The first-year cohort of the History doctoral program recently presented their research in the annual Hi-Five end-of-year gathering. The format was adapted from the Three Minute Thesis model, developed by the University of Queensland (UQ) in Australia. See the flier above for the names of the graduate students who presented and their research, and check out the images from the event below.
Dr. Daniel LaChance, Associate Professor of History and Winship Distinguished Research Professor in History, recently published a new book with co-author Dr. Paul Kaplan, Professor of Criminal Justice in the School of Public Affairs at San Diego State University. Titled Crimesploitation: Crime, Punishment, and Pleasure on Reality Television and published by Stanford University Press, the monograph investigates the enduring appeal of ‘true crime’ media in American popular culture. Dr. Michelle Brown, Professor at the University of Tennessee, offered the following appraisal of Crimesploitation: “Kaplan and LaChance move us toward a critical reckoning with the exploitative forms of (un)freedom that media’s spectacle of crime and punishment have conjured. A powerful dose of thoughtful accountability, this volume points the way to getting truly ‘real’ about—and intervening in—the suffering that a culture of punishment has produced.” Read more about the monograph below as well as on the Stanford UP website.
“‘Due to the graphic nature of this program, viewer discretion is advised.’ Most of us have encountered this warning while watching television at some point. It is typically attached to a brand of reality crime TV that Paul Kaplan and Daniel LaChance call “crimesploitation”: spectacles designed to entertain mass audiences by exhibiting “real” criminal behavior and its consequences. This book examines their enduring popularity in American culture. Analyzing the structure and content of several popular crimesploitation shows, including Cops, Dog: The Bounty Hunter, and To Catch a Predator, as well as newer examples like Making a Murderer and Don’t F**K with Cats, Kaplan and LaChance highlight the troubling nature of the genre: though it presents itself as ethical and righteous, its entertainment value hinges upon suffering. Viewers can imagine themselves as deviant and ungovernable like the criminals in the show, thereby escaping a law-abiding lifestyle. Alternatively, they can identify with law enforcement officials, exercising violence, control, and “justice” on criminal others. Crimesploitation offers a sobering look at the depictions of criminals, policing, and punishment in modern America.”
Professor Hank Klibanoff, James M. Cox Jr. Professor of Journalism and Associated Faculty in the History Department, is among four Emory faculty members who have recently been named to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Among the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies, the Academy is also a leading center for independent policy research. Read Klibanoff’s biography below and learn about the other Emory faculty members selected here: “Four Emory professors named to American Academy of Arts and Sciences.”
“Hank Klibanoff is a veteran journalist, Pulitzer Prize-winning author and Peabody Award-winning podcast host. He co-authored ‘The Race Beat: The Press, the Civil Rights Struggle, and the Awakening of a Nation,’ which won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for history. Prior to joining Emory, he was a reporter and editor for more than 35 years, holding reporting and editing positions in Mississippi, The Boston Globe and The Philadelphia Inquirer, and serving as a managing editor of The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“Klibanoff is director of the Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project at Emory, for which students examine Georgia’s modern civil rights history through investigation of unpunished racially motivated murders. His podcast based on the project, titled “Buried Truths,” produced by public radio station WABE, was the winner of Peabody, Robert F. Kennedy and Edward R. Murrow awards.”
Congratulations to graduate student Anjuli Webster on being selected as a dissertation fellow for Emory’s upcoming Mellon Sawyer Seminar, “Visions of Slavery: Histories, Memories, and Mobilizations of Unfreedom in the Black Atlantic.” Funded by a $225,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation, the seminar will bring together scholars at Emory and Atlanta-area universities to examine the “manifold ways slavery in the Black Atlantic has been archived, interpreted, memorialized, mobilized, and resisted.” Webster’s nine-month fellowship will provide opportunities to participate in planning the seminar, as well as support for conducting research and presenting findings related to the seminar’s central theme. Webster’s dissertation, advised by Drs. Clifton Crais, Mariana P. Candido, and Yanna Yannakakis, is titled “Water’s Power: Ecologies of Sovereignty, Race, and Resistance in south Indianic Africa.”
Doctoral student Jessica Markey Locklear recently participated in a conversation hosted by the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Albin O. Kuhn Library. Titled “Indigenous Community Archiving and Collective Memory,” the virtual roundtable centered on community archiving projects within American Indian communities of Baltimore and Philadelphia. Locklear was joined in the conversation by Siobhan Hagan (founding director, Mid-Atlantic Regional Moving Image Archive), Tiffany Chavis (Consulting Archivist, UMBC), and Ashley Minner (Assistant Curator for History and Culture, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian). Locklear’s dissertation, advised by Dr. Malinda Maynor Lowery, is titled “The Other Lands We Know: Lumbee Migrations and the Maintenance of Indian Identity, 1880-1980.”
