and present that research publicly. The general theme for the working group is globalization and culture, with three principal aspects: (1) the globalization of cultural industries and goods, and its consequences for patterns of everyday life as well as for forms of fiction, film, broadcasting, and music; (2) the trajectories of social movements and their relation to patterns of migration, the rise of global cities, the transformation of labor processes, and forms of ethnic, class, and gender conflict; (3) the emergence of and debates within transnational social and cultural theory. The specific focus, projects, and directions of the working group are determined by the interests, expertise, and ambitions of the members of the group, and change as its members change. The working group is open to doctoral students in their second year and beyond. Graduate students interested in participating should contact [email protected]. M 3:30pm-5:20pm

AMST 630a / HSAR 529a / RLST 819a, Museums and Religion: the Politics of Preservation and Display   Sally Promey

This interdisciplinary seminar focuses on the tangled relations of religion and museums, historically and in the present. What does it mean to “exhibit religion” in the institutional context of the museum? What practices of display might one encounter for this subject? What kinds of museums most frequently invite religious display? How is religion suited (or not) for museum exhibition and museum education? Permission of the instructor required; qualified undergraduates are welcome.   W 1:30pm-3:20pm

AMST 640a, Muslims in the United States   Zareena Grewal

Since 9/11, cases of what has been termed “home-grown terrorism” have cemented the fear that “bad” Islam is not just something that exists far away, in distant lands. As a result, there has been an urgent interest to understand who American Muslims are by officials, experts, journalists, and the public. Although Muslims have been part of America’s story from its founding, Muslims have alternated from an invisible minority to the source of national moral panics, capturing national attention during political crises, as a cultural threat or even a potential fifth column. Today the stakes are high to understand what kinds of meanings and attachments connect Muslims in America to the Muslim world and to the U.S. as a nation. Over the course of the semester, students grapple with how to define and apply the slippery concept of diaspora to different dispersed Muslim populations in the U.S., including racial and ethnic diasporas, trading diasporas, political diasporas, and others. By focusing on a range of communities-in-motion and a diverse set of cultural texts, students explore the ways mobility, loss, and communal identity are conceptualized by immigrants, expatriates, refugees, guest-workers, religious seekers, and exiles. To this end, we read histories, ethnographies, essays, policy papers, novels, poetry, memoirs; we watch documentary and fictional films; we listen to music, speeches, spoken word performances, and prayers. Our aim is to deepen our understanding of the multiple meanings and conceptual limits of homeland and diaspora for Muslims in America, particularly in the Age of Terror. W 1:30pm-3:20pm

AMST 696b / ENGL 906b / ER&M 696b / HSHM 782b / RLST 630b / WGSS 696b, Michel Foucault I: The Works, The Interlocutors, The Critics   Greta LaFleur

This graduate-level course presents students with the opportunity to develop a thorough, extensive, and deep (though still not exhaustive!) understanding of the oeuvre of Michel Foucault, and his impact on late-twentieth-century criticism and intellectual history in the United States. Non-francophone and/or U.S. American scholars, as Lynne Huffer has argued, have engaged Foucault’s work unevenly and frequently in a piecemeal way, due to a combination of the overemphasis on The History of Sexuality, Vol 1 (to the exclusion of most of his other major works), and the lack of availability of English translations of most of his writings until the early twenty-first century. This course seeks to correct that trend and to re-introduce Foucault’s works to a generation of graduate students who, on the whole, do not have extensive experience with his oeuvre. In this course, we read almost all of Foucault’s published writings that have been translated into English (which is almost all of them, at this point). We read all of the monographs, and all of the Collège de France lectures, in chronological order. This lightens the reading load; we read a book per week, but the lectures are shorter and generally less dense than the monographs. [The benefit of a single author course is that the more time one spends reading Foucault’s work, the easier reading his work becomes.] We read as many of the essays he published in popular and more widely-circulated media as we can. The goal of the course is to give students both breadth and depth in their understanding of Foucault and his works, and to be able to situate his thinking in relation to the intellectual, social, and political histories of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Alongside Foucault himself, we read Foucault’s mentors, interlocutors, and inheritors (Heidegger, Marx, Blanchot, Canguilhem, Derrida, Barthes, Althusser, Bersani, Hartman, Angela Davis, etc); his critics (Mbembe, Weheliye, Butler, Said, etc.), and scholarship that situates his thought alongside contemporary social movements, including student, Black liberation, prison abolitionist, and anti-psychiatry movements. Instructor permission required. HTBA

AMST 701a / AFAM 687a / HIST 751a, Race in American Studies   Matthew Jacobson

This reading-intensive seminar examines influential scholarship across disciplines on “the race concept” and racialized relations in American culture and society. Major topics include the cultural construction of race; race as both an instrument of oppressions and an idiom of resistance in American politics; the centrality of race in literary, anthropological, and legal discourse; the racialization of U.S. foreign policy; “race mixing” and “passing,” vicissitudes of “whiteness” in American politics; the centrality of race in American political culture; and “race” in the realm of popular cultural representation. Writings under investigation include classic formulations by such scholars as Lawrence Levine and Ronald Takaki, as well as more recent work by Saidiya Hartman, Robin Kelley, and Ann Fabian. Seminar papers give students an opportunity to explore in depth the themes, periods, and methods that most interest them. Permission of the instructor required. F 1:30pm-3:20pm

