Four History majors students are among the 2026-27 cohort of Undergraduate Humanities Honors Fellows at Emory’s Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry (FCHI). The fellows program supports undergraduates as they complete their honors theses, introduces them to the life of the humanities, and provides a venue for interdisciplinary interchange, mentorship, and conference-style presentation. Fellows will conduct research intersecting with the FCHI’s theme for this year, Habitat, which researchers will engage as “both a physical place for living and the necessary conditions for thriving.”
View short profiles of 2026-27 fellows from the History Department below and follow the links to more extended biographies.
Emma Faz is double-majoring in Classics and History. Her thesis, “Exploring Potential Uses of Room X in the House of the Vettii,” examines erotic wall paintings in Pompeii’s House of the Vettii as a lens to understand how concepts of sexuality, status, and power coexisted in a Roman home
Cabot Postol studies History and African Studies. His thesis project, titled “Iron & the Bomi Hills: Liberia, the United States, and Cold War Resource Sovereignty, 1945-1977,” is a microhistory that analyzes questions of sovereignty, the environment, labor, and the postwar economic order.
William Shan is a History major who studies how Irishmen lived, moved, and conceived of themselves in early-nineteenth century Sierra Leone as governors, justices, commissioners, bureaucrats, soldiers, settlers, and merchants. His thesis is titled “The Empire’s Laboratories: Ireland, Sierra Leone, and the Movement of Policy and Personnel, 1808-1841.”
Eloise So is a History and English double major. Her project, “The Suburban Dream in Chinatown: Culture, Place, and Family in San Francisco, 1945–1965,” examines how postwar life shaped Chinese American migration from San Francisco’s Chinatown to the city’s western neighborhoods.