Month / January 2024

by emoryhistorydept

Alumni Update: Rafael Ioris (Ph.D., ’09)

Dr. Rafael Ioris, a 2009 doctoral program alum and Professor of History at the University of Denver, recently sent an update to the History Department. Since completing his PhD, Ioris has authored Qual Desenvolvimento? Os Debates, Sentidos e Lições da Era Desenvolvimentista (Paco Editorial, 2017) and Transforming Brazil: A History of National Development in the Postwar Era (Routledge, 2014). He has also published two edited volumes on the history of development in Brazil and in the Amazon region, Frontiers of Development in the Amazon: Riches, Risks, and Resistances (Lexington Book, 2020) and Amazonia no Seculo XXI: Trajetorias, Dilemas e Perspectivas (Alameda, 2022). Ioris has, additionally, expanded his collaborations as a Research Fellow with two institutions: the Institute for the Study of the United States in Brazil and the Washington Brazil Office. He spent the fall of 2022 as a Visiting Professor at the Institute of Advanced Latin American Studies at the Sorbonne University (l’Institut des Hautes Études de l’Amérique latine). Now he is preparing to undertake a new book project on Brazil-US relations in the Cold War.  He writes that he hopes everyone is doing well back at Emory and looks forward to staying in touch!

Are you an Emory History alumnus? Please send us updates on your life and work!

by emoryhistorydept

Alumni Update: Ashleigh Dean Ikemoto (Ph.D., ’16)

Dr. Ashleigh Dean Ikemoto, a 2016 alum of the doctoral program, recently sent an update on her career trajectory since graduating from Emory. As she discusses below, Dean recently published her first book, Pedro de Alfaro & the Struggle for Power in the Globalized Pacific, 1565-1644 (Rowman & Littlefield, Lexington Books). The book derives from her dissertation, which was advised by Dr. Tonio Andrade. Enjoy Ashleigh’s update below!

“Since finishing my PhD, I taught at Monmouth College in New Jersey and at Gordon State College in Georgia before beginning at Georgia College in 2018. My doctoral research was on Spain’s frustrated attempts to conquer Ming Dynasty China. This year I published a book based on my dissertation. It examines the career of Pedro de Alfaro (d. 1580), a Spanish Franciscan whose illegal entry into China sparked a chain of events that contributed to the development of an interconnected Pacific economic and diplomatic maritime zone.

“I am still engaged in the field of early modern history and still teach East Asian history, but I currently spend most of my time working on food history. I teach courses on the historical methodology of foodways, Asian and Asian-American food, Jewish food, Mediterranean food, and the history of alcohol.

“Beginning in January 2023, I will be Co-Director of Georgia College’s Global Foodways Program, which provides an undergraduate certificate and opportunities for community outreach and study abroad. I have also done two research fellowships in pursuit of food-related research and pedagogy: one in Mongolia as a Henry Luce Foundation American Center for Mongolian Studies Field School participant in 2022, and one this past summer as a Brandeis University Schusterman Center for Israeli Studies Fellow in Israeli & the West Bank.

“My time at Emory prepared me to see history as a universally-applicable discipline, letting me branch out beyond my dissertation research and broadening my perspective as an educator.”

Are you an Emory History alumnus? Please send us updates on your life and work!

by emoryhistorydept

Anderson Maps Voter Intimidation Efforts in GA, Past and Present

Dr. Carol Anderson, Robert W. Woodruff Professor of African American Studies and Associated Faculty in the History Department, recently wrote an opinion piece in Democracy Docket, a news platform focused on voting rights and elections in the courts. Anderson’s article, “Intimidating Voters Is Nothing New in Georgia, It’s Just Easier Now,” outlines the range of voter intimidation efforts that took place in Georgia in the 2020 election and which have been made even easier through new laws in the lead up to the 2024 election. The article offers historical context, as well, as Anderson draws parallels to earlier eras of voter suppression. Read a quote from the piece below along with the full article.

“In December 2020, just weeks before a historic U.S. Senate runoff election in Georgia, True the Vote, a Texas-based right-wing group, challenged the voter registration of more than 250,000 Georgians, ‘offered a $1 million bounty and recruited Navy SEALs to oversee polling places,’ hoping that enough Americans would be purged from the rolls less than a month before a key election that would decide control of the Senate.  

“This was not the first time that the organization pulled a stunt like this. True the Vote had already received brushback pitches from the Department of Justice and authorities in Ohio, Texas and Wisconsin for submitting unverifiable lists, demanding the removal of voters even though a federal election loomed and intimidating voters. Indeed, True the Vote suggested that intimidation was key to its strategy. Earlier it had told its volunteers that the goal was to give voters a feeling ‘like driving and seeing the police following you.’ In short, to replicate the terror of ‘Voting while Black.'”

by emoryhistorydept

PhD Alum Claudia Kreklau Receives Honorable Mention for Article

Dr. Claudia Kreklau (PhD, ’18), Associate Lecturer at the University of St Andrews, recently received an honorable mention for an article from the Central European History Society. Krelau’s article “The Gender Anxiety of Otto von Bismarck, 1866–1898,” published in the journal German History in 2022, was named an honorable mention for the Annelise Thimme Article Prize. That prize recognizes the best article in the field of Central European History published by a North American scholar. Kreklau completed her dissertation, “‘Eat as the King Eats’: Making the Middle Class through Food, Foodways, and Food Discourses in Nineteenth-Century Germany,” under the advisement of Dr. Brian Vick.

by emoryhistorydept

Alumni Update: Justin Rubino (C ’22), from History in ATL to Science in NYC

Honors History alum Justin Rubino recently shared news with us about his professional path since graduating in the spring of 2022. Rubino is currently working at Success Academy, a charter school in NYC, as a 6th grade science teacher. Success Academy is the top-performing public school system in NYC with locations in the Bronx, Harlem, Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. While Rubino had originally planned to teach history, he is enjoying teaching science and helps out the students with their history questions from time to time ;).

Are you an Emory History alumnus? Please send us updates on your life and work!

by emoryhistorydept

Lowery’s New Film ‘Lumbeeland’ Explores Impact of Drug Trade on Lumbee Communities


Dr. Malinda Maynor Lowery, Cahoon Family Professor of American History, has written and produced a new short film, titled Lumbeeland. With an all-Native crew and cast (the first film written, produced, and starring members of the Lumbee tribe), Lumbeeland explores the impact of the drug trade on Lumbee communities in Lowery’s birthplace of Robeson county, North Carolina. The film will premiere at the Lumbee Film Festival in July 2024, and the producers are in the midst of a fundraising campaign to support its release to wider audiences. Read a great piece about the origins and aims of the films here, and watch the trailer below.

by emoryhistorydept

Chira to Lead Inaugural Study Abroad Program to Cuba


The Emory History Department will inaugurate a study abroad program in Cuba in May 2024. Titled “History, Environment, and Society,” the 4-credit program will be led by Dr. Adriana Chira, Associate Professor of History, and be run in collaboration with the Fundación Antonio Nuñez Jiménez de la Naturaleza y el Hombre in Havana and Learn from Travel. Highlights of the program include: experiencing a rumba street party, visiting a tobacco farm, and snorkeling at a starfish reserve. If you are interested and/or have questions, please contact Prof. Chira at adriana [dot] chira [at] emory [dot] edu.