AMST 702a / AFAM 500a, Global Black Aesthetics   Tav Nyong'o

Given the planetary scope increasingly implicit in contemporary art practice and the art world, this course asks after the relationship between politics and aesthetics in the current moment of planetary crisis. Critical discussion of the relation between aesthetics and politics is often framed as solely a question of enhancing democratic participation and emancipating publics. However, this approach is limited and does not sufficiently account for colonial modernity’s role in the construction of the aesthetic, as well as its role in political relegating and regulating populations as dispossessed and disenfranchised. Readings include contemporary black aesthetic theories of refusal, fabulation, and poetics and draw on readings from Denise Ferreira da Silva, Fred Moten, Tina Campt, Saidiya Hartman, Christina Sharpe, John Keene, Dionne Brand, Édouard Glissant, and Sylvia Wynter. Prerequisite: one other graduate African American Studies course, preferably AFAM 505 . T 1:30pm-3:20pm

AMST 704b / ENGL 886b / WGSS 704b, War and Everyday Life   Sunny Xiang

This course thinks together two spatiotemporal phenomena that appear opposed: war and everyday life. Why is war generally thought of as an exceptional phenomenon, a climactic event that disrupts the quotidian rhythms of the everyday? And why does everyday life so often appear parceled off from war, a placid domestic realm that soldiers depart from and return to? The study of war is often a masculine, muscular endeavor. This course's turn to the methodologies that are guided by feminist, anti-imperialist, and anti-racist critique allows us to better contemplate how militaristic logics shape everyday life and how anti-militarism might be lived at the level of daily practices. This notion of everyday militarisms is both the impetus and the frame for our engagement of the special collections at Yale Library. As an impetus, lived experience of militarism requires us to account for our specific institutional location. What has Yale's role been in war-making and empire-building? How might we analyze our own experiences at Yale and in the historical present with these flashpoints in mind? An attunement to the more quotidian aspects of militarisms also provides an alternate frame for rethinking wartime events that may at the outset seem extraordinary or exceptional. What might it mean to understand nuclear bombs, forced migrations, and environmental disasters as ordinary crises? What do people's day-to-day experience of such crises look like? To approach such questions from different angles and at different scales, we need to consult primary source materials in tandem with an array of interdisciplinary scholarship. Considered together, these course materials help us contemplate why everyday wars tend to go undetected—whether because of new kinds of weapons, war crimes that pass as governance, the time lag of slow violence, or the representational norms of popular culture. Of course, the militarization of daily life looks different depending on one’s geographical, historical, social, and disciplinary orientation. So, even though the course tries to assemble a range of materials and examples, it reflects the instructor's orientation as an Americanist scholar of twentieth-century transpacific culture and politics. But the assessment of everydayness is a matter of perception and perspective in a more general sense as well. How does militarism hide in plain sight, and for whom is it hidden? Throughout the term, the power relations embedded in discerning and analyzing everyday militarisms require us to bring an added layer of critical self-reflection to all our research endeavors. M 9:25am-11:15am

AMST 715a / AFAM 764a / HIST 715a, Readings in Nineteenth-Century America   David Blight

The course explores recent trends and historiography on several problems through the middle of the nineteenth century: sectionalism, expansion; slavery and the Old South; northern society and reform movements; Civil War causation; the meaning of the Confederacy; why the North won the Civil War; the political, constitutional, and social meanings of emancipation and Reconstruction; violence in Reconstruction society; the relationships between social/cultural and military/political history; problems in historical memory; the tension between narrative and analytical history writing; and the ways in which race and gender have reshaped research and interpretive agendas. W 9:25am-11:15am

AMST 716b / ANTH 769b / ARCG 769b / HSAR 716b, Landscapes of Meaning: Museums and Their Objects   Anne Underhill

This seminar explores how museums convey various meanings about ethnographic, art, and archaeological objects through the processes of collecting, preparing exhibitions, and conducting research. Participants also discuss broader theoretical and methodological issues such as the roles of museums in society, relationships with source communities, management of cultural heritage, and various specializations valuable for careers in art, natural history, anthropology, history, and other museums. W 1:30pm-3:20pm

AMST 721a / AFAM 522a / ENGL 935a, The Beautiful Struggle: Blackness, the Archive, and the Speculative   Daphne Brooks

This seminar takes its inspiration from concepts and questions centering theories that engage experimental methodological approaches to navigating the opacities of the archive: presumptively “lost” narratives of black life, obscure(d) histories, compromised voices and testimonials, contested (auto)biographies, anonymous testimonies, textual aporias, fabulist documents, confounding marginalia. The scholarly and aesthetic modes by which a range of critics and poets, novelists, dramatists, and historians have grappled with such material have given birth to new analytic lexicons—from Saidiya Hartman’s “critical fabulation” to José Estaban Muñoz’s “ephemera as evidence” to Tavia Nyong’o’s “Afrofabulation.” Such strategies affirm the centrality of speculative thought and invention as vital and urgent forms of epistemic intervention in the hegemony of the archive and open new lines of inquiry in black studies. Our class explores a variety of texts that showcase these new queries and innovations, and we also actively center our efforts from within the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, where a number of sessions are held and where we focus on Beinecke holdings that resonate with units of the course. Various sessions also feature distinguished guest interlocutors via Zoom, who are on hand to discuss the specifics of their research methods and improvisational experimentations in both archival exploration and approaches to their prose and poetic projects. W 1:30pm-3:20pm

AMST 724b / PLSC 868b / WGSS 724b, Gender and Sexuality in American Politics and Policy   Dara Strolovitch

