Meet our Graduate Students

Over 50 graduate students currently study, teach, and conduct research in the Department of History at Western Michigan University.

The History Graduate Student Organization is an advocacy group for graduate students and sponsors guest lectures, workshops for professional development and social events. Several students have received prestigious Fulbright grants or other fellowships and awards to undertake archival research in Britain, France, Latvia, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain, Italy, Peru, Liberia and the United States. Students serve as members of departmental and University committees, and administer an active HGSO.

Student feature

Jack Goodman is a doctoral candidate in medieval history and a recipient of a J. William Fulbright Grant to Italy. Goodman spent the 2011-12 academic year living and researching in Palermo, Italy. It was Jack’s third research trip to the island of Sicily where he examined 14th century Latin documents at the State Archives (Archivio di Stato) of Palermo. During his year in Italy, he transcribed and translated highly abbreviated commercial contracts recorded by medieval notaries as he investigated evidence of slavery in late medieval Palermo. 

In the fourth year of his doctoral program, he analyzed the results of his research and began writing his dissertation, “Slavery and Manumission in Fourteenth Century Palermo,” which pursues the lives of medieval slaves (a mixed population of Muslims, Greeks, Tartars, and Sub-Saharan Africans) beyond their period of bondage. He examined the process of manumission and the lives these freedmen were able to make for themselves in the Sicilian city to which they were forcibly relocated. 

In addition to his research, he teaches a section of “World History to 1500” and served as the graduate mentor for the department and president of the History Graduate Student Organization.

Connect with others

Meet our students and find out how they have made the most of their lives at WMU: