UNT history graduate students go on to sucessful careers in a variety of fields, including in positions at colleges and universities. Our graduates bring their UNT history training and skills to their roles as teachers, researchers, and administrators around the country.

Jonathan Abel

Associate Professor of History,
US Army Command and General Staff College

UNT history MA, 2011; UNT history PhD, 2014

Dr. Abel’s research and writing focus on the eighteenth-century French army, particularly the theorist Guibert. He has published two books on the subject, including his award winning Guibert’s General Essay on Tactics (2022). His third book will be published soon. Now, Abel is an Associate Professor of History at the US Army Command and General Staff College. He is active in the Society for Military History, the Consortium on the Revolutionary Era, and is a board member of the Masséna Society and an editorial board member of the War Studies Journal. “I cannot speak highly enough of my time in the History Department at UNT and the Military History Center,” he says. “The education at UNT, especially the MHC, was the best in the country. It focused on both traditional operational military history and all other aspects of history and historiography. It was broad and deep… It pushed me into the classroom, including subjects outside my field of European history, which was invaluable for my current position.”		 abel

Matt Dietz

History Department Head,
US Air Force Academy

UNT history PhD, 2020

Dr. Dietz specialized in US military history, especially air power, while completing his PhD at UNT. Now he teaches at the US Air Force Academy, where is the head of the history department. He published a book in 2020, Eagles Overhead: The History of US Air Force Airborne Forward Air Controllers, from the Meuse-Argonne to Mosul. He now has three research projects at various stages: a chapter about commercial aviation after World War II, a project about the war in Afghanistan, and a co-authored book about airpower in World War II. He says that UNT gave him a great academic foundation and prepared him to teach at the Air Force Academy.

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Nick Foreman

Senior Instructor,
Oregon State University

UNT history BA, 2009; UNT history MA, 2012, University of Florida history PhD, 2019

Dr. Foreman studied free women of color who owned property in Colonial and Early American New Orleans for his MA degree. Then he earned his PhD at the University of Florida, where his dissertation focused on the food trade in Louisiana, through which Native Americans, people of African descent, and other marginalized groups managed to create platforms of cultural and economic influence. Now he is a senior instructor of history at Oregon State University. He teaches classes on topics including Early America, food history, and the history of popular music, while also writing for both academic and public audiences. Foreman says his time at UNT “showed me what a cool job teaching could be,” while also introducing him to food history and sharpening his writing and analysis.

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Deborah Liles

Assistant Professor and W. K. Gordon Endowed Chair of Texas History,
Tarleton State University
UNT history PhD, 2013


Dr. Liles specialized in Texas history while at UNT. Her dissertation, “Southern Roots, Western Foundations: The Peculiar Institution and the Livestock Industry on the Northwestern Frontier of Texas, 1846-1864,” examined the wealth, power, and influence of enslavers who engaged in the livestock industry. She is now completing her sixth book project, a study of slavery in Texas. Her other books include the award-winning Women in Civil War Texas (2016) and Texas Women and Ranching (2019). She is an Assistant Professor at Tarleton State University, where she holds the W. K. Gordon Endowed Chair of Texas History. As a student at UNT, she says “I learned to question, analyze, and write; as a teaching assistant, I learned how to evaluate students’ work; and as a teaching fellow, I learned how to run my own class.”

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Chloe Northrop

Department Chair and Professor of History,
Connect Campus, Tarrant County College

UNT history MA, 2010; UNT history PhD, 2015

Dr. Northrup focused on 18th century Europe, and issues of gender, sexuality, and art. Her dissertation explored the sentimental exchange of material goods between England and Jamaica in the eighteenth century. She recently published a book based on it, Fashioning Society in Eighteenth-Century British Jamaica (2024). Now, she is a Professor of History at Tarrant County College’s Connect Campus. She is also working on a monograph focusing on 18th century celebrity and the life and legacy of Admiral George Rodney. “I was incredibly supported at UNT during my graduate studies,” Northrup says. She enjoyed working as a teaching assistant and teaching fellow and conducting archival research in England and Jamaica.

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Col. Jeremy Reeves

Commander
Air War College, Maxwell Air Force Base

UNT history PhD, 2024

Dr. Reeves focused on military history at UNT. His dissertation examined Allied operational response to the Nazi concentration camps at the end of the Second World War. Now, he is faculty at Air University, at the Air War College on Maxwell Air Force Base. He works in the Department of Strategy, which uses historical case studies to teach senior military officers how to analyze and assess the geo-political security environment. He is revising his dissertation into a book, while also designing new elective courses. Reeves says UNT’s history department, especially the faculty and fellows of the Military History Center, fostered “a superb educational experience.” He adds that “earning a degree from UNT equipped me to step into my role at the Air War College immediately.”

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Edith Ritt-Coulter

Lecturer of History,
University of Central Oklahoma

UNT history PhD, 2023

Dr. Ritt-Coulter earned her PhD in history with a concentration in Body, Place, Identity. Her dissertation focused on the development of Oklahoma City’s African American community in the late-19th and early-20th centuries as an urban ethnic enclave and explored the ways that urban geography shaped both economic and political opportunities. She is busily at work on a book, an article, an edited collection, as well as a publicly engaged history project on a historical African American burial site along Route 66. She says her time at UNT encouraged her to innovative in her research, think creatively, and approach topics in new ways while building a strong CV that helped her secure post-degree employment.

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