Dr. Joseph Crespino recently appeared on 11 Alive to discuss the life and legacy of Dolly Parton, who died at the age of 80 on August 25, 2026. Crespino discussed Parton’s uniquely broad appeal amid stark political and cultural polarization. An expert on the history of the United States with a focus on the U.S. South since Reconstruction, Crespino also highlighted Parton’s impact on global perceptions of the peoples and cultures of the rural South, particularly Appalachia.
Crespino is Senior Associate Dean of Faculty, Divisional Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Jimmy Carter Professor of History.
Dr. Daniel LaChance, Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Fellow in Law and the Humanities and Associate Professor, has received a Distinguished Achievement Award from his alma mater, Carleton College. LaChance was one of just three people in his graduating class of 2001 to receive the award, which “recognizes exceptional achievement and impact within the field or fields of professional accomplishment, non-professional pursuit, or volunteer service.” Read the award citation below:
Daniel LaChance ’01 is a leading scholar, teacher, and public intellectual in the field of American legal studies whose work has been widely recognized for its originality, impact, and interdisciplinary reach. After studying English at Carleton, he earned his PhD in American studies from the University of Minnesota, where his dissertation received the Best Dissertation Award in the Arts & Humanities. During his graduate studies, he was recognized for his exceptional promise, winning national awards such as the Graduate Student Paper Prize from the Law & Society Association and securing prestigious William Stout and Thomas Wallace Fellowships. LaChance’s career is marked by significant scholarly achievements, including the publication of his highly acclaimed first book, Executing Freedom: The Cultural Life of Capital Punishment in the United States (2016), which earned the Choice Outstanding Academic Title Award. He also co-authored Crimesploitation: Crime, Punishment, and Pleasure on Reality Television (2022), a pioneering study that bridges the gap between legal history and popular culture. Currently associate professor of history at Emory University, he has been honored with the John Emory Award for Teaching and Advising and appointed as a Winship Distinguished Research Professor. His commitment to public engagement is further demonstrated by his frequent contributions to The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Newsweek. LaChance is a beloved teacher, honored for his mentorship and dedication to students and his deep commitment to public service, evidenced by his teaching in Georgia prisons. Shaped by his Carleton education, he exemplifies intellectual excellence, humility, and a profound commitment to justice.
The History Department celebrates Senior Graduate Program Administrator Katie Wilson on completing twenty years of service to Emory University. Katie has been instrumental to the success of our graduate students and the graduate program as a whole. This milestone was recognized at the Emory College of Arts & Sciences Staff Service Awards Ceremony and at a gathering of History Department faculty and staff colleagues. Thank you, Katie, for your exceptional work.
The Emory History Department is pleased to welcome four new doctoral students for the fall 2026 semester. Browse abridged profiles of the new graduate cohort below and follow the links to read their full biographies on the History Department website.
Asa Ackerly received his B.A. from Boston College. Framed by Latin American environmental and economic history, his research examines the different development models that Mexico pursued in the nineteenth century to accelerate economic growth and advance national sovereignty. His advisors are Drs. Thomas D. Rogers and Yanna Yannakakis.
Theophilus Humphrey is an Atlanta native and received his B.A. and M.A. from Georgia State University. He studies the labor, entrepreneurial networks, and community institutions that African Americans built across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, paying particular attention to the Sweet Auburn district. His advisors are Drs. Crystal Sanders and Carl Suddler.
Micah Lynn received his B.A. from the University of Southern Mississippi and M.A. from the University of Kentucky. Lynn studies the intersection of racial violence, memory, and place in the American South and its borderlands. He aims to use oral history to extend the study of lynching further into the 20th century. His advisors are Prof. Hank Klibanoff, Dr. Allen E. Tullos, and Dr. Jason Morgan Ward.
Sophie Reed received her B.A. from the University of Michigan. She is interested in race and ethnicity, media studies, women and gender studies with a focus on health, disability studies, cultural history, American studies, and archives. Her interdisciplinary research sociohistorically contextualizes the phenomenon of culturally-mediated eating disorders and body image in minority populations in the US across the 20th century. Her graduate advisors are Drs. Eric L. Goldstein, Ellie R. Schainker, and Chris Suh.
Dr. Andrew G. Britt (PhD, ’18) has published his first book, I’ll Samba Someplace Else: A Spatial History of Race, Ethnicity, and Displacement in São Paulo, with Duke University Press. Someplace Else charts the interwoven history of three of the city’s most iconic neighborhoods, popularly known as “African” Brasilândia, “Japanese” Liberdade, and “Italian” Bela Vista. Drawing on granular archival research, historical GIS, and sustained engagement with African-descendent cultural organizations in São Paulo, Britt demonstrates how the mid-twentieth-century construction of these neighborhoods served both to reproduce racial inequities and bolster discourses of multicultural harmony.
Mural by artist JOKS in São Paulo’s Brasilândia neighborhood.
Barbara Weinstein, Silver Professor of History at New York University, offered the following praise: “Andrew Britt has given us a remarkable book. By combining the latest digital tools with a trove of archival and oral sources, he enables us to see the city of São Paulo from entirely new angles.”
Britt is Assistant Professor in the Department of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He completed his doctoral training in 2018 under the advisement of Drs. Jeffrey Lesser and Thomas D. Rogers.
The Emory News Center recently published a feature story about the research led by Dr. Jeffrey Lesser, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History, in the Bom Retiro neighborhood of São Paulo, Brazil. Headlined “Understanding health, history and environment in urban Brazil,” the piece highlights the innovative methods that inform Lesser’s work, including for his most recent book, Living and Dying in São Paulo: Immigrants, Health, and the Built Environment in Brazil (Duke University Press, 2025). The article also describes the productive cross-disciplinary collaborations that Lesser has cultivated with graduate and undergraduate students, including second-year doctoral student Paula Manfredini and History honors student Lucia Alexeyev.