This seminar familiarizes students with foundational work on and approaches to the study of gender and sexuality in American politics and public policy. It explores empirical work that addresses these topics, a range of theoretical and epistemological approaches to them, and the social scientific methods that have been used to examine them. It explores the history, findings, and controversies in research about gender and sexuality in American politics and political science, examining work within several subfields of American politics (e.g., political development; public law; political behavior; legislative studies; public policy; interest groups and social movements), important work from other disciplines, and research that does not fit neatly into traditional disciplinary categories, paying particular attention to the implications of this “messiness” for the study of gender, sexuality, and politics. We are attentive to the complicated histories of science and social science when it comes to the study of gender and sexuality and to the ways in which gender and sexuality intersect with other politically relevant categories, identities, and forms of marginalization, such as race, ethnicity, class, and ideological and partisan identification. M 3:30pm-5:20pm

AMST 725a, Writing the Academic Journal Article   Albert Laguna

Graduate students are often told that publishing a journal article is a crucial part of their professional development. This course helps students get it done. Students come to class with a piece of writing—seminar paper, dissertation chapter—that we workshop as a group throughout the course of the term. In addition to personalized feedback, we also have broader discussions about the nuts and bolts of this genre of academic writing: organizing your argument, revision, clarity, framing interventions, etc. We complement this structured approach to writing with discussions aimed at demystifying the process by which an article gets published—the art of selecting the right journal, how to read and respond to reader reports, and general timelines. The goal is for all students to submit their article to the journal of their choice by the end of the term. Students are required to have a piece of writing ready to workshop into an article at the very beginning of the class. Students interested in the course should contact the instructor at [email protected]. T 9:25am-11:15am

AMST 746a / ANTH 503a, Ethnographic Writing   Kathryn Dudley

This course explores the practice of ethnographic analysis, writing, and representation. Through our reading of contemporary ethnographies and theoretical work on ethnographic fieldwork in anthropological and interdisciplinary research, we explore key approaches to intersubjective encounters, including phenomenological anthropology, relational psychoanalysis, affect studies, and the new materialisms. Our inquiries coalesce around the poetics and politics of what it means to sense and sensationalize co-present subjectivities, temporalities, and ontologies in multispecies worlds and global economies. This is a core anthropology graduate program course; others admitted only by permission of the instructor. T 1:30pm-3:20pm

AMST 754b / ANTH 757b, The Ethnographic Imaginary   Kathryn Dudley

At its best, ethnographic meaning-making is a way of knowing that illuminates social worlds both seen and unseen, said and unsaid, texted and extra-textual. Yet try as we might to convey the truth of our lives lived in concert with others, something more , and something else always exceeds our efforts. When the anthropocentric logics of cultural representation fail us, the imaginary offers a hold, however fleeting and tenuous, on our own and others’ experiential realities. This seminar focuses on the use of images, imagery, and the imaginary in ethnography that explores the hazy uncertainties that surround and underpin what can be both known and unknown by us as well as our interlocutors. Thinking critically about anthropology’s colonial gaze and how its afterlives haunt our ethnographic encounters today, we engage a range of interdisciplinary scholarship that embraces, and troubles, the sensorial imagination as a source of knowledge about cultural histories and immediacies. Final projects are ethnographic in spirit and explore representational/anti-representational practices that may include photography, video documentary, and creative writing, among other artforms. In-class workshops will offer opportunities to share work-in-progress. HTBA

AMST 778b / ANTH 666b / ER&M 762b / WGSS 666b, The Study of Privilege in the Americas   Ana Ramos-Zayas

Examination of inequality, not only through experiences of the poor and marginal, but also through institutions, beliefs, social norms, and everyday practices of the privileged. Topics include critical examination of key concepts like “studying up,” “elite,” and “privilege,” as well as variations in forms of capital; institutional sites of privilege (elite prep schools, Wall Street); living spaces and social networks (gated communities, private clubs); privilege in intersectional contexts (privilege and race, class, and gender); and everyday practices of intimacy and affect that characterize, solidify, and promote privilege. Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

AMST 780b / HIST 734b / WGSS 734b, Class and Capitalism in the Twentieth-Century United States   Jennifer Klein

Reading course on class formation, labor, and political economy in the twentieth-century United States; how regionalism, race, and class power shaped development of American capitalism. The course reconsiders the relationships between economic structure and American politics and political ideologies, and between global and domestic political economy. Readings include primary texts and secondary literature (social, intellectual, and political history; geography). M 3:30pm-5:20pm

AMST 783a / FILM 783a, The Historical Documentary   Charles Musser

This course looks at the historical documentary as a method for carrying out historical work in the public humanities. It investigates the evolving discourse sand resonances within such topics as the Vietnam War, the Holocaust, and African American history. It is concerned with the relationship of documentary to traditional scholarly written histories as well as the history of the genre and what is often called the “archival turn.” T 3:30pm-5:20pm, M 7pm-10pm

AMST 801b / HIST 700b, U.S. Colonial Present   Lisa Lowe

Settler colonialism, slavery, racialized immigration, and military empire have been integral to the emergence of the U.S. nation, state, and economy, and their historical consequences continue today. In this interdisciplinary seminar, we study the relevance of these historical and ongoing formations to the founding and development of the United States, giving attention to the independence of each, as well as to their differences, convergences, and contestations. We consider the strengths and limits of given analytic frames for understanding our current historical crises of public health, economic austerity, and racial state violence. Despite the differentiated histories of settler colonialism, slavery, and empire, contemporary struggles and solidarities can identify links and convergences that colonial logics may disallow. The seminar includes readings in history, anthropology, political theory, and literature, as well as films and other media. Enrollment limited. Permission of the instructor required. W 3:30pm-5:20pm

AMST 804a, Religion and U.S. Empire   Tisa Wenger and Zareena Grewal

This course draws on perspectives from anthropology, history, American studies, religious studies, Indigenous studies, and postcolonial studies to interrogate the varied intersections between religion and US empire. It asks not only how Christianity and other religious traditions have facilitated imperialism and how they have served as resources for resistance, but also how the categories of “religion” and the “secular” have been assembled as imperial products alongside modern formations of race, class, gender, and sexuality. Through seminar discussions and written assignments, students gain new analytical tools along with critical purchase on an important new area for research in several intersecting fields of study. Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

AMST 830a / AFAM 771a / HIST 729a, The American Carceral State   Elizabeth Hinton

This readings course examines the historical development of the U.S. carceral state, focusing on policing practices, crime control policies, prison conditions, and the production of scientific knowledge in the twentieth century. Key works are considered to understand the connections between race and the development of legal and penal systems over time, as well as how scholars have explained the causes and consequences of mass incarceration in America. Drawing from key insights from new histories in the field of American carceral studies, we trace the multifaceted ways in which policymakers and officials at all levels of government have used criminal law, policing, and imprisonment as proxies for exerting social control in communities of color throughout U.S. history. T 1:30pm-3:20pm

AMST 832a and AMST 833b / FILM 735a and FILM 736b, Documentary Film Workshop   Charles Musser

This workshop in audiovisual scholarship explores ways to present research through the moving image. Students work within a Public Humanities framework to make a documentary that draws on their disciplinary fields of study. Designed to fulfill requirements for the M.A. with a concentration in Public Humanities. W 3:30pm-6:20pm, T 7pm-10pm

AMST 835b / HIST 731b, Research in Recent U.S. History   Joanne Meyerowitz

Students conduct research in primary sources and write original essays on post-1945 U.S. history. Readings include scholarly articles that might serve as models for students’ research projects. W 1:30pm-3:20pm

AMST 836b / HIST 570b, American Religion in the Archives   Tisa Wenger

An advanced seminar on archival research methods for historians of American religion. The class begins with readings that theorize the archive, particularly for the study of American religion. What counts as an archive? How are archives constituted and by whom? What are the limits and pitfalls of archives—and the construct of “the archive”—for research in this field? Over the course of the term, students are guided through the process of writing an archivally grounded research paper using Yale Divinity School Library Special Collections and the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Enrollment capped at fifteen; meets at YDS Library L104. Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

AMST 838b / HIST 749b / HSHM 753b, Research in Environmental History   Paul Sabin

Students conduct advanced research in primary sources and write original essays over the course of the term. Readings and library activities inform students’ research projects. Interested graduate students should contact the instructor with proposed research topics. T 9:25am-11:15am

AMST 856b, American Mobilities   Laura Barraclough

The “mobilities turn,” developed primarily in the social sciences since the early 2000s, examines the structured movements of people, ideas, and things; the transportation and communication infrastructures that move them; and the cultural meanings attributed to mobility and immobility. This course integrates critical mobilities scholarship with American studies and adjacent fields to consider the significance of (im)mobilities for the evolution of American history, geographies, society, and culture. Our focus is on American (im)mobilities and mobility justice in relationship to settler colonialism, racism, and capitalism in a variety of regions and from the seventeeth century to the present. HTBA

AMST 857b / WGSS 857b, Frailties   Scott Herring

An overview of the methodologies and interdisciplinary potentials of critical age studies. After beginning with a recent issue of Radical History Review on “Old/Age,” we spend our weeks discussing topics such as ageism and age discrimination; immigrant caregiving and servitude; black debility; creative iterations of queer and trans aging; age standardizations in the early twentieth-century United States; “deaths of despair” amidst “the new longevity”; feminist critiques of optimal aging; and junctures of disability and aging. The course brings together a range of thinkers including historians such as Corinne T. Field and Nicholas L. Syrett; theorists such as Kathleen Woodward and Margaret Morganroth Gullette; disability justice activists such as Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha; and sociologists such as Mignon R. Moore. Two governing concerns that we answer as a class: How do considerations of age, aging, and gerontophobia featured in our readings amplify the contemporary investments of American studies? How can we chart political and aesthetic formations of the frail that offset their persistent nonrecognition? Th 1:30pm-3:20pm

AMST 900a or b, Independent Research   Staff

AMST 901a or b, Directed Reading   Staff

AMST 902a or b, Prospectus Workshop   Staff

Upon completion of course work, students are required to participate in at least one term of the prospectus workshop, ideally the term before the prospectus colloquium is held. Open to all students in the program and joint departments, the workshop serves as a forum for discussing the selection of a dissertation topic, refining a project’s scope, organizing research materials, and evaluating work in progress. The workshop meets once a month. W 1:30pm-3:20pm

AMST 903b / HIST 746b / PHUM 903b, Introduction to Public Humanities   Dicky Yangzom

What is the relationship between knowledge produced in the university and the circulation of ideas among a broader public, between academic expertise on the one hand and nonprofessionalized ways of knowing and thinking on the other? What is possible? This seminar provides an introduction to various institutional relations and to the modes of inquiry, interpretation, and presentation by which practitioners in the humanities seek to invigorate the flow of information and ideas among a public more broadly conceived than the academy, its classrooms, and its exclusive readership of specialists. Topics include public history, museum studies, oral and community history, public art, documentary film and photography, public writing and educational outreach, the socially conscious performing arts, and fundraising. In addition to core readings and discussions, the seminar includes presentations by several practitioners who are currently engaged in different aspects of the Public Humanities. With the help of Yale faculty and affiliated institutions, participants collaborate in developing and executing a Public Humanities project of their own definition and design. Possibilities might include, but are not limited to, an exhibit or installation, a documentary, a set of walking tours, a website, a documents collection for use in public schools. F 3:30pm-5:20pm

AMST 904a or b / PHUM 904a or b, Practicum   Karin Roffman

Public Humanities students are required to complete a one-term internship with one of our partnered affiliates (to be approved by the Public Humanities DGS or assistant DGS) for practical experience in the field. Potential internships include in-house opportunities at the Beinecke Library, Sterling Memorial Library, or one of Yale’s museums, or work at a regional or national institution such as a media outlet, museum, or historical society. In lieu of the internship, students may choose to complete a “micro-credential.” Micro-credentials are structured as workshop series (3–5 daylong meetings over the course of a year) rather than as term courses, and include revolving offerings in topics such as oral history, collections and curation, writing for exhibits, podcast production, website design, scriptwriting from the archive, or grant writing for public intellectual work. HTBA

AMST 905a or b / PHUM 905a or b, Public Humanities Capstone Project   Karin Roffman

The course work and practicum/micro-credential lead to a significant project to be approved by the DGS or assistant DGS (an exhibition, documentary, research paper, etc.) and to be presented in a public forum on its completion. HTBA

AMST 917a or b, American Studies Professionalization Workshop   Staff

This seminar is designed for advanced Ph.D. candidates who are going on the job market. Students draft and revise three full rounds of the five standard genres of job market materials: job letter, CV, dissertation abstract, teaching portfolio, and diversity statement. Students also participate in mock interviewing skills, developing a job talk, and preparing applications for postdoctoral fellowships. Graded Satisfactory/Unsatisfactory. HTBA

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Department of History

Ph.d. programs.

The Department of History’s doctoral degree program seeks to train talented historians for careers in scholarship, teaching, and beyond the academy. The department typically accepts 22 Ph.D. students per year. Additional students are enrolled through various combined programs and through HSHM.  All admitted Ph.D. students receive a  full  financial aid package  from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. 

History of Science and Medicine

The  Program in the History of Science and Medicine  (HSHM)  is a semi-autonomous graduate track within the Department of History. HSHM students receive degrees in History, with a concentration in the History of Science and Medicine.  There is a separate admissions process for students interested in the History of Science and Medicine. For more information, please see the  HSHM website . 

Combined Doctoral Programs

Joint ph.d. programs.

• Reserve WLH 309

Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies

Graduate studies.

Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies critically interrogates gender and sexuality as categories of  inequality, difference, and identification. Gender (the social and historical meanings of distinctions across sexes) and sexuality (the domain of sexual practices, identities, discourses, and institutions) are studied as they intersect with class, race, nationality, religion, ability, and other zones of human and nonhuman experience. The introduction of these perspectives into all fields of knowledge necessitates new research paradigms, organizing concepts and analytics, and critique.

Combined PhD and Certificate

Women’s, Gender, & Sexuality Studies offers a Combined PhD and Certificate .  Both the Combined PhD and Certificate may only be pursued by students already enrolled in another PhD program at Yale University. 

Our Combined PhD is offered with African American Studies, American Studies, Anthropology, English, and Sociology.   

While the requirements of the Combined PhD are more extensive than those of the Certificate, both entail graduate-level coursework, teaching and pedagogic experience, and capacity to pursue independent research. 

Director of Graduate Studies

Dara Strolovitch ( dara.strolovitch@yale.edu )  WLH Rm 310

Religious Studies

You are here, combined ph.d. program.

In conjunction with the Department of African-American Studies , the Department of Religious Studies offers a combined Ph.D. in Religious Studies and African-American Studies. This joint degree is most appropriate for students who enter the field of American Religious History within the Department of Religious Studies or for students who concentrate on aspects of modern religious thought.

Department of Anthropology

Combined ph.d. in anthropology and african american studies.

Anthropology and African American Studies converge in the mutual project of making sense of how racial formations impact global processes, and well as in the generation of new methodologies for studying power and resistance across the social sciences and humanities. Yale’s Combined Ph.D. in African American Studies and Anthropology includes introductory coursework in both departments followed by qualifying exams and a dissertation prospectus process that encourage students to creatively combine these fields in ways that support their own emerging scholarship.

Resources and Common Connections:

Ethnography and Social Theory Colloquium

Department of African American Studies

Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration

Program in Race, Ethnicity, and Migration

American Studies Program

MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies

Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program

Department of African American Studies

Graduate admissions.

The Department of African American Studies will be welcoming applications to the Combined Degree Program this Fall.  For further information, please consult our Graduate Program web page and the Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences web page .

We thank you for your interest in African American Studies at Yale University.

Erica Edwards Director of Graduate Studies [email protected]

Naomi McWilliams Academic Support Assistant (Registrar) 203-432-1170 [email protected]

Graduate Student Liaisons Speak with a student about the program Kristine Guillaume   Jorge Banuelos  

10 PhD Students Named 2023-24 Prize Teaching Fellows

Ten PhD students from the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) have been named Prize Teaching Fellows for the 2023-2024 academic year: Camille Angelo (Religious Studies), Carissa Chan (Microbiology), Grayson Hoy (Chemistry), Nghiem Huynh (Economics), Kimberly Lifton (Medieval Studies), Benjamin Schafer (History), Jillian Stallman (Economics), Audrey Tjahjadi (Anthropology), Alexa Williams (Chemistry), and Novak Yang (Immunobiology). 

The Graduate School has awarded the teaching prizes annually since 2000. Recipients are nominated by their undergraduate students and the faculty members they assist while serving as Teaching Fellows.

"Doctoral education is more than just a journey from knowledge acquisition to knowledge creation," said Lynn Cooley, Dean of the Graduate School. "It is fundamentally about equipping scholars with the ability to share their insights broadly—to impact society positively through education. Reviewing the nominations, I am profoundly impressed by the innovative and engaging ways in which our teaching fellows have made complex ideas accessible and exciting to their students."

