Thanks to a generous gift from Dan and Sylvia Walbolt, FSU's Department of History has been able to offer the Walbolt Dissertation Fellowships for dissertation research and writing since 2010.
The Department awards two Walbolt Dissertation Fellowships each year. One for the spring semester and one for the fall semester. Applicants must be current FSU students in the Department who have successfully defended their dissertation prospectus. Recipients are required to use the fellowships to conduct doctoral research in archives or to complete the writing of the dissertation.
The funding level of the Walbolt Fellowship is equal to the value of a TA stipend for one semester, inclusive of tuition and medical subsidies.
Applications consist of a three- to five-page double-spaced prospectus describing the project and its importance, a one-page bibliography of secondary sources, a c.v., and two letters of recommendation. Applicants must include sealed letters of recommendation when they submit the other required materials. While the evaluation criteria favors research (due to the difficulty of funding extended research trips), proposals to fund dissertation writing are also eligible.
The Walbolt Dissertation Fellowship must be the recipient's primary funding source during the semester in which it is held. Walbolt Fellows are expected to present their work to the department at the end of their funded semester or the following semester. The Fellows are also expected to acknowledge their Walbolt award in any publication arising from this research, and provide a copy to the department chair.
Past Recipients
| Year | Name | Research Topic |
|---|---|---|
| Spring 2024 | Noah Cole | "Ideologies of Factionalism and Political Conflict in Late-Medieval Italy” |
| Fall 2023 | Lauren Owens | "Managing Fertility and Reproductive Health in Eighteenth-Century France” |
| Spring 2023 | Alice Zhang | "Migrating from the “One-child Nation” to the “Nation of International Adoption”: The Adoption of Chinese Children into American Families, 1980-2015" |
| Fall 2022 | Brandon Bernick | “The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend: America’s Intelligence Partnership with Reinhard Gehlen, 1945-1956” |
| Spring 2022 | Caroline Hackett | "The Things They Owned: Married Women and Their Property in Old Regime and Revolutionary France" |
| Fall 2021 | Marina Ortiz | “’Barbizier’s Visit To Jacquemard’: Folklore And Counter-Revolution In Revolutionary Besancon” |
| Spring 2021 | Dan Zylberkan | “Ireland, The Great War, And The Unfinished Revolution" |
| Fall 2020 | Justin Vos | “Ethnicity And Religion Moves To The Suburbs: Exploring School Segregation in Chicago” |
| Spring 2020 | Jason Ratcliffe | “Assertive Nationalism?: Jose Laurel’s Vision of Filipino Identity and the Ideal Philippine Nation" |
| Fall 2019 | Taylor Tobias | “Imperial Players: Theatre, Culture, and Power in the 19th Century World” |
| Spring 2019 | William Clift | “Reassessing North & South: Illinois Political Culture and its Border State Identity” |
| Fall 2018 | Zachary Stoltzfus | “Publicizing Property: The French Revolution and the Transformation of Hypotheque” |
| Spring 2018 | Richard Siegler | “Enemy at the Gates: The Fall & Rise of Octroi 1789-1815” |
| Fall 2017 | Hillary Sebeny | “Truly Alone: Richard Evelyn Byrd and the Decline of Heroic Exploration in the US, 1934-1957.” |
| Spring 2017 | Kyle Bracken | "Green War: The US Army and the Environment of Paua-New Guinea, 1942-45" |
| Fall 2016 | Richard Soash | "Tempered Inclusion: Syrian-Lebanese and Armenian Mobility in the Progressive Era" |
| Spring 2016 | John Whitehurst | "Diagnosing the Nation: Medical Activism in the Nuclear Age" |
| Fall 2015 | Christian Juergens | "Chasing Favius: the Revolutionary Army of Hessen-Kassel and its Mission in America, 1776-84" |
| Spring 2015 | J. Ryan Stackhouse | Political Policing During the Third Reich |
| Fall 2014 | Arad Gigi | "Fortifying Colonialism: Colonial State and Society in the French Caribbean, 1685-1789" |
| Spring 2014 | Scott Craig | "Punishing the Periphery: The Transportation Act and Political Power in the Atlantic World, 1718-1775." |
| Fall 2013 | Weston Nunn | "Between State and Peasantry: The Dynamics of Military Administration in Volunteer-Occupied Russia, 1918-21." |
| Spring 2013 | Katy Boche | "Dancing Americana: Choreographing Visions of American Identity from the Stage to the Screen, 1936-1958." |
| Fall 2012 | Maureen MacLeod | "A Society in Flux: Female Education and Societal Transition in Early Nineteenth-Century France, 1799-1830." |
| Spring 2012 | Kevin Kokomoor | "Africans, Indians, and the Spanish Frontier: 1784-1821" |
| Fall 2011 | Sherri Reinhardt | "'Sacrifice their Hears in a Holocaust of your Love': The Virgin Mary and the Mexican Independence War, 1810-1821" |
| Spring 2011 | Jonathan Grandage | "'Their progress toward civilization has been their own work': Becoming Seminole, 1858-1936" |