Dr. Debjani Bhattacharyya, a 2014 doctoral program alum, was recently awarded a competitive, multi-year grant from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) for the project, “Climate Risk Management: A Historical Perspective.” The project investigates the role of financial institutions in the making of climate science, including by engaging financial institutions’ archives from the 18th century onward, and addresses the fundamental question, “Why have we overwhelmingly turned to the market to tackle the climate crisis?” The full abstract of the project follows:
This project explores why market-based tools – such as carbon trading, weather derivatives, parametric insurance, and catastrophe bonds – have become central to managing climate risk. Examining insurance archives from the eighteenth century onward, it analyzes how financial institutions shaped meteorological knowledge, risk measurement tools, underwriting policies and enforcement mechanisms. The research aims to explain how the business of risk management influenced evolving conceptions of climate and why market mechanisms, rather than regulation, dominate current climate-risk governance.
Bhattacharyya is Professor of the History of the Anthropocene at the University of Zürich. She is the author of Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta(Cambridge University Press, 2018), which won the 2019 honorable mention for the best book in Urban History. She completed her doctorate under the advisement of Dr. Jeffrey Lesser, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History.
Emory News recently featured history and business double major Leah Wang among a select group of Emory’s exceptional student-athletes. Wrapping up her junior year at Emory, Wang has been a leader on the pitch, throughout campus, and beyond. She testified before the U.S. congress about Title IX, was selected for the NCAA Division III Student Immersion Program, and served as the founder and president of the Asian and Pacific Islander Student-Athlete group. Find a quote from the feature about Wang below, and read the all the profiles of the featured student-athletes: “How Emory athletes find the Eagle Edge.”
“Balancing my commitments and social life has been challenging, but I’ve been able to maintain strong academic performance, continue to grow as an athlete and build meaningful friendships along the way,” Wang says. “It’s still a work in progress, but I’ve learned to stay grounded and appreciate the opportunities I have.”
In December the U.S. Senate passed a bill to extend by four years the work of the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board. The nonpartisan group is appointed by the U.S. president and dedicated to investigate and release federal records relating to unsolved, racially-motivated murders from the civil rights era (1940-1979). With bipartisan support, the bill now heads to the U.S. House of Representatives.
The cold cases project has strong ties to Emory College and the Emory History Department. Professor Hank Klibanoff, Associated Faculty in History, is co-chair of the review board. Klibanoff directs the Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project (to which multiple History students have contributed) and is the creator and host of the award-winning podcast Buried Truths.
“What we are doing is simply trying to, you know, excavate the records and get them released, review them, review them with the FBI, review them with the Department of Justice, review them with the National Archive,” said Emory University Professor Hank Klibanoff, a co-chair for the Civil Rights Cold Case Records Review Board.
The Emory History Department mourns the death of Rosalyn Page, who served as the department administrator for more than 25 years before her retirement in 2008. Becky Herring, current department administrator, writes that Rosalyn was “not only a patient and encouraging mentor, she was also a loyal and supportive friend. Her fun-loving spirit, joyful nature, and kind heart will be greatly missed by her loving family and cherished friends.” A funeral service will be held on Thursday, March 12, 2026, at 1:30 pm in Glenn Memorial UMC’s Little Chapel at Emory University in Atlanta. In remembrance, consider a donation to WABE or Friends of Disabled Adults and Children.
Rosalyn’s obituary, chronicling her rich life and character, follows:
Rosalyn Florence Page, beloved mother, sister, aunt and cherished friend, passed away peacefully in Tucker, Georgia, on February 16, 2026, at the age of 82, surrounded by her family and those she held dear.
Born on April 25, 1943, in Sapulpa, Oklahoma, Rosalyn was the first daughter of Joe E. Page and Cora Jane Page. She spent her childhood in Bristow, Oklahoma, and later in Englewood, Colorado, where she developed the curiosity, independence, and love of learning that would shape her life. She earned her bachelor’s degree from Colorado State University, an accomplishment she carried with pride.
Rosalyn married Mike Phillips, and together they raised two children while living in Colorado, Kansas, and ultimately Stone Mountain, Georgia. Whether substitute teaching, cheering at countless ball games or savoring summer camping, Rosalyn poured her heart into the moment. Her devotion to her children was unwavering, and she nurtured them with the same warmth, humor, and optimism she offered to everyone she met.
She retired in 2008 from Emory University in Atlanta, where she served for more than 25 years as an Academic Department Administrator in the History Department. Rosalyn found fulfillment in her work, forming lasting friendships with colleagues and students who admired her intelligence, steadiness, and generous spirit.
A woman of many passions, Rosalyn was a longtime member of Glenn Memorial Methodist Church and an enthusiastic participant in the Atlanta Cajun Zydeco Association, where she embraced her love of dance and community. Known for her cheery smile, kindness, and unwaveringly positive outlook, she had a remarkable ability to make others feel seen, valued, and loved — and she never let them forget it.
Rosalyn was a lifelong reader with an insatiable thirst for knowledge, a talented cook and patient seamstress. She was a dedicated student of the French language, enjoyed yoga and genealogy. She was a treasured friend to all who knew her. Her presence brought light, laughter, and comfort, and her absence will be felt deeply.
She is survived by her daughter Lisa Phillips (Mike Owens) of Brevard, North Carolina; her son Trace A. Phillips (Jen Moran) of Edwards, Colorado; her sister Melissa Page (Hugh Simpson) of Los Lunas, New Mexico; and her former husband Mike Phillips (Susanne Pinkley) of Alpharetta, Georgia. Rosalyn is also remembered with love by many extended family members and countless friends whose lives she touched. Her memory will continue to inspire those who were fortunate enough to know her.
Doctoral alum Claudia Kreklau, Honorary Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of St Andrews, has published a new article in the journal German History. Titled “Vaterland, c.1780–1870,” the piece examines the multiple and shifting meanings of the German-language term meaning “fatherland.” The full abstract follows:
This article analyses the changing semiotics of the term Vaterland between 1780 and 1870 in a variety of German-language discussions by reconstructing specific instances of meaning. It finds that the term Vaterland held multiple meanings due to the range of religious, philosophic and political frameworks and historical frames of reference in which this term operated. A great variety of speakers produced and exercised meanings synchronically and modified them diachronically. Far from being synonymous with better-studied terms such as Germany or Volk, Vaterland meant something different in every instance of usage—and reflected contestations for the fatherland itself in the period examined here.
Doctoral program alum Dr. Lena Oak Suk (PhD, ’14) has published her first book, In the Darkness of the Cinema: Gender and Moviegoing in Early Twentieth-Century Urban Brazil, with Pittsburgh University Press. Focused on the cities of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, Suk’s work offers an innovative analysis of how movies and moviegoers reshaped gendered perceptions and gendered realities in urban Brazil at the beginning of the last century. Rielle Navitski (University of Georgia) praises In the Darkness of the Cinema as “an engaging account of how the movies transformed urban space and women’s participation in public life in Brazil.”
Suk is a research affiliate at the Institute of Historical Studies at the University of Texas at Austin and Assistant Director of Investigator Skill-Building in the Office of the Vice President for Research, Scholarship & Creative Endeavor at UT. She completed her graduate training under the advisement of Dr. Jeffrey Lesser, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History.
Read the abstract of Suk’s monograph below, and find more information on Pittsburgh UP’s book page.
Gender and sexual morality, and their intersections with race and class, were central to the formation of urban Brazil in the twentieth century. In the Darkness of the Cinema takes a wide-ranging and innovative approach to gender and moviegoing culture in Brazilian society. By focusing on the flirtations and romances of the movie theater, as well as the intrigue and moral panic that they caused, Suk creates a rich portrait of spectatorship. Where women went to the movies, who they met, and what they did in the darkness were key questions that brewed among overlapping but disparate circles, from film intellectuals and filmmakers to legislators and public health officials, as well as the moviegoers themselves. Amassing sources located traditionally within film culture as well as outside of it, such as film magazines, interviews, comics, literature, and songs, Suk shows that movie theaters and moviegoers made an indelible mark on the urban landscapes of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
Doctoral program alumnus Dr. Craig Perry has published his first monograph, Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt: A History, with Princeton University Press. Perry’s book reconstructs the social history of slavery in Cairo at a pivotal period in the city’s history, showing how the slave trade and slavery shaped everyday life, state diplomacy, and the formation Jewish and Arab-Islamic culture.
Dr. Arnold Franklin, Associate Professor at Queens College, City University of New York, describes Perry’s book as “a major contribution to historians’ understanding of one of the most pervasive and consequential institutions in the medieval Islamic world.” David Eltis, Robert W. Woodruff Professor Emeritus at Emory, describes the work as “a brilliant reconstruction of slavery and slaveowners in the Jewish community of medieval Cairo drawing on the vast but highly fragmentary records of a synagogue.”
Perry received his doctorate in 2014. He is assistant professor in the Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies Department at Emory. Read the full abstract of Slavery and the Jews of Medieval Egypt below and find more on the Princeton UP book page.
In this book, Craig Perry mines a remarkable cache of fragmentary documents preserved in an Egyptian synagogue to write a new history of slavery and the slave trade in the medieval Middle East. These documents—which range from the everyday correspondence of traveling merchants to legal queries sent to Jewish jurists—provide the richest surviving archive for the social history of slavery during the centuries when Cairo was an imperial and commercial capital at the intersection of the Mediterranean and Indian Ocean worlds. Perry draws on this archive, known as the Cairo Geniza, to shed new light on such crucial topics as the slave trade in state diplomacy, the entanglements of gender and household slavery, and the lives of the enslaved.