Biographies of the winners are included below.

Camille Leon Angelo (Religious Studies)

Camille Leon Angelo is a sixth-year PhD student in the Department of Religious Studies in the subfields of Eastern Mediterranean and West Asian Religions and Ancient Christianity. Her work examines materiality, sexuality, and space in late antiquity through new materialist, feminist, and queer lenses. She is a field archaeologist and has excavated in the eastern Mediterranean and the Caucasus. Her current research primarily engages archaeological, papyrological, and epigraphic evidence, related to late antique Egypt. Her past projects have analyzed the archaeological remains of several early Christian sites in the eastern Mediterranean and North Africa, most notably Dura-Europos, to elucidate sensory experiences in late antiquity.

Carissa Chan (Microbiology)

Carissa Chan is a fifth-year PhD candidate in Microbiology. Her research investigates how bacterial pathogens adapt to infection-relevant stresses, thus promoting survival inside mammalian host cells and disease. She has served as a teaching fellow for Physiological Systems for the past three years, including two as head teaching fellow. Each year, Carissa is inspired by the dedication and level of engagement from students in the class as they cover fascinating topics about the human body from fundamental cellular physiology to complex interactions between organ systems. Working with undergraduate and graduate students in Physiological Systems and sharing her excitement for science with them has been one of the highlights of her time at Yale.

Grayson Hoy (Chemistry)

Grayson Hoy is a first-year PhD student in the Chemistry Department. His research focuses on using super-resolution infrared microscopy to study metabolism in living cells to better understand metabolic dysregulation. Before Yale, he attended William & Mary, where he learned how transformative professors and mentors can be from a student’s perspective. Inspired by his undergraduate researcher professor, Dr. Kristin Wustholz, and other teachers throughout his life, Grayson aims to create a supportive learning environment where students feel empowered and excited by chemistry. 

Nghiem Huynh (Economics)

Nghiem Huynh is a doctoral candidate in Economics at Yale University, graduating in May 2024. His research evaluates the effects of government policies on regional and gender inequality. Nghiem holds a BA in Economics and Mathematics from New York University Abu Dhabi.

Kimberly Lifton (Medieval Studies)

Kimberly Lifton is a PhD candidate in the Medieval Studies program. She studies how Burgundy, England, and France's relationships with the Ottoman Empire materialized in manuscripts during the fifteenth century. Her research has been supported by the Fulbright, FLAS, and the Dhira Mahoney Fellowship. In the classroom, she works to develop compassionate pedagogy for neurodiverse students. 

Benjamin Schafer (History)

Benjamin Schafer is a PhD candidate in American History. He studies urban and social history in the late-twentieth-century United States.  His dissertation, “Life and Death in Rust,” is a study of poverty and inequality in post-industrial Buffalo, NY, his hometown, from the late 1970s to the early 2000s. Prior to Yale, Ben received an AB, magna cum laude with highest honors; Phi Beta Kappa, in History with a secondary in African American Studies from Harvard College, where he was awarded the Thomas T. Hoopes Senior Thesis Prize, the David Herbert Donald Prize in American History, and the Rev. Peter J. Gomes Prize in Religion and Ethnicity. He also holds an MPhil in Economic and Social History from Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge. He works as a research assistant for Professors Elizabeth Hinton and Vanessa Ogle and has previously worked as a researcher for Professor Fredrik Logevall (Harvard) and the John F. Kennedy Library Foundation. He has been a teaching fellow for Professor David Engerman (Fall 2023, The Origins of U.S. Global Power) and Professor Marco Ramos (Spring 2023, The History of Drugs in America).

Jillian Stallman (Economics)

Jillian Stallman is a PhD student in the Economics Department interested broadly in the intersection of economic development, environmental economics, and political economy. She's writing her dissertation about cooperation over freshwater resources in developing countries using a combination of economic theory, surveys and administrative data, and remote-sensing measurements. Jillian spent her undergraduate years at Williams College, where she worked most semesters as a teaching assistant to her peers in courses ranging from macroeconomic development to multivariable calculus to introductory Chinese. After graduating, she spent several years travelling in, among other places, China, Chile and Senegal, operating under the belief that she would have a difficult time ultimately doing research about places and people she hadn't lived around for a good while.

Audrey Tjahjadi (Anthropology)

Audrey Tjahjadi is a third-year PhD student in the Department of Anthropology focusing on human evolutionary genetics. She is interested in how local environments have shaped the evolution of diet-related adaptations in Southeast Asian and Oceanic populations, particularly in genes involved in fatty acid metabolism. Outside of research, Audrey is also involved in science communication and outreach through Yale graduate student organizations. 

Alexa Kim Williams (Chemistry)

Alexa Williams is a PhD student in Materials Chemistry. She completed her BS in Chemistry in 2021 at Montclair State University in New Jersey. At Yale, her research explores the fundamental reactivity of H-terminated silicon nanoparticles and aims to inform broader studies on silicon-based hybrid materials for CO2 reduction. This work is part of the CHASE solar fuels hub.

Xuan (Novak) Yang (Immunobiology)

Novak Yang is a third-year PhD candidate in Dr. Lieping Chen’s laboratory at the Department of Immunobiology. He received his BS in Biology and MS in Cancer Biology and Translational Oncology degrees at Emory University, and was the first to accomplish this in a “3+1” timeline at Emory. Prior to joining Yale, Novak was trained by Dr. Haian Fu and Dr. Andrey Ivanov at the Department of Pharmacology and Chemical Biology, Emory University School of Medicine, with a primary focus on cancer-associated protein-protein interactions and high-throughput drug discovery. He has multiple first-author and co-author publications, and is the recipient of American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics (ASPET) Travel Award and Program Committee Blue Ribbon Pick, and Society for Laboratory Automation and Screening (SLAS) Tony B. Academic Travel Award. Novak was recruited to Yale Immunobiology in 2021 as a Gruber Science Fellow. His research focuses on the discovery of actionable targets in the tumor microenvironment that drive the resistance to current immunotherapies, and pre-clinical development of innovative therapeutic strategies that normalize anti-tumor immunity for cancer patients.

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Seven yalies to hone leadership skills as knight-hennessy scholars.

Top row, from left, Daviana Berkowitz-Sklar, Tilly Brooks, and Gabe Malek. Second row, Qusay Omran, Henry Smith, Lina Volin, and Barkotel Zemenu.

A Yale College senior and six Yale alumni are among 90 scholars from 30 countries to be named Knight-Hennessy Scholars at Stanford University. The scholars were selected for their independent thought, leadership, and civic-mindedness.

At Stanford, the cohort will pursue graduate degrees in 45 degree programs across all seven schools.

Knight-Hennessy Scholars is a multidisciplinary, multicultural graduate scholarship program that helps develop future leaders. The scholars receive up to three years of financial support to pursue graduate studies at Stanford while also engaging in experiences that prepare them to tackle global challenges.

The seven Yale affiliates named to the 2024 cohort of Knight-Hennessy scholars follows:

Daviana Berkowitz-Sklar ’23, who studied ecology and evolutionary biology as an undergraduate at Yale College, will pursue a Ph.D. in oceans at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. Raised in Costa Rica and California, Berkowitz-Sklar aspires to develop collaborative, science-based solutions to improve the health of ecosystems and the people who depend on them. She is interested in marine spatial ecology and socio-ecological systems and has conducted research in Costa Rican fishing communities with the DynaMAR Project at Stanford. She was awarded a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship as well as a Yale postgraduate fellowship to research whale migrations at OKEANOS-University of the Azores and a Rohr Reef Resilience Fellowship to study coral reef resilience at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute in Panama. Berkowitz-Sklar is the co-founder and president of a nonprofit organization, Nature Now International, through which she leads programs to engage youth in community-based science and conservation, including hands-on work with wildlife, citizen science, and STEM education.

Tilly Brooks  ’23, who was a linguistics major as a Yale College undergraduate, will concurrently pursue a Ph.D. in linguistics at Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences and a J.D. at Yale Law School. Brooks, who is from New Haven, studied Indo-European philology at Yale before discovering an interest in action-based research and the relationship between language and law. Focusing both on the effects of law and policy decisions on marginalized linguistic communities and the application of linguistic theories, research methods, and tools to interpretive legal processes, she researches what she calls “the law of language and the language of law.” In the long term, Brooks aims to draw communities of legal scholars, linguists, and legal practitioners together with the common goals of advancing linguistic justice in the practice of law, and refining the use of linguistic evidence and tools for law and policy purposes.

Gabe Malek ’20, who was a double major in American studies and anthropology at Yale, will pursue a J.D. at Stanford Law School. He aspires to leverage commercial law, financial regulation, and tax policy to accelerate the clean energy transition. Malek has served as chief of staff at Fervo Energy, a next-generation geothermal power developer, and deputy chief of staff to Mark Carney, co-chair of the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero and former governor of the Bank of England. He began his career at Environmental Defense Fund, where he helped formalize and scale the organization’s investor engagement strategy. At Yale, Malek received the Edward Sapir Prize for his research on international climate finance and the Institute for Social and Policy Studies Director’s Fellowship for his commitment to public service.

Qusay Omran ’21, who studied chemistry as an undergraduate at Yale College, will pursue an M.D. and Ph.D. in genetics at Stanford School of Medicine. He aspires to develop innovative therapies for cancers and immunologic disorders through research in chemical and synthetic biology. In college, he studied nucleic acid chemical biology at Yale and the National Cancer Institute, publishing his senior thesis on a novel self-splicing assay. Omran also led the Yale Review of International Studies, where he edited and published academic essays on global affairs solicited from around the world. Originally from Bahrain, Omran is a passionate advocate for displaced populations. He worked at Havenly, a nonprofit dedicated to breaking the cycle of poverty for refugee women. He earned a Dwight Hall Community Response Fellowship and the Berkeley College Fellows’ Prize for his contributions to the greater community.

Henry Smith  ’22, who was a double major in mathematics and statistics at Yale, is pursuing a Ph.D. in statistics at Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences. Through his Ph.D., Smith, who is from Hanover, Pennsylvania, aims to improve statistical understanding of machine learning algorithms so they can be more confidently applied across various domains. After graduating from Yale, he spent a year conducting research at the University of Cambridge, where he and a team developed a novel machine learning algorithm to solve a challenging problem in multi-drone flight. At Yale, Smith served as a leader of the Yale Votes Coalition to strengthen university voting policy and managed data for numerous political campaigns. He also spent three years preparing taxes for low-income New Haven residents. At Yale, Smith received the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, an award for the best undergraduate thesis, and Yale’s Emerson Tuttle award for scholastic achievement.

