Joseph Sturgeon

Joseph Sturgeon is a first-year History PhD student at Yale studying the contours of capitalism, Marxism, imperialism, and the Black Radical Tradition. Joseph is a recent graduate of Howard University where he earned his B.A in History with a minor in Caribbean Studies, and former Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow. His research interests lie at the intersection of the study of capitalism, Black intellectual thought, and Black radicalism. His senior thesis, “Sugar, the State, and A Commercial Empire: The Bass Family and the Exploitation of the Dominican Cane Sugar Industry,” takes a critical look at two American industrialists, their involvement in the Dominican Republic’s early sugar industry, and their relationship to American imperialism. He has presented research at the 2022 and 2023 Mellon Mays Undergraduate Conferences, as well as the 2023 Northeast Regional Honors Conference. His work has also been published in Ukweli: The Howard University Undergraduate Research Journal.