Program: PhD, U.S. History, completed August 2017 

Email: aserafine@luc.edu

Office: 557 Crown Center

Advisor: Dr. Michelle Nickerson

My dissertation, "'Let's Get Together and Chew the FAT': Women, Size, and Community in Modern America" engages with the history of women and Gender, history of the body, and fat history.  It explores twentieth-century communities formed around body size, and the women who created these groups and were re-created by them.

I have also published work on the experiences of women in the Civil War and presented at conferences on topics ranging from frontier history in Buffy the Vampire Slayer to the hobo in Gilded Age popular culture.

• PhD Candidate, History, Loyola University Chicago, U.S., Gender, and Modern Europe
• Certificate in Women and Gender Studies, Loyola University Chicago, 2011
• M.A., History, Loyola University Chicago, U.S. History, 2010
• B.A., History, University of Pittsburgh, Modern Europe, 2007

• ​“He Filled My Heart with Doubt: The Southern Belle’s Love and Duty in the Civil War.” Romance Fiction and American Culture. Eds. William Gleason and Eric Selinger. New York: Ashgate Press, March 2016.  
• "He Loves Me. He is a Yank." Essay published online at The Popular Romance Project, an interactive, content-rich website created by the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, 2012
• "Satan was a Lesbian: Queer Pulp in the Cold War Era." An Omeka Exhibit, 2012. 

• "Hallelujah, He's a Bum! Reformers, Muckrakers, and the Creation of the Manly Tramp," Loyola History Graduate Student Conference, November 2013.

• "A Union Heart: Josie Underwood's Civil War," Popular Culture/American Culture Associations' National Conference, Boston, April 2012

• "He Filled My Heart With Doubt: The Southern Belle's Love and Duty in the Civil War," Loyola's Women and Leadership Archives' Lecture Series, March 2012.

• "Hoop-Skirts and Chick Lit: the Southern Woman's Imagination in the Civil War," Loyola History Graduate Student Conference, November 2011.

• "Ruin-Nation: Space, Place, Race and Urban Ruinscapes," Northern Illinois Graduate Student Association Conference, October 2011.

• "Mysteries of a Hobo's Life: Tramping in the Masculine Imagination," Loyola History Graduate Student Conference, April 2011.
• "Buffy Fights a Bear: Joss Whedon's Vampire Slayer as Frontier Heroine," Popular Culture/American Culture Associations’ National Conference, St. Louis, March 2010.

• Ramonat Fellowship, 2016-2017
• Loyola University Teaching Fellowship, 2015-2016
• Loyola History Department Assistantship, 2010-2015
• Alpha Sigma Nu Inductee, 2013

• President, Loyola University History Graduate Student Association, 2012-2013
• Graduate student representative, Council of Graduate School Programs, 2012-2014
• History department representative, GSAC, 2012-2013
• HGSA Conference Co-Chair, 2015
• Member of the HGSA Conference Planning Committee, 2011-2014
• Secretary, Loyola University History Graduate Student Association, 2011-2012

• Online Teaching Certificate, received for completion of the Faculty Center for Ignatian Pedagogy’s Online Teaching Course, Summer 2015.
• Teacher of Record, History 102, Western Civilization from the Seventeenth Century, Fall 2015, Loyola
• Teacher of Record, History 102, Western Civilization from the Seventeenth Century, Spring 2015, Loyola
• Teacher of Record, History 211, U.S. to 1865, Spring 2014, Loyola
• Teaching assistant and discussion leader for History 101, 102, and 211, 2010-2014, Loyola