Lina Volin ’19, who studied history at Yale, is pursuing a J.D. at Stanford Law School. Volin, who is from Hollywood, Florida, also holds a Master of Science degree in modern Middle Eastern studies from the University of Oxford. She aspires to advance access to health care and improve health outcomes through policymaking that centers equity and addresses intersecting social, economic, and legal issues. For three years, she served at the White House Gender Policy Council, most recently as director for health policy, where she worked on policy development and litigation response related to reproductive rights and helped to launch a new White House initiative aimed at closing critical research gaps in women’s health. Volin previously served as the council’s chief of staff and led efforts to advance pay equity and strengthen worker protections.

Barkotel Zemenu , an intensive physics major will graduate from Yale College this month, will pursue a Ph.D. in physics at Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences. Zemenu, who is from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, has conducted in research on three continents, including work that has spanned particle physics, quantum gravity, and observational astronomy. At Stanford, he plans to leverage this background to investigate fundamental questions in cosmology, with a focus on the elusive neutrinos and the hidden dark sector. As a Yale undergraduate, Zemenu was selected to join the 73rd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in Physics, named Top Oral Presenter at the annual international conference hosted by the American Physical Society, and awarded multiple national scholarships by the American Institute of Physics. At Yale, he enjoyed being a physics tutor and studying numerous foreign languages.

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International and Development Economics

The IDE Program is a one-year Master's program intended to help students build the necessary toolkit for embracing obstacles in their future careers.

The global economic environment has become increasingly complex and poses a myriad of new challenges for policy and data analysts and professionals in all fields.

The ability to respond to rapid changes in this environment requires that leaders have a detailed understanding of the economic forces that affect economic outcomes. Careful economic policy analysis requires practitioners who can make use of the most current theoretical academic literature, as well as do empirical and econometric analysis using the latest approaches and methods.

No longer accepting applications

Visit the  GSAS Application site  for more information!

• The Program
• Prospective Students

The IDE program at Yale University, housed within the  Economic Growth Center (EGC) and the Department of Economics, is a one-year Masters program intended to help students build the necessary toolkit for embracing such obstacles in their future careers, whether as career practitioners and economic analysts or to follow a path through the policy analysis field on their way to subsequent Ph.D. work.

This site is to inform prospective students of the program, the university and life in New Haven. We encourage prospective students to also visit the website of the  Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) for more information on the application procedure, policies, living in New Haven and other Yale facilities that are all open to IDE Students.

Additionally, this site will provide current students with access to all information they need on a daily basis and the rich alumni network. In the last 65 years, graduates have followed careers in all sectors of work. We encourage current students to reach out to alumni and benefit from their advice.

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Amos Espinosa Wins American Society of Hematology Minority Hematology Graduate Award

Amos espinosa wins minority hematology graduate award.

Amos S. Espinosa, a PhD Candidate in Experimental Pathology, was recently named a winner of the American Society of Hematology's Minority Hematology Graduate Award.

Amos S. Espinosa, a PhD Candidate in Experimental Pathology, was recently named a winner of the American Society of Hematology (ASH) Minority Hematology Graduate Award (MHGA). Amos is a member of the Krause Lab and a Medical Research Scholar.

The MHGA encourages graduate students from communities underserved and underrepresented in hematology in the United States and Canada to pursue a career in academic hematology. The award provides funding for students conducting research on hematology-focused projects and is open to doctoral students in their first, second, or third year of graduate school at the time of application.

Amos’ doctoral research focuses on understanding the molecular mechanisms of cancer development. His areas of interest include malignant hematology, where he is currently investigating the leukemogenic mechanism of a rare subtype of acute megakaryoblastic leukemia implicated by the RBM15-MKL1 fusion protein.

“I am thankful for the support I received from ASH,” Amos said. “This award will help me move one step closer to understanding the complexities of such a rare and fatal pediatric leukemia and potentially contribute to targeted treatment strategies in the future.”

“We were super excited to hear that Amos received this award. It is well deserved,” said Diane Krause, MD, PhD, Anthony N. Brady Professor of Laboratory Medicine and Professor of Pathology, and Principal Investigatory of the Krause Lab . “Over the next two years, Amos will determine the degree to which the RBM15-MKL1 fusion oncoprotein acts to promote leukemia via its direct association with the RNA methylation complex.”

Amos was born in the Philippines, immigrated to California’s Bay Area in 2009, and attended Diablo Valley College, where he obtained associate’s degrees with honors in biology, life science, and natural science. Next he attended UC Berkeley, where he earned his bachelor’s degree with high distinction in integrative biology. During his senior year, he began working at UCSF in the lab of Dr. Michelle Arkin in collaboration with the Accelerating Therapeutics for Opportunities in Medicine (ATOM) Consortium.

Amos is one of nine graduate students selected for the award, which provides the winning scientists an annual $40,000 stipend for a two-year period that can be used for tuition/salary/stipend, research, training-related expenses (including health insurance), and travel to the ASH Annual Meeting and Exposition. Program participants receive complimentary ASH membership throughout graduate school. During the ASH Annual Meeting, participants will attend the Minority Recruitment Initiative Luncheon and present their research at the Promoting Minorities in Hematology Presentations and Reception Event.

ASH is the world’s largest professional society of clinicians and scientists dedicated to conquering blood diseases. The MHGA is one of six programs under ASH’s Minority Recruitment Initiative, a series of programs committed to increasing the number of underrepresented minorities training in hematology-related fields and the number of underrepresented hematologists with academic and research appointments.

Featured in this article

• Amos Espinosa
• Diane Krause, MD, PhD Anthony N. Brady Professor of Laboratory Medicine and Professor of Pathology; Vice Chair for Research Affairs, Laboratory Medicine; Assoc. Director, Yale Stem Cell Center; Assoc. Director, Transfusion Medicine Service; Medical Director, Clinical Cell Processing Laboratory; Medical Director, Advanced Cell Therapy Laboratory