Education

Bachelor of Arts; Public History
Certificate; Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion
Certificate; Journalism

Biography

Crystalina is a second-year Bridge Fellow in the Department of History, where her focus is on post-Reformation Christianity and women's and gender history. 

Her passion lies in reading and writing, so Crystalina has been excited to explore gender history through a lens of the French and British empires, intersecting the gender identities of people in the colonies with their religious identities and faith practices. She has been seeking these voices through the published works that the typical person would have been able to publish, and would have been able to read (or have read to them) - namely, pamphlets, flyleafs, and newspapers. She is currently focusing on sources first published in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

During her undergraduate career, Crystalina became heavily involved in student government and advocacy groups, including serving as an undergraduate TA, ESL tutor, and Peer Diversity Educator. This passion has carried over into her time here at UVA, and she served one term on the Graduate History Student Association (GHSA) as the Bridge Student Representative. 

Crystalina is also involved in the greater Charlottesville community as Vice Chair of the Policy Council for the Monticello Area Community Action Agency, which runs the Head Start pre-K education program in the Charlottesville City and Albemarle County area.

In her time not spent researching or working on coursework, Crystalina enjoys hanging out with her children, singing, playing and listening to music, reading fantasy and science fiction novels, and getting together with her friends to play games or watch movies. She also has a podcast called The Witchy Historian, where she discusses the people, laws, and events that led up to the witch trials of the early modern period and juxtaposes the stereotypes about witchcraft against modern pagan practices and their historical and cultural roots.

Publications

"Black Masculinity in the Civil Rights Era: Non-Violent Protest Versus Armed Self-Defense." University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire, ASTRA Journal, 2022.

"Rachel Speght and the Muzzling of a King: The Beginning of the "Calvinist Revolution" in the Pamphlets of a Spinster," University of Virginia, Master's Thesis, 2024.

Research

Plans for the future: Crystalina will matriculate into the Ph.D. program at the University at Buffalo in August 2024. She will join the Department of History as a Schomburg Fellow and continue her research on Transatlantic Empire with Dr. Robin Mitchell as her advising faculty.