Congratulations to graduate student Amelia Golcheski on receiving a Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Wilson Library at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. The $3,500 fellowship will support a one month residency at the Wilson Special Collections Library. Golcheski’s dissertation, advised by Drs. Jason Morgan Ward and Allen Tullos, is titled “Compensating Care: The Professionalization of Women’s Care Labor in Appalachia, 1968-2000.”
Congratulations to junior History Major Isabel Coyle on winning a George P. Cuttino Scholarship for Independent Research Abroad. Coyle will conduct research in France for her Honors thesis over the summer of 2022. She will also be a Halle Institute Undergraduate Global Research Fellow. Her working title is “Immigration, Race, and Assimilation in France, 1962-1975.”
She writes that Prof. Judith A. Miller’s “support has helped me so much, and I have such great memories from the French Revolution class as well as the Origins of Capitalism class.” She owes “a lot to Dr. Maria Montalvo, who taught the first history class I ever took at Emory and is one of the reasons I decided to major in history.”
The prize is named for Prof. George Cuttino (1914-1991), who taught at Emory for 32 years. He was a beloved professor and held the Candler Chair in Medieval History. He was a two-time Guggenheim Fellowship recipient and chaired the Emory History Department in the early 1970’s before retiring in 1984.
The summer fellowship recipients will present their research to the department at an event this coming fall semester.
The Department of History is delighted to award one of the new Loren & Gail Starr Awards in Experiential Learning to Honors student and film studies major Kheyal Roy-Meighoo for the Summer of 2022. She will create short animated film, “Backwards,” about the historical connections between the Covid-19 pandemic and Asian exclusion laws.
Kheyal’s work in stop motion films has been winning praise. Last December, she received the Women in Film and Television Atlanta 2021 Scholarship. Recent projects include “The Great Escape” & “My Bunny’s Story.” Check out her YouTube channel: www.tinyurl.com/KheyalRM.
She writes that “All of the History faculty I have taken classes from have been fantastic!” and praises the department for being so supportive. “It has always encouraged me to draw on my love of film in my historical studies,” she explains. She expressed special thanks to her advisor, Prof. Chris Suh, who has encouraged Kheyal to make films since her first year at Emory. Kheyal notes that “Not only has he taught me so much about Asian American history, but he has taught me how Asian American filmmakers have tacked historical (and current) social and political issues.”
Established in 2022 through a generous donation, the Loren & Gail Starr Award provides summer funding for experiential learning projects proposed by History majors, joint majors, or minors. The Starr Award is intended to support students who wish to use the knowledge and skills they have acquired in history courses to create or participate in projects in settings outside of the classroom. Bold, creative, and off-the-beaten path proposals are encouraged. The only rule is that engagement with the past be central to the experience undertaken by the student. We will offer a second round of these awards in the fall.
We look forward to seeing “Backwards” at the end of the summer! This fall, all of the winners of our summer funding awards will make presentations on their projects and their research experiences to the History Department.
Congratulations to junior History Major Wittika Chaplet on winning a George P. Cuttino Scholarship for Independent Research Abroad. Chaplet will conduct research in France and Burkina Faso for her Honors thesis over the summer of 2022. Her working title is “West African Visions of a Verdant Urban Future: A Microhistory of Burkina Faso’s Urban Gardens.”
She writes that “Dr. Clifton Crais, Dr. Thomas Rogers, Dr. Mariana Candido, & Dr. Susan Gagliardi have been wonderfully supportive through the process of proposing my honor’s thesis.” Moreover, “Dr. Anouar El Younssi supported me from the very beginning of my time at Emory & has been immensely helpful over the past three years.”
The prize is named for Prof. George Cuttino (1914-1991), who taught at Emory for 32 years. He was a beloved professor and held the Candler Chair in Medieval History. He was a two-time Guggenheim Fellowship recipient and chaired the Emory History Department in the early 1970’s before retiring in 1984.
The summer fellowship recipients will present their research to the department at an event this coming fall semester.
Congratulations to Katie Wilson, Senior Graduate Academic Degree Program Coordinator, on receiving the Laney Graduate School’s Outstanding Program Administrator in the Humanities Award. 2022 is the inaugural year for the award. The faculty, staff, and students of the History Department are delighted that Wilson has received this recognition for her 11 years of outstanding work in the Department.