Find an excerpt of the piece below, and read the full article.
“Lesser, who frequently visits the neighborhood accompanied by student researchers who are just as likely to be medical, theology or public health scholars as history majors, researches the historical dimensions of how health problems arise — not just via germs or disease, but also from the many different ways people live their daily lives within the urban environment. This unusual approach brings his team into contact with a wide variety of individuals who shape public health, including policymakers, street-level health teams and and ordinary people from diverse backgrounds.
‘Being a historian is a great way to be left alone,’ says Lesser, the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Latin American History at Emory. ‘But I started to realize I would be a better scholar if I was surrounded by people who had different expertise than my own, who challenged me as opposed to my doing it all in my own head.‘”
Dr. Alison Collis Greene, Associate Professor of American religious history and Associated Faculty in the History Department, was recently recognized by the Candler School of Theology for her exceptional contributions inside and outside of the classroom. Greene received the Provost’s Distinguished Teaching Award for Excellence in Graduate and Professional Education, as well as the award for Outstanding Service to the Candler Community by a Faculty Member.
Greene’s teaching centers on United States religious history, particularly American religions as they relate to politics, wealth and poverty, race and ethnicity, the environment, and the modern rural South. She also directs the Master of Theological Studies Program.
Bruna Digiacomo Cerveira, fourth-year doctoral candidate in Latin American history, received the 2026 Beveridge Family Research Grant in Western Hemisphere History from the American Historical Association. The grant will support research for her dissertation project, “Liberated African Children Between Empires: Slavery, Freedom, and British Imperialism in Rio de Janeiro, 1831–1888.” Cerveira is among just eleven graduate students in history nationwide to receive the AHA’s Beveridge grant this cycle. Her dissertation is advised by Drs. Mariana P. Candido and Thomas D. Rogers.
Jordyn Alvarez Starr received the 2026 Laney Award for Inclusive Excellence in Graduate Education. This award recognizes students who “engage in service activities that promote inclusivity in the graduate community while also helping to develop and implement strategies to remove barriers for historically marginalized groups and helping them participate fully in graduate education and their respective professions.” Starr was one of four recipients of the award this year.
Starr is a graduate student in Latin American and Caribbean History with research interests centered on struggles against slavery and imperialism in the Spanish Caribbean, especially Puerto Rico. Starr’s dissertation project, titled “Revolutionary Rhetoric: Antislavery and Anticolonial Alliances in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico,” is advised by Drs. Adriana Chira and Yanna Yannakakis.
Emory’s 2026 Commencement ceremonies took place May 7-11, 2026, and the History Department had many reasons to celebrate. 25 History undergraduate majors or joint majors walked across the stage. Seven of those, after completing compelling original theses under the advisement of dedicated faculty, graduated with honors in History.
Latin American History doctoral candidate Alejandro Guardado defended his dissertation, titled “Indigenous Intellectuals, Cultural Brokers, and the Struggle for Native Self-Determination in Late Twentieth-Century Oaxaca, Mexico.” Kaelyn McAdam, a doctoral student in Ancient history, completed her dissertation, “Understanding the Graeculi: A Greek Roman Empire in the Third and Fourth Centuries,” and graduated in the summer of 2025. Five other graduate students received their interim master’s.
Departmental leadership, faculty, and staff celebrate these exceptional, collective accomplishments of the 2025-’26 academic year.
Yuan Zeng Ashley Tan (Fall 2025) Advisor: Tonio Andrade
The following undergraduates completed either a major or joint major in History and were recognized at the 2026 commencement:
Lucia Kumari Alexeyev Adrien Jonah Dolin Armstrong Daniel Hays Bell Kennedie Amanda Black Ciera Merie Butler Edmund Humphrey Cayley Georgios Drakos Chloe Nanci Glazer Mya D. Green* Isaac Paul Jaye Jiarui Jiang Thora Jordt Alice Liu** Victoria Mia Maza Isabella J. Mazet Lola Kate McGuire Rachel Elizabeth Mehler Javier Andres De Jesus Montano Leo Abraham Raykher Dylan Robert Sanders Villegas Joel Moa Shin Siya Sanjeev Thadani Xipei Wan Megan Xing Yiqi Zhang
* Graduating summer 2026 ** Graduating fall 2026
The following students completed honors thesis and graduated with honors in History.
Lucia Kumari Alexeyev, “Vieques Se Levanta: A History of Health Amidst Occupation” Faculty Director: Professor Jeffrey Lesser
Daniel Bell, “Public Men in Glass Houses: Herbert Jenkins and the Remaking of the Atlanta Police Department, 1947-1972” Faculty Director: Professor Joseph Crespino
Edmund Cayley, “The First East Turkestan Republic: The Rise of 20th Century Uyghur Nationalism” Faculty Director: Professor Matthew Payne
Lola McGuire, “‘This stand I make is not alone’: Uncovering the Chicago Young Patriots Organization Women, 1968-1973” Faculty Director: Professor Iliana Yamileth Rodriguez
Leo Raykher, “Economics, Espionage, Exile: The Surveilled Life of David Drucker, Esq.” Faculty Director: Professor Jonathan Prude
Siya Thadani, “Medicalizing Difference: Science and the Making of Race in the British Empire” Faculty Director: Professor Chris Suh
Thomas Wan, “For the Nation and the Revolution: Inner Mongols in the Shadow of Empire and Civil War (1931-49)” Faculty Director: Professor Matthew Payne
