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Loren and Gail Starr Award in Experiential Learning Given to History Major Matthew Croswhite

The Department of History is delighted to award one of the new Loren & Gail Starr Awards in Experiential Learning to Emory History major Matthew Croswhite for the Summer of 2022. He will create a website about the Emory mascot, Dooley, and its possible link to the cadaver trade associated with Emory’s School of Medicine. He’s exploring the broader context of the possible racist practices by the school that influenced the creation of Dooley. His tentative title is “Skeletons in the Closet: Emory University’s Position in the Illicit Cadaver Trade and the History of Dooley the Skeleton.”

He explains that, “My directed study with Dr. [Matthew] Payne has been the most impactful on my experience as a history major and in developing my understanding of the field of history. The 398R Research Tutorial I took with Dr. Payne last spring particularly has been a great boon in the development of this project, for the focus of this research was also Dooley.”

Established in 2022 through a generous donation, the Loren and 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 Matt’s website 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. Many congratulations, again, Matt!

Some of you might know that Matt’s mother, Prof. Annette Finley-Croswhite, earned her doctorate in French History at Emory. We were so happy when Matt chose to come to Emory and then to Major in History!

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History Honors Student Becca Frischling Wins James L. Roark Prize in American History

Many congratulations to Emory History Honors student, Becca Frischling, who has won the James L. Roark Prize in American History for summer travel to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York, NY. She’s working on politically-oriented theatrical and choral organizations within the early-20th century Yiddish labor movement. Her working title is ”Freedom in Song: Examining the Workmen’s Circle, Choral Music, & Theater within the American Yiddish Labor Movement, 1921-1939.” Prof. Jonathan Prude is her Honors director.

She is especially grateful to Dr. Prude for his guidance. She writes that she has “taken 2 great classes with him.” She has also enjoyed classes with Prof. Eric Goldstein, Prof. Jason Ward, & Prof. Judith Miller.

The award honors James L. Roark, who was the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of American History and taught at Emory from 1983 to 2016. A first generation college student, Professor Roark embarked on an academic journey that took him from community college to Nigeria with the Peace Corps, to Stanford for his doctorate, and to Emory as one of his generation’s most influential historians of the American South. Professor Roark was, above all, a steward of the Emory community, having mentored hundreds of undergraduate students, advised groundbreaking theses, and served two terms as Department Chair. Prior to his retirement, Professor Roark was known throughout the Emory community as a revered professor, trusted colleague, and beloved mentor. As such, the James L. Roark Prize is not only an invitation to conduct research, but also a charge to honor Professor Roark’s legacy of service to the Emory community. Former students Ben Leiner and Naveed Amalfard led the effort to create this fellowship in 2016.

This fall, all of the winners of our summer funding awards will make presentations on their projects and their summer research experiences to the History Department. We look forward to hearing about Becca’s summer! Many congratulations, again, Becca!

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Anderson Discusses the State of American Democracy on CBS News

Dr. Carol Anderson was recently a guest on CBS News, where she discussed the state of American democracy. Anderson offers historical context about both the distant and recent roots to undemocratic practices in the U.S. Anderson is Charles Howard Candler Professor and Affiliated Faculty in the History Department. Watch the full interview here: “Concerns raised about the future of democracy in America.”

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U.S. Senate Confirms Lipstadt to Antisemitism Post

The United States Senate has confirmed Emory historian Deborah E. Lipstadt to serve as a special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism across the globe. Although Republicans in the Senate delayed Lipstadt’s confirmation for months, she received unanimous approval in the vote on March 30. Lipstadt is Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies and Associated Faculty in the History Department. Read more about the envoy position and recent confirmation here: “Historian Deborah Lipstadt confirmed as envoy to combat antisemitism after push from Jewish groups.”

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Anderson Interviewed on FAIR Podcast ‘CounterSpin’

Dr. Carol Anderson was recently interviewed on CounterSpin, the weekly radio show of the national media watch group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). Anderson discusses the relationship between white supremacy and the struggle for democracy in the United States, including by drawing on her most recent book, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America (Bloomsbury, 2021). Anderson is Charles Howard Candler Professor of African-American Studies and Affiliated Faculty in the History Department. Read and listen to the FAIR piece here: “Carol Anderson on History, Race and Democracy.”

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History Major Bronwen Boyd Named 2022 Graduating Woman of Excellence

Congratulations to History major Bronwen Boyd on being named a 2022 Graduating Woman of Excellence by the Center for Women at Emory. Each year the Center invites the community to identify graduating women who have demonstrated great effort, strength of character, and excellence in their time at Emory. Boyd was among 50 outstanding graduates from across Emory’s college, graduate, and professional school divisions honored at a pinning ceremony on March 24.

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Graduate Student Anjuli Webster Presents at “Charting African Waterscapes” Conference

History graduate student Anjuli Webster recently presented a paper at the conference “Charting African Waterscapes: A Conference on African Maritime History Across Time and Space.” Webster’s paper was titled “’Kawubheke ukuphangelana kwemifula’: isiNguni waters through Maputo Bay” and was delivered on the panel “Political Ecologies of Water.” Webster’s research uses water as a way to understand the convergence of local and global forces in south Indianic Africa in the nineteenth century. Webster’s dissertation is titled “Water’s Power: Ecologies of Sovereignty, Race, and Resistance in south Indianic Africa.”

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Jia-Chen Fu in ‘Atlas Obscura’: “The Secret Maoist Chinese Operation to Conquer Malaria”

Dr. Jia-Chen Fu, Associate Professor of Chinese and Affiliated Faculty in the History Department, recently published an article in Atlas Obscura. Titled “The Secret Maoist Chinese Operation to Conquer Malaria,” the piece recounts the discovery of the most powerful antimalarial drug available today by a young Chinese medical researcher named Tu Youyou in the 1960s-’70s. The breakthrough came during the Cultural Revolution in China and the Vietnam War, context within which Fu situates Youyou’s signal achievement. Read the full story here.

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Graduate Student Katrina Knight Presents at Univ. of Maryland HGSA Graduate Conference

History graduate student Katrina Knight recently presented at the University of Maryland’s 16th annual Graduate History Conference. Delivered on a panel with the theme “Histories of Subaltern Revolt,” Knight’s paper was titled “Rebellion, Reformation, or Romanization? The Barbarian Reges and the ‘End’ of the Western Roman Empire.” The focus of the conference this year was “Conflict, Protest, Insurrection, Coup.” Knight’s research centers on the ways in which Roman cultural identity intersected with provincial identity during and after the Roman Empire. Her dissertation is titled “Becoming UnRoman: Romans and Romanness in Late Antique and Early Medieval Britain and Italy, AD 400-700.”

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Six History Honors Students Present at Fox Center’s Undergraduate Honors Colloquium

Six History Honors students will present at the upcoming Undergraduate Honors Colloquium, convened by the Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry. The History majors featured and the titles of their talks are:

  • Scott Benigno: “Depicting Zulu: Race, Empire, and Zulu Representations in the British Metropole, 1820s-1910”
  • Bronwen Boyd: “Ceci n’est pas une signare: Locating Women in Nineteenth-Century Urban Coastal Senegal: Using French Representations of the Signares”
  • Hannah Charak: “Terror from the Top Down: Violence and Voter Suppression in the Postwar South”
  • Willie Lieberman: “The Mystery of England’s First Great Opera: Nahum Tate, Dido, and Womanhood”
  • Julien Nathan: “Who is the Nation: Democratization of Leftist Media in West Berlin”
  • Matthew Takavarasha: “Apostates of the Rechtsstaat: Jurisprudence between Weimar Democracy and Nazi
    Dictatorship”

The event will take place on Wednesday, April 6th, 2022, from 4-6pm EST in Ackerman Hall on the 3rd floor of the Carlos Museum.