Perry chronicles a protean slave trade that trafficked enslaved people from Europe, Africa, and India to the Egyptian market. His account cuts across different scales of analysis, from the macro-level of imperial rule to the micro-level of the family kitchen. Along the way, he upends the traditional story of Passover; medieval Jews, he writes, could explain slavery to their children by pointing to the enslaved people who served the holiday meal. When freed, some former slaves converted to Judaism and became the parents of Jewish children. Perry’s narrative reveals a world, long hidden from historians, in which enslaved people made their way through the alleys of Cairo, toiled in the workshops of apothecaries, and found ways to evade the surveillance of their owners. With this book, Perry writes enslaved people into the social and economic life of medieval Islamic society.
Dr. Camille Goldmon (PhD, ’22), Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina, is publishing a series of stories on Instagram and TikTok for Black History Month. Titled “Black HiSTORIES,” the series broaches topics ranging from early efforts by Carter G. Woodson to celebrate Black history to the lives and work of seminal figures like Ida B. Wells-Barnett and Fannie Lou Hamer.
Goldmon’s research centers on twentieth-century United States history, Southern history, and agrarianism. She completed her dissertation, “On the Right Side of Radicalism: African American Farmers, Tuskegee Institute, and Agrarian Radicalism in the Alabama Black Belt, 1881–1940,” in 2022 under the advisement of Dr. Carol Anderson.
Find the series via her handle camigoldmon on Instagram and TikTok.
Jim Brophy, Francis H. Squire Professor of History at the University of Delaware, describes The Making of Modern Eating as “a tour de force that promises to be a field-defining work.” Kreklau, he continues, is “a historian with a capacious and bold historical imagination…a rising star in our field.”
Kreklau is Honorary Lecturer in Modern European History at the University of St Andrews, and she is the three-time prize-winning author of seven academic articles. She completed her PhD in 2018 under the advisement of Dr. Brian Vick.
The African-American Intellectual History Society has named the finalists for its annual Pauli Murray Book Prize, and Dr. Danielle Wiggins (PhD, ’18) was short-listed for her newly-published monograph Black Excellence: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Black Liberalism (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025). Named for pioneering lawyer, scholar, activist, and theorist Pauli Murray, the prize recognizes the best book concerning Black intellectual history published in the preceding year.
Described as a “provocative new history of modern black liberalism,” Black Excellence has already received notable praise. For instance, George Derek Musgrove, co-author of Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital, writes: “Beautifully written and wonderfully insightful, Black Excellence is a must read for anyone who wants to understand both the liberatory and disciplinary history of black liberalism in the post–civil rights era.”
Wiggins is Assistant Professor of History at Georgetown University. She completed under doctoral work under the advisement of Dr. Joe Crespino, Jimmy Carter Professor of History and Interim Dean of Emory College of Arts & Sciences.
Read the abstract of Black Excellence below, and learn more about the other nominees for the 2026 Murray prize.
Black Excellence offers a provocative new history of modern black liberalism by situating the seemingly conservative tendencies of black elected officials in the post–civil rights era within neoliberal American politics and an enduring black liberal tradition.
In the 1970s and ’80s, cities across the country elected black mayors for the first time. Just as these officials gained political power, however, their cities felt the full brunt of white flight and deindustrialization. Tasked with governing cities in crisis, black political leaders responded in seemingly conservative ways to the social problems that austerity worsened. Nowhere was this response more evident than in Atlanta. In the nation’s preeminent black urban regime, black leaders such as mayors Maynard Jackson and Andrew Young employed the power of policing and the private sector to discipline black Atlantans, hoping they would equip vulnerable communities with the tools to manage the volatility of the era.
Danielle Wiggins shows that these punitive responses to the problems of crime, family instability, and unemployment were informed by black liberalism’s disciplinary impulse: an enduring tendency to reform behaviors believed to threaten black survival in a white supremacist nation. Forged in response to the violence of Jim Crow, the disciplinary impulse relied upon notions of pathology and its inverse, black excellence. Wiggins identifies several black liberal efforts to cultivate excellent black communities, families, and workers in the post–civil rights era, including community policing, corporate-sponsored family initiatives, and black entrepreneurship.
In embracing disciplinary strategies, however, black liberals often focused on behavior at the expense of addressing structural inequality. Consequently, their approaches dovetailed with those of the “New” Democrats, whose post–Great Society social policies were informed by urban black liberals. Black Excellence reveals thus how urban black liberals not only reshaped black politics but, as Democrats, also helped build the neoliberal Democratic Party.
