Congratulations to doctoral candidate Anastasiia Strakhova on being awarding a highly-competitive Summer Dissertation Writing Grant from the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES). The grant will support Strakhova’s work on her dissertation project, “Selective Emigration: Border Control and the Jewish Escape in Late Imperial Russia, 1881-1914.” Strakhova is advised by Drs. Eric Goldstein and Ellie R. Schainker.
Month / May 2021
Alumni Update: Richard Rawls (PhD, ’02)
Dr. Richard S. Rawls, a 2002 graduate of the doctoral program, recently provided the department with an update. Rawls holds a dual appointment in the History and Religion Departments at Georgia Gwinnett College. His recent publications include co-editing the book Curriculum Internationalization and the Future of Education (IGI Global, 2018) with Semire Dikli and Brian Etheridge. He authored two chapters in the volume: “Internationalizing a Course on the Cultural and Intellectual History of the Ancient World” and “Reflecting on New Faculty Training: Internationalized Learning Essentials” (with Semire Dikli). Rawls also composed the encyclopedia article “Peloponnesian War” for The Encyclopedia of Diplomacy (Wiley-Blackwell, 2018).
Emory News Center Features Montalvo’s Course, “Slavery and the Archive”
The Emory News Center recently wrote a feature story about Dr. Maria R. Montalvo‘s spring 2021 course, “Slavery and the Archive.” The course involved undergraduates in conducting original archival research on the lives of enslaved people, including in Emory’s extensive collections in African American history in the Woodruff Library and Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library. Dr. Erica Bruchko, a 2016 graduate of the History doctoral program and African American Studies and U.S. History Librarian at the Woodruff library, supported the students’ research. Dr. Montalvo is an Assistant Professor and in her second year at Emory. Read a quote from the Emory News Center article below along with the full piece: “History course uncovers ‘archival silences’ of enslaved people.”
“My goal is not to have them all become historians,” Montalvo says. “My goal is to help them understand how to read, learn and question effectively enough to become the best of anything they want to be.”
Students in Miller’s “The History of Skiing and Snowsports” Launch Website
This spring Dr. Judith A. Miller, Associate Professor of History, taught a new course, “The History of Skiing and Snowsports.” Explaining the genesis of the course, Miller said, “I wished to create a course that took the history of skiing and snowsports seriously, that is, a course that reflected the questions that historians have.” The students in this course have just published their final projects on a website, which was produced in collaboration with Emory’s Center for Digital Scholarship (ECDS). Browse the students’ projects on the new website, and read more about the course via the description below.
This new course explores the history of snow sports, especially skiing, from the 18th century to today. We have many topics and Zoom guests lined up. This class is not only for history majors or skiers, but also for business students, and anyone interested in environmental history, sports history, and the history of gender and race. The class will look at the military uses of skiing in World War II, the expansion of leisure sports after 1960, the development of ski schools, history of ski patrols, lift technology, emerging environmental issues, snow science, avalanche control, the history of the land and the indigenous peoples, race and inclusivity in winter sports, the transformation of ski equipment, snow fashions, and the business of ski resorts. Students who have never taken a history course and first-year students are welcome. Each student will do a short final research project. Check out the promotional video on @emoryhistory Instagram during the enrollment period. As American Historical Association Executive Director Jim Grossman says, “Everything has a history.” Skiing and snow sports have a fascinating histories.
Hagemann Awarded a Dean’s Teaching Fellowship
Doctoral candidate Luke Hagemann has received a 2021-22 Dean’s Teaching Fellowship (DTF) from Emory’s Laney Graduate School. The DTF program supports students who demonstrate excellence in teaching and who will complete their doctoral degree in the fellowship year. Each Dean’s Teaching Fellow teaches one course. Hagemann’s DTF is focused on technologically enhanced teaching, or the leveraging of technology to foster active learning in support of course goals. Advised by Dr. Judith Evans Grubbs, Hagemann’s dissertation is titled “A Fisco Petit: The Redistribution of Imperial Wealth and Property to Provincials in the Roman Empire.”
Abrahamson Receives Fellowship at the Boundary End Archaeology Research Center
Doctoral candidate Hannah Abrahamson received a 2021-22 George Stuart Residential Fellowship. The fellowship is housed at the Boundary End Archaeology Research Center, a scholarly retreat, library and meeting space place in the North Carolina mountains. The center was founded by Dr. George Stuart, a former Associate Editor of the National Geographic Magazine who, in that role, participated in many significant archeological investigations of Mesoamerican sites. The fellowship will help to support Abrahamson’s work completing her dissertation, titled “Women of the Encomienda: Households and Dependents in Sixteenth and Seventeenth-Century Yucatan, Mexico.” Her advisers are Yanna Yannakakis, Javier Villa-Flores, and Tonio Andrade.
Anderson Draws Parallels to Jim Crow Era in CNN Articles on Voter Suppression
Dr. Carol Anderson was quoted in two recent CNN articles produced as part of a series on voter suppression. The articles examine legislation in multiple states, including Georgia, that observers see as meaningfully restricting voting access and curbing voters’ rights. Anderson explains how this legislation echoes voter suppression tactics from the Jim Crow era.
Dr. Anderson is Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies, Department Chair, and Associated Faculty in the History Department. She is the author of One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy (Bloomsbury, 2018). Read an excerpt from Anderson’s contribution to the first CNN article below, along with the full versions of each: “Republican state lawmakers look to empower partisan poll watchers, setting off alarms about potential voter intimidation” and “A short history of the long conservative assault on Black voting power.”
“Carol Anderson, an historian and professor of African American Studies at Emory University, said the new proposals build on a history of voter intimidation that long has targeted people of color. ‘What’s built into this is the inequality of the system itself,’ she said. ‘You know that somebody who is Black or Hispanic will not be able to go up into an all-White precinct and start challenging those voters without having a massive law-enforcement response.’ She called the wave of new laws ‘infuriating.’ ‘It’s infuriating because we’ve done this dance before,’ Anderson said. ‘We know what a Jim Crow democracy looks like and the damage it does to the United States of America and to its people.'”
Suh Contributes to ‘TIME’ Series on Asian-American History
Dr. Chris Suh, Assistant Professor of History, recently contributed to a TIME article chronicling significant, though often unknown, moments from Asian-American history. Suh’s entry focused on the 1913 Alien Land Act in California, which effectively prevented Asian-Americans from owning agricultural land and limited their lease term to three years. Washington, Oregon, and Arizona would pass similar measures in the years following. These statutes were upheld by the Supreme Court in 1923 and only repealed in the aftermath of World War II. Read Suh’s entry for more, along with the other ten entries from scholars and activists across the U.S.: “11 Moments From Asian American History That You Should Know.”
Celebrating Doctoral Program Graduates: Drs. López Fuentes, Lu, and Ramsay
Congratulations to three doctoral students from the History Department who received their degrees in the course of the 2020-’21 academic year. Julia López Fuentes completed her degree in the summer of 2020. López Funtes’s dissertation, “Thinking Europe, Thinking Democracy: The Struggle for European Democracy in Spain, 1949-1986,” was overseen by S C Dobbs Emeritus Professor Walter Adamson and Associate Professor Astrid M. Eckert. Rebekah A. Ramsay also finished in the summer of 2020. Overseen by Associate Professor Matthew Payne, Ramsay’s dissertation was titled “Kindling the Hearths of Culture: Kazakh Citizenship and Cultural Revolution on the Soviet Frontier, 1917-1937.” Cheng-Heng Lu completed in the fall of 2020 under the advisement of Professor Tonio Andrade. His dissertation was titled “The Art of Being an Imperial Broker: The Qing Conquest of Taiwan and Maritime Society (1624-1788).”
Celebrating the Class of 2021
Congratulations to the History Department-affiliated undergraduate and graduate students receiving degrees at Emory’s 2021 commencement! Find out more information about Emory’s commencement ceremonies here. See below for a list of undergraduate students graduating with special recognition.
History Majors Graduating with Honors
Melanie Mills Dunn
Jason Paul Goodman
Colin Andrew Hutton
Cameron Vida Katz
Ryan Andrew Kelly
Sun Woo Park
Rachel Elizabeth Remmers
Max K Rotenberg
Graduating Members of the History Department Honor Society, Phi Alpha Theta, Phi Tau Chapter
Zachary Charles Ball**
Daniel Manuel Batterman
Elise Lauren Black
Colleen Elizabeth Carroll
Jessica Arevalo Dam
Melanie Mills Dunn
Jason Paul Goodman
Cameron Vida Katz
Ryan Andrew Kelly
AnnMarie Marlow
Rachel Elizabeth Remmers
Jesse Leib Steinman
Rowan M. Thomas
James L. Roark Prize in American History
Cameron Vida Katz
Matthew A. Carter Citizen-Scholar Award
Ciara Murphy
George P. Cuttino Prize in European History
Jesse Leib Steinman
James Z. Rabun Prize in U.S. History
Max K Rotenberg
Melanie Mills Dunn
Latin America & Non-Western World History Prize
Jacob Angelo DeFazio