Month / October 2022

by abritt

Rodriguez’s Class Inspires Pioneering, Undergraduate-Curated Exhibit on Latinx History

“Consciousness is Power: A Record of Emory Latinx History”

Emory Libraries has showcased a pioneering exhibit on Latinx histories in recognition of Hispanic Heritage Month. Titled “Consciousness is Power: A Record of Emory Latinx History,” the exhibit was curated by Arturo Contreras, a fourth-year student majoring in Latin American and Caribbean Studies. In the Emory News Center piece about the exhibit, Contreras describes how History Department Assistant Professor Yami Rodriguez helped to inspire the project through her class “Migrants, borders and transnational communities in the U.S.” Read an excerpt from the Emory News Center Article below along with the full piece here: “Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month with an Emory Libraries pop-up exhibit.”

As a student, Contreras wanted to integrate his community work into his academic life. In spring of 2022, he enrolled in Yamileth “Yami” Rodriguez’s special topics history class to expand as a scholar in the field of Latinx studies. Rodriguez, an assistant professor of history at Emory, inspired and supported Contreras in proposing his exhibit project to the Emory Libraries Events and Exhibits team. 

“Yami’s presence is what Emory needed, especially for students wanting to be involved with their respective communities,” Contreras says. “Her field of study and method of facilitating makes the classroom an environment of belonging and safety to explore intellectual curiosity.” 

“Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month with an Emory Libraries pop-up exhibit,” September 14, 2022.

by abritt

Crespino Analyzes “The Two Sides of Atticus Finch” on ‘Letters and Politics’

Joseph Crespino (center), from the Emory News Center.

Dr. Joseph Crespino, Jimmy Carter Professor of History, was recently interviewed on the show “Letters and Politics,” produced by the historic California community radio station 94.1 KPFA. Drawing on his most recent book, Atticus Finch: A Biography (Basic Books, 2018), Crespino discussed the seemingly-discrete representations of the American cultural icon Finch in Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird and Go Set a Watchman, which was released in 2015. Listen to the conversation here: “The Two Sides of Atticus Finch.”

by abritt

Allitt Reflects on the Life and Legacy of Queen Elizabeth II

Allitt, from an earlier Emory News Center story

Dr. Patrick Allitt, Cahoon Family Professor of American History, recently authored a piece for the Emory News Center reflecting on the life and legacy of Queen Elizabeth II, who died in September. At Emory Allitt teaches courses on American intellectual, environmental, and religious history, on Victorian Britain, and on the Great Books. He was born and raised in Britain. Read an excerpt from the piece below along with the full article: “Reflecting on the life and legacy of Queen Elizabeth II.”

I was born and raised in Britain so I’ve been hearing about the queen since early childhood. When I was five, at school for the first time, my class followed her route on a big map of North America as she traveled across Canada on an official visit. We were told that the queen was good, and that she headed the British Empire, which was also good. That was 1961.

Now I teach American history to American students. Nothing about America surprised me more when I first came here, in the 1970s, than discovering the American love affair with the British monarchy. After all, the United States fought a revolutionary war to get away from Britain; the second half of the Declaration of Independence is a detailed denunciation of King George III.

Patrick Allitt, “Reflecting on the life and legacy of Queen Elizabeth II,” Emory News Center, September 8, 2022.
by abritt

LaChance Quoted in Article on Media Coverage of Last Meal Custom

Daniel LaChance

Dr. Daniel LaChance, Winship Distinguished Research Professor in History, 2020-23, and Associate Professor of History, was quoted in an article in The Oklahoman about media coverage of the last meals that people sentenced to death request. The piece comes as the state of Oklahoma has scheduled an unprecedented number of executions between 2022 and 2024. LaChance discusses how the custom affects popular perceptions and policy of the death penalty, specifically, and crime and punishment more broadly. LaChance is the author of Executing Freedom: The Cultural Life of Capital Punishment in the United States (University of Chicago Press, 2016) and, most recently, Crimesploitation (Stanford University Press, 2022), co-written with Paul Kaplan. Read an excerpt from the piece in The Oklahoman below along with the full article: “‘When they stop serving last meals, we’ll stop reporting it.’ Oklahoma death row custom stirs debate.“

The humanizing element of the last meal ritual might contribute to the state’s justification of executions and public support for the practice, one researcher said.

“It represents a kind of way making the violence of the state look more virtuous, more civilized, more humane and not the kind of dirty violence of the murderers the state is punishing,” Daniel LaChance, a history professor at Emory University in Atlanta, said.

While condemned individuals become institutionalized and forgotten by the public as real people with unique personalities, their choice of last meal reveals something of their character, from simply eating what is on the prison menu that day, to requesting extravagant feasts.

LaChance argues the act of choosing also portrays a condemned person as an autonomous agent, capable of decision-making, which has the effect of showing him to the public, without regard to his upbringing, socio-economic status and mental health, as a free moral agent who willfully committed his gruesome crime.

“There’s a way in which by highlighting the last meal and last words, the irony is it serves a retributive purpose,” LaChance said. “It shows the public this person is very much alive and has something to lose. They are losing their lives and the ability to do things people do — plan for the future and consume food according to their taste. And the state engages in these rituals to remind us these are people who deserve what they are getting.”

