Student & Faculty Research
Resources
The O’Toole Library is the university library on the Jersey City campus. Students can utilize its collections and numerous databases for their research. In addition, students should look into the library’s Reciprocal Borrowing program in order to gain access to the many university libraries, historical societies, and museums in the NJ-NY metro area at their disposal.
The University Archives are not only available to students for institutional research, but History majors can work under the tutelage of the university archivist on projects to receive credit toward graduation.

Our budding historians at work in the university archives, pictured here with former University Archivist Mary Kinahan-Ockay.
Student Research
During their four years, students will participate in the Platt research seminar which introduces them to primary and secondary sources, as well as historical research methods. In the first semester of senior year, majors must take part in the Tuleja capstone seminar, during which students are expected to produce a significant research paper.
History Teaching Practicum for Credit
Open to History majors matriculated in Saint Peter’s University Caulfield School of Education, the History Teaching Practicum offers students an opportunity to gain practical classroom experience teaching a history course at SPU. Student responsibilities involve locating appropriate primary source materials for core history courses. In the fall semester the materials will relate to the Western Tradition course. In the spring semester the materials will relate to the modern world history course. Students will develop lesson plans to accompany their sources and, when appropriate, will lead class periods based on their lesson plans. A member of the History Department will guide and assess the student’s work in this area. This allows experience in developing appropriate lesson plans, historical research skills, and how to effectively utilize teaching strategies and techniques. Students taking part in the History Teaching Practicum register for a tutorial for 3 course credits.
Honors Theses
Anthony Rivera, ’25 “Hilter Jugend: The Story of German Youths under the Nazi Regime” with Dr. David W. Gerlach
Patrick W. Farrell ’19, “Colonial Structures & Post-Independence Authoritarianism in Zimbabwe,” with Dr. John W. Johnson, Jr.
Aminata Hughes ’16, “Strange Fruit and Southern Horrors: Ida B. Wells’ Crusade Against Lynch Law,” with Dr. Michael deGruccio
Lauren Squillante ’16, “Christine de Pizan, Dame d’Eloquence,” with Dr. Sheila J. Rabin
Shadman Hassan ’14, “An Analysis of American and Russian Involvements and Dynamics in the Middle East: From the Cold War to the Present,” with Dr. David W. Gerlach
Vanessa Vogel ’14, “1968 Convention Riots Radicalize the Streets,” with Dr. Jerome Gillen
Michele Lynn DeVries ’13, “Not All Smoke and Mirrors: The Growth and Development of Magic During the Renaissance in Europe,” with Sheila J. Rabin
Nicholas Paoletti Lynch ’12, “The Land that Weeps: The Roots and Causes of Instability in Modern-Day Zimbabwe,” with Dr. Eugenia Palmegiano
Chris Giorlando ’11, “The Great Revival: The Rise of the Universities in the Middle Ages,” with Dr. Sheila J. Rabin
Christopher Frakes ’11, “From the Negro Leagues to the Minor Leagues: How and Why Major League Baseball Integrated and the Impact of Racial Integration on Three Negro League Teams,” with Dr. Jerome Gillen
Maria Anna “Peaches” Dela Paz ’10, “Charlotte Perkins Gilman and ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’: Contemporary and Modern Receptions,” with Dr. Jerome Gillen
John Massey ’08, “Machiavelli: The Man Who Could Not Be Courtier,” with Dr. Sheila Rabin
Matthew Abatemarco ’01, “Person or Property: Locke’s Effect on the Abolitionist Writings of the 1800s,” with Dr. Hermann Platt
Faculty Research
Dr. Michael deGruccio, Associate Professor and Chair
Out now! Michael deGruccio, The Strange and Tragic Wounds of George Cole’s America: A Tale of Manhood, Sex, and Ambition in the Civil War Era (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2025). In his review of Dr. deGruccio’s text, historian Edward L. Ayers, author of The Thin Light of Freedom: The Civil War and Emancipation in the Heart of America, winner of the Lincoln Prize, says, “Michael deGruccio has written a haunting story of ambition, injury, jealousy, and violence in the crucible of the American Civil War. Here, with ingenious research and understated but powerful prose, is the ‘real war’ that Walt Whitman worried would ‘never get into the books.’”
Dr. John Johnson, Jr., Associate Professor
John Johnson, Jr., Ph.D. presented the 2023 Philip Roth Lecture at the Newark Public Library. With his lecture, Dr. Johnson joins the ranks of prestigious Philip Roth Lecture alumni including international bestseller and Booker Prize-winning author of Midnight’s Children, Sir Salman Rushdie; Princeton professor, Pulitzer Prize finalist, and Grammy Award-nominee, Sean Wilentz; and New York Times journalist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The 1619 Project, Nicole Hannah-Jones. His talk titled, “History, Memory, and the Weequahic Section of Newark,” offered an erudite and empathic meditation on the entangled physical histories of the Jewish and African American populations which call Weequahic home. Dr. Johnson is currently working on a monograph on the history of the Weequahic Section of Newark.
Dr. Maria Americo, Assistant Professor
Maria Americo, Ph.D. recently contributed two object histories to the upcoming second edition of the Encyclopedia of the Global Middle Ages (Bloomsbury). Her entries on two works of art from the medieval period will help tell the story of the interconnected, global Middle Ages. Dr. Americo often uses visual art in her courses to teach students about reading artifacts to glean information about the past. Her interests expand from the Greco-Roman history of science, to the medieval world of Islam. She is currently working on a manuscript proposal for a historical biography of Kadijah, first wife of the prophet Muhammad.
Dr. David Gerlach, Professor
Now in paperback! David W. Gerlach, The Economy of Ethic Cleansing: The Transformation of the German-Czech Borderlands after World War II (Cambridge University Press, 2017). Gerlach’s text is winner of the 2018 Radomír Luža Prize awarded by The American Friends of the Documentation Center of Austrian Resistance and Marshall Plan Center for European Studies, University of New Orleans.