Dr. Paul Renfro is an assistant professor of US history. He received his PhD from the University of Iowa in 2016 and joined FSU in 2018.

What is your academic area?

I am an historian of the United States, specifically the post-1945 U.S., and I have thematic interests in gender and sexuality, childhood and family, and the carceral state.

When did you receive your degree?

Hi there – I am Taylor Rivers, and I graduated from FSU with a major in History in December 2020. Since March 2021, I have been teaching with EPIK (English Program in Korea). I live in Daejeon, Korea’s 5th largest city with a population of 1.6 million people and the hub of Korea’s high speed rail network. I teach at two very different high schools. One high school is for advanced students in math and science, and it is co-ed.  Many of its students are from well-to-do backgrounds, and some have even lived abroad. The other high school I teach at is an all-boys vocational school.

Dr. Joseph Gabriel has a dual appointment in the Department of History and the Department of Behavioral Sciences and Social Medicine at the College of Medicine. He received his BA in Philosophy in 1992, his MA in History in 1999, both from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He earned his PhD at Rutgers University in 2006 and joined the History Department at FSU in 2016.

What is your area of research?

Dr. Annika A. Culver is an associate professor of East Asian history in the Department of History. She received her BA from Vassar College in 1997, MA from Harvard University in 2000, and PhD from University of Chicago in 2007. Her doctoral dissertation title was “Between Distant Realities:” The Japanese Avant-Garde, Surrealism, and the Colonies, 1924-1943. She joined FSU in 2013.

What questions have driven your research?

Dr. Ben Dodds is an associate professor in the Department of History, specializing in the history of late medieval England. He received his BA, MA, and PhD from Durham University (2002) and taught there from 2003 to 2017. Dr. Dodds joined FSU in 2017.

How many years did you spend in graduate school?

When D J Kinney defended his PhD dissertation in the fall of 2018, he decided not to seek an academic job straight away. Instead, he set out to share his passion for the Cold War era with a broader audience. “I love telling stories and making podcasts about the Cold War was a natural extension for me.” Thus, The Cold War Vault was born.

Dr. Katherine Mooney is the James P. Jones Associate Professor of History. She received her BA in American Studies from Amherst College in 2004, her MA and PhD from Yale University in 2008 and 2012, respectively. Dr. Mooney joined FSU in 2014.

When did you start thinking about graduate school?

How did you get interested in music?

I started with piano and then guitar and when I was 11, I switched to tuba. I always loved music. In my high school, I joined the marching band. I became a section leader in my senior year. I went to a large high school with a big marching band, so the transition to playing with the FSU Marching Chiefs was not that hard.

What did it take to become a MC?

Dr. Maximilian Scholz is an assistant professor specializing in the social and religious history of early modern Europe. He received his BA, MA, MPhil, and PhD from Yale University (2016). His dissertation was titled “Exile and the Recasting of the Reformation: Frankfurt am Main, 1554-1618.” He joined the FSU Department of History in 2017.

How would you describe your general experience of grad school?

Earlier this year, Dr. Sam Holley-Kline received the Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program’s postdoctoral mentor award. Dr. Holley-Kline, whose area of expertise is the history of modern Mexico, is a Dean's Postdoctoral Scholar in FSU’s History Department. Michelle Evangelista (FSU 2023 International Affairs), one of his UROP student researchers, nominated Dr. Holley-Kline for the mentoring award.