Josh Dulaney, “‘When they stop serving last meals, we’ll stop reporting it.’ Oklahoma death row custom stirs debate.” The Oklahoman, August 14, 2022.
by abritt

Price Offers the Long View of Pandemics in the U.S. on MSNBC

Price’s Plagues in the Nation

Dr. Polly J. Price, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law, Professor of Global Health, and Associated Faculty in the History Department, recently appeared on MSNBC’s The Mehdi Hasan Show to discuss the COVID-19 pandemic in historical context. Price is the author of Plagues in the Nation: How Epidemics Shaped America, just published in May of 2022 by Beacon Press. Watch the clip of Price in the embedded video below or on YouTube at “Why Wasn’t America More Prepared For Covid-19?“

Polly J. Price on the Mehdi Hasan Show, July 27, 2022.
by abritt

Dudziak Contextualizes Americans’ Detachment from U.S. Wars

Mary L. Dudziak

Dr. Mary L. Dudziak, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law at the Emory University School of Law and Associated Faculty in the History Department, recently discussed her newest book in a Q&A with Tevah Gevelber of Responsible Statecraft. Dudziak argues that many Americans have long had a disconnect with wars fought in the name of their country, well before the aftermath of the Vietnam War (commonly seen as the origin of that disconnect). Dudziak also discusses how the consolidation of war powers in the executive branch, and specifically the hands of the president, has contributed to widespread detachment among American citizens from wars fought outside the U.S. Read an excerpt from their conversation below along with the full article here: “Why are Americans so unplugged from the wars in their own name?“

It’s common to point to the end of the military draft after the U.S. war in Vietnam as the point when most of the polity lost direct engagement with war. American civilians lost a more fundamental connection with war much earlier, however: when U.S. wars became foreign wars, after the Civil War and warfare with American Indian nations. Americans came to understand war in a visceral way during the Civil War. Battles happened in settled areas. U.S. civilians were war casualties. Family and friends of soldiers arrived at devastated battlefields looking for their loved ones, so they were not immune from the sensory experience of war.

Tevah Gevelber, “Why are Americans so unplugged from the wars in their own name?“, August 1, 2022.

by abritt

Anderson Discusses Anti-Blackness and Gun Legislation on CNN

The cover of Carol Anderson’s 2021 book, The Second.

Dr. Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies and Associated Faculty in the History Department, was quoted in a CNN article on the racialized dimensions of contemporary legislation related to gun possession and gun control. Anderson’s most recent book, The Second: Race and Guns in an Unequal America (Bloomsbury, 2021), interrogates the links between anti-Blackness and the second amendment throughout U.S. history. Read an excerpt from the article below along with the full piece: “The fight to curb gun violence without inflaming racial biases.”

The issue when it comes to gun control isn’t necessarily the law, according to Carol Anderson, an African American studies professor at Emory University. Sometimes, the issue is the enforcement of the law.

“Let’s go back to the Bruen decision in New York, that horrible decision by the US Supreme Court,” Anderson said, referring to the high court’s ruling in June that struck down a century-old New York gun law and that observers suspect will unleash a wave of lawsuits seeking to loosen restrictions at the state and federal levels. “The amicus curiae brief from public defenders said, The NYPD has used this law to go after Black folks. Look at what this has done.”

Anderson, the author of “The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America,” said that, at the core, the problem was policing.

“That’s the component I don’t think is understood well enough,” she said. “We’ve got to clean up policing.
Until we take anti-Blackness seriously, we’re going to keep dancing around the issue.”

Brandon Tensley and Eva McKend, “The fight to curb gun violence without inflaming racial biases,” CNN, July 31, 2022.
by abritt

Anti-Defamation League Hosts Lipstadt on “Fighting Hate from Home” Webinar

Dr. Deborah E. Lipstadt on the ADL’s webinar “Fighting Hate from Home.”

The Anti-Defamation League hosted Dr. Deborah E. Lipstadt, Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies and the U.S. State Department’s special envoy to fight antisemitism, on their webinar “Fighting Hate from Home” in late July of 2022. In conversation with ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, Lipdstadt discussed her work thus far in combating antisemitism around the world, including through trips to, and negotiations with officials in, Israel, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. Watch the full webinar above or on the link to the ADL’s YouTube page.

by abritt

Emory Launches African-American Studies PhD Program

Flyer for new doctoral program in African American Studies.

Emory has launched a new doctoral program in African American Studies, the first of its kind in the U.S. Southeast. The interdisciplinary program will draw on the expertise of more than 50 scholars across schools at Emory, including from the College’s Department of History. Dr. Walter C. Rucker, Professor of African American Studies and History, will serve as core faculty in the program and as the Director of Graduate Studies. The program will be built around four of the pillars of African American Studies: interdisciplinarity, intersectionality, community engagement, and transnationalism. The first cohort of four doctoral students is expected to begin in the fall of 2023. Read more information about the program on the AAS website, as well as in the following coverage in the press: