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Alison Colis Greene Recognized for Outstanding Teaching and Service


Dr. Alison Collis Greene, Associate Professor of American religious history and Associated Faculty in the History Department, was recently recognized by the Candler School of Theology for her exceptional contributions inside and outside of the classroom. Greene received the Provost’s Distinguished Teaching Award for Excellence in Graduate and Professional Education, as well as the award for Outstanding Service to the Candler Community by a Faculty Member.

Greene’s teaching centers on United States religious history, particularly American religions as they relate to politics, wealth and poverty, race and ethnicity, the environment, and the modern rural South. She also directs the Master of Theological Studies Program.

She is author of No Depression in Heaven: The Great Depression, the New Deal, and the Transformation of Religion in the Delta (Oxford, 2016), as well as a number of essays and articles on modern United States religious history in both scholarly and popular outlets.

by emoryhistorydept

Cerveira Wins AHA’s Beveridge Grant in Western Hemisphere History


Bruna Digiacomo Cerveira, fourth-year doctoral candidate in Latin American history, received the 2026 Beveridge Family Research Grant in Western Hemisphere History from the American Historical Association. The grant will support research for her dissertation project, “Liberated African Children Between Empires: Slavery, Freedom, and British Imperialism in Rio de Janeiro, 1831–1888.” Cerveira is among just eleven graduate students in history nationwide to receive the AHA’s Beveridge grant this cycle. Her dissertation is advised by Drs. Mariana P. Candido and Thomas D. Rogers.

by emoryhistorydept

Starr Receives LGS Inclusive Excellence Award


Jordyn Alvarez Starr received the 2026 Laney Award for Inclusive Excellence in Graduate Education. This award recognizes students who “engage in service activities that promote inclusivity in the graduate community while also helping to develop and implement strategies to remove barriers for historically marginalized groups and helping them participate fully in graduate education and their respective professions.” Starr was one of four recipients of the award this year.

Starr is a graduate student in Latin American and Caribbean History with research interests centered on struggles against slavery and imperialism in the Spanish Caribbean, especially Puerto Rico. Starr’s dissertation project, titled “Revolutionary Rhetoric: Antislavery and Anticolonial Alliances in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico,” is advised by Drs. Adriana Chira and Yanna Yannakakis.

by emoryhistorydept

Celebrating 2026 History Department Graduates


Emory’s 2026 Commencement ceremonies took place May 7-11, 2026, and the History Department had many reasons to celebrate. 25 History undergraduate majors or joint majors walked across the stage. Seven of those, after completing compelling original theses under the advisement of dedicated faculty, graduated with honors in History.

Latin American History doctoral candidate Alejandro Guardado defended his dissertation, titled “Indigenous Intellectuals, Cultural Brokers, and the Struggle for Native Self-Determination in Late Twentieth-Century Oaxaca, Mexico.” Kaelyn McAdam, a doctoral student in Ancient history, completed her dissertation, “Understanding the Graeculi: A Greek Roman Empire in the Third and Fourth Centuries,” and graduated in the summer of 2025. Five other graduate students received their interim master’s.

Departmental leadership, faculty, and staff celebrate these exceptional, collective accomplishments of the 2025-’26 academic year.

Expand the sections below to learn more about the graduating and degree-receiving students. Also catch a replay of the 2026 Emory College Honors Ceremony and browse photos of the Commencement ceremonies.

The following graduate students received their interim master’s degree:

Bruna Digiacomo Cerveira Coutinho (Summer 2025)
Co-advisors: Mariana Candido and Thomas D. Rogers


Gerardo Manrique de Lara Ruiz (Summer 2025)
Co-advisors: Mariana Candido and Clifton Crais


Rene K. Odanga (Summer 2025)
Co-advisors: Mariana Candido and Clifton Crais


Emilie Cunning (Fall 2025)
Co-Advisors: Mary L. Dudziak and Jason Morgan Ward


Yuan Zeng Ashley Tan (Fall 2025)
Advisor: Tonio Andrade

The following undergraduates completed either a major or joint major in History and were recognized at the 2026 commencement:

Lucia Kumari Alexeyev
Adrien Jonah Dolin Armstrong
Daniel Hays Bell
Kennedie Amanda Black
Ciera Merie Butler
Edmund Humphrey Cayley
Georgios Drakos
Chloe Nanci Glazer
Mya D. Green*
Isaac Paul Jaye
Jiarui Jiang
Thora Jordt
Alice Liu**
Victoria Mia Maza
Isabella J. Mazet
Lola Kate McGuire
Rachel Elizabeth Mehler
Javier Andres De Jesus Montano
Leo Abraham Raykher
Dylan Robert Sanders Villegas
Joel Moa Shin
Siya Sanjeev Thadani
Xipei Wan
Megan Xing
Yiqi Zhang

* Graduating summer 2026
** Graduating fall 2026

The following students completed honors thesis and graduated with honors in History.

Lucia Kumari Alexeyev, “Vieques Se Levanta: A History of Health Amidst Occupation”
Faculty Director: Professor Jeffrey Lesser

Daniel Bell, “Public Men in Glass Houses: Herbert Jenkins and the Remaking of the Atlanta Police Department, 1947-1972”
Faculty Director: Professor Joseph Crespino

Edmund Cayley, “The First East Turkestan Republic: The Rise of 20th Century Uyghur Nationalism”
Faculty Director: Professor Matthew Payne

Lola McGuire, “‘This stand I make is not alone’: Uncovering the Chicago Young Patriots Organization Women, 1968-1973”
Faculty Director: Professor Iliana Yamileth Rodriguez

Leo Raykher, “Economics, Espionage, Exile: The Surveilled Life of David Drucker, Esq.”
Faculty Director: Professor Jonathan Prude

Siya Thadani, “Medicalizing Difference: Science and the Making of Race in the British Empire”
Faculty Director: Professor Chris Suh

Thomas Wan, “For the Nation and the Revolution: Inner Mongols in the Shadow of Empire and Civil War (1931-49)”
Faculty Director: Professor Matthew Payne

by emoryhistorydept

Doctoral Candidate Emilie Cunning Publishes Article in ‘Modern American History’


Earlier this spring Doctoral candidate Emilie Cunning published an article titled “The Making of a Militarized War on Poverty: The Effort to Triangulate Military Service, Crime Prevention, and Social Citizenship through Project 100,000 and Project Transition” in the journal Modern American History. Cunning interprets these two programs, which focused on the military recruitment and rehabilitation of low-IQ men, as sitting at the nexus between the War on Poverty and the war in Vietnam. Cunning’s graduate work is advised by Drs. Daniel LaChance and Mary L. Dudziak.

Separately, Cunning was recently accepted to the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) Summer Institute for ABD candidates. Held at the Ohio State University and hosted by the Mershon Center for International Security Studies, the Summer 2026 Institute is co-directed by Christopher McKnight Nichols (Ohio State) and Andrew Preston (University of Virginia).

Read the abstract from Cunning’s Modern American History article below and find the full version here.

This article explores the programs known as Project 100,000 and Project Transition developed within the Johnson administration during the Vietnam War. Viewing them as the intersection between the War on Poverty and the War in Vietnam, this article contends with how these programs were designed to serve the goals both of social uplift and crime prevention through the rehabilitation of low-IQ men via military service. The article analyzes the racialized aspects of these programs, as they were disproportionately composed of Black men, and questions the motivations behind the construction of Project 100,000 and Project Transition as a means of “transporting” America’s racial unrest abroad. At its core, the article argues that these programs were inherently at odds with the intense manpower demands of the Vietnam War and the reluctancies of military officials to properly train Project 100,000 men. The program formed another tragedy of the Vietnam era.

by emoryhistorydept

Alejandro Guardado Among Inaugural Recipients of Gustavo Gutiérrez Research Award


Alejandro Guardado, a 2026 graduate of the Latin American History doctoral program, has won the Gustavo Gutiérrez Research Award from Notre Dame’s Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism. Guardado’s project is titled “Reimagining Community: Indigenous Organizing in Mexico’s Neoliberal Turn, 1968–2000.”

Inaugurated in 2025, Gustavo Gutiérrez Research Awards honor the life and legacy of Rev. Gustavo Gutiérrez, O.P., the Peruvian priest and theologian widely seen as the father of Latin American liberation theology. The award supports projects in theology, history, and the social sciences that engage or take inspiration from Gutiérrez’s work on the preferential option for the poor.

Guardado was among five recipients in the first cycle of the award. Read more about the award and the recipients’ projects: “Cushwa Center announces 2026 research funding, including five inaugural Gutiérrez Research Awards.”

Guardado completed his dissertation under the advisement of Dr. Yanna Yannakakis, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History and Department Chair.

by emoryhistorydept

Kreklau (PhD, ’18) Publishes Article in ‘German Studies Review’


Dr. Claudia Kreklau, a 2018 doctoral program alum and Honorary Lecturer at the University of St. Andrews, has published a new article in the journal German Studies Review. Titled “Masters of Food: Climate Crisis and Optimized Exploitation in an Atlantic Hinterland Before the Revolutions of 1848,” the work examines how dietary control and prescription served as a means for social control in a time of extreme climatic crisis.

Kreklau published her first book, The Making of Modern Eating: How the German Middle Class Forged the Way We Eat, 1780–1910, with Berghahn Books earlier this year. The book as well as the new article originated in a research paper that Kreklau completed during coursework at Emory. Termed the “P-Paper” and produced by every graduate student before candidacy, this milestone helps students to develop their dissertation projects and lays the foundation for academic publication early in doctoral training.

Read the abstract of the German Studies Review article below along with the full piece here.

In 1818, the manorial lord Ludwig Ellrichshausen used his agricultural estate in Maisenhälden as a laboratory for optimized economic exploitation during a period of extreme climatic crisis. He designed a minimum-feed diet for his workers that was low in protein, devoid of fruits and vegetables, and insufficient in calories to support hard physical labor with the goal of engineering their bare subsistence to maximize outputs. The Speisemeister’s or master of food’s dietary prescription functioned as a means of social control in this Atlantic Hinterland, constructed to communicate social positioning via the symbolically charged means of food.

by emoryhistorydept

Allitt Offers Analysis of Royal Visit for Newsweek, AJC, and 11Alive


Dr. Patrick Allitt, Cohoon Family Professor of American History, provided insightful analysis and historical context about the recent four-day visit of King Charles III and Queen Camilla to the United States. Allitt wrote an op-ed for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “King Charles III and America’s curious love affair with the British monarchy,” and was interviewed on the Atlanta NBC News affiliate 11Alive (“Why Americans remain fascinated by the monarchy“).

Allitt was also quoted in a Newsweek article that examined the visit and its significance. Read a section of the Newsweek piece below, and find the full article here: “King Charles to Address Press Dinner Shooting in Landmark Congress Speech.”

Patrick Allitt, Professor of History at Emory University, told Newsweek: “The king’s had a lifetime of experience in not talking about policy details. I think when he was younger, he periodically did make some rather gauche intrusions into policy questions, particularly about the environment but gradually, he’s learned the lesson that his job is to be head of state and not head of government

Allitt argued the monarchy was a powerful tool for warming up public opinion and said that “because the British monarchy is insanely popular in America, even Trump has got the good sense to realize, ‘I can only benefit from showing the king and his wife a good time’ and avoiding all the things which have created rancor between himself and Starmer.

“So it’s actually a very non-political event, even though people will construe it as being one with political resonances.”

“The nature of politics in both countries is that people from different parts of the spectrum disagree about the rights and wrongs of what’s happening,” he continued, “but I think that the really astonishing part of this whole story is that for nearly 250 years, or since 1815, since the end of the War of 1812, Britain and America have never gone to war against each other.

“And usually when one empire is in decline and another one is in the ascendance, they fight over it but in this case, they never did.”

by emoryhistorydept

Fox Center Honors Fellows Bell and Raykher Present Theses


Senior History majors Daniel Bell and Leo Raykher recently presented their honors theses as part of the 2025-’26 cohort of Fox Center Undergraduate Humanities Honors Fellows. A senior double-majoring in Economics, Bell’s thesis examines the life and career of Herbert Jenkins, Atlanta’s influential twentieth-century police chief. Raykher’s research explores espionage, surveillance, and political freedom in the United States through the life of his great, great-uncle, David Drucker, a strident advocate for socialist causes and political exile in Mexico.

Both projects echo the Fox Center’s 2025-’26 theme, Life/Story, which “draws its inspiration from the many ways humanities fields and disciplines often approach a single life as the entry point for examining broad political, socio-cultural, and historical phenomena.”

by emoryhistorydept

Celebrating 2026 Senior Prize Winners


The Undergraduate Committee is pleased to announce the recipients of the Emory History Department’s undergraduate senior prizes for the 2025-26 academic year. These awards were presented at our annual Senior Celebration on Tuesday, April 28, from 1:00-3:00 pm, in the Brooks Commons.

Congratulations to the following awardees for their outstanding work in history:

The African, Asian, and Latin American History Prize for best record in African, Asian, and Latin American History

🙞 Lucia Alexeyev 🙜

James Z. Rabun Prize for the best record in American History

🙞 Kennedie Black 🙜

George P. Cuttino Prize for the best record in European History

🙞 Edmund Cayley 🙜

James Z. Rabun Prize for the best record in American History

🙞 Chloe Glazer 🙜

Matthew A. Carter Citizen-Scholar Award

🙞 Lola McGuire 🙜