On March 26th Emory University will host a campus-wide event on the roles of the interdisciplinary humanities and liberal arts at Emory and the future of the interdisciplinary humanities in higher education and society more broadly. Featured participants include President Claire E. Sterk, Provost Dwight A. McBride, Earl Lewis, the outgoing President of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Mariët Westermann, the Executive Vice President of the Mellon Foundation. History faculty Daniel LaChance and Pablo Palomino (a historian at Emory Oxford), both Mellon Faculty Fellows, are featured participants at the conference. Read more about the conference and other participants here.
Month / February 2018
$300,000 Mellon Grant Supports Updates and Expansions to ‘Voyages: The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database’
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded Emory’s Center for Digital Scholarship a $300,000 grant to support the updating and expansion of Voyages: The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database. Robert W. Woodruff Emeritus Professor of History David Elits and Professor of History Allen E. Tullos are co-directors of the project. The funding will specifically fund the development of “People of the Atlantic Slave Trade” (PAST), a new feature of the database and website focused on the biographies of historical figures linked to the slave trade. Read more about the grant at the Emory News Center.
History Graduate Program to Host Panel on Career Diversity
The Graduate Program of the Emory History Department will host a panel discussion titled “Beyond the Professoriate: Diverse Careers in History” on March 19. Panelists will include three former graduate students: Sarita Alami, a Brand Marketing Manager at MailChimp; Ed Hatfield, Editor of the New Georgia Encyclopedia; and Chris Sawula, Visual Resources Librarian in the Department of Art History at Emory.
Patrick N. Allitt Featured on ‘History News Network’
History News Network Features Editor Yoni Anijar recently profiled Patrick N. Allitt, Cahoon Family Professor of American History, in an article titled “The Historian Who Denies Climate Change? Not so Fast.” The piece discusses (and refutes) accusations that Allitt is a denier of climate change, a misreading of his recent work A Climate of Crisis: America in the Age of Environmentalism (Penguin, 2014). Read the full piece here.
Daniel LaChance on Racism, the Death Penalty, and ‘Black Mirror’ in ‘The Washington Post’
Assistant Professor of History Daniel LaChance recently penned an article for The Washington Post’s “Made by History” section. LaChance is an expert on law and American culture. Read the article, titled “How ‘Black Mirror’ exposes the racist reality of the death penalty in America,” and also see LaChance’s Executing Freedom: The Cultural Life of Capital Punishment in the United States (University of Chicago Press, 2016).
History Honors Student Liza Gellerman Wins Travel Grant for Original Research
Congratulations to Liza Gellerman, history honors student, who has been awarded a 2018 Bradley Currey, Jr. Seminar travel grant. This travel grant, which supports Emory University undergraduate students who are planning to conduct original research in archival repositories, will enable Ms. Gellerman to continue research on her honors thesis “Framing the Nuremberg Einsatzgruppen Trial: An American Narratives” (Honors Director: Astrid M. Eckert).
Yannakakis and Peterson Win Emory Women of Excellence Awards
Congratulations to Yanna Yannakakis and Dawn Peterson for winning Emory Women of Excellence Awards. Yannakakis is Associate Professor of History, Director of Graduate Studies, and 2018-2021 Winship Distinguished Research Professorship in History. She was recognized with the Berky Dolores Abreu Spirit Award. Peterson, Assistant Professor of History, won the Award for Excellence in Pedagogy. Read more about these distinguished honors below.
Berky Dolores Abreu Spirit Award
This award recognizes a woman in the greater Emory community whose presence has fostered the personal and academic growth of students, faculty, staff people, and/or departments. During her 13 years at Emory, Berky Abreu touched the lives of countless individuals. Highly involved in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and College Staff communities, Berky served as the Academic Department Administrator for Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She also served on the President’s Commission on the Status of Women, the Center for Women at Emory Advisory Board, and the College Staff Consortium, including a term as Chair of the College Staff Consortium. Berky’s extensive contributions to the Emory community were recognized by awards including Emory University’s Award of Distinction and the Unsung Heroine award, and she was recognized as the Emory College Staff Consortium Employee of the Year. What was truly remarkable about Berky, however, was not only the extent and depth of her commitment and service to the Emory community, but the warmth she brought to the lives of everyone with whom she came into contact, her unparalleled joie de vivre, and her unique ability to lift up each and every person who came into her office. She made everyone she met feel special, and lit up every room she entered with her contagious humor and zest for life. Berky’s boundless kindness and concern for others and her ability to show us the goodness of people and life even in the most challenging of situations continue to be an inspiration for all of us.
Award for Excellence in Pedagogy
The Award for Excellence in Teaching and Pedagogy recognizes any teacher (lecturer, professor, graduate student, or teaching assistant) at Emory whose teaching methods, syllabi, and/or course design addresses women’s issues or matters of feminist importance with innovation and success. The award honors a teacher whose record demonstrates a willingness to bring gender issues into the classroom in creative and inspiring ways.
Dr. Carol Anderson Presents John F. Morgan Sr. Distinguished Faculty Lecture for Emory Founders Week
We are sorry to announce that today’s Distinguished Faculty Lecture has been cancelled since the main speaker, Dr. Carol Anderson, is incapacitated by the flu. The lecture will be re-scheduled soon. Stay tuned.
Dr. Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor and Chair of African American Studies, will present the John F. Morgan Sr. Distinguished Faculty Lecture this year as a part of Emory Founders Week. Anderson is an historian and affiliated faculty in the Department of History. At the event on Tuesday, February 6 she will speak about her most recent and acclaimed work, White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide (Bloomsbury, 2016). Read more about the event at the Emory News Center.
ACLS Collaborative Research Fellowship Awarded to Thomas D. Rogers and Colleague Jeffrey Manuel
Congratulations to Thomas D. Rogers, Associate Professor of Modern Latin American History and NEH/Arthur Blank Distinguished Teaching Professor. Rogers and Jeffrey Manuel (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville) won an ACLS Collaborative Research Fellowship for a project titled “Agriculture’s Energy: Learning from the History of Biofuels in Brazil and the United States.” Rogers and Manuel will use the two-year fellowship to write a book on the comparative and transnational history of biofuel production in the two largest producing countries in the world. This co-authored book will unearth a century of biofuels history in Brazil and the United States. Understanding how and why certain patterns and problems arose out of these biofuels programs will shed light on issues arising in the emerging renewable energy regime.