Dr. Sean Andrew Wempe, A 2015 PhD alumnus and Assistant Professor of Modern European History at California State University–Bakersfield, was recently interviewed for New Books Network. Wempe discusses his 2019 book Revenants of the German Empire: Colonial Germans, Imperialism, and the League of Nations (Oxford UP) with Jack Guenther, a doctoral candidate in history at Princeton University. Find the link to the interview here.
Category / Alumni
Alumni Update: Jeffrey S. Reznick (PhD, 1999)
Jeffrey S. Reznick (PhD 1999), chief of the History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine (NLM), National Institutes of Health (NIH), has written the first study of Rudolf H. Sauter (1895–1977), the German-born artist, poet, cultural observer and nephew of the famed novelist John Galsworthy. To be published by Anthem Press in January 2022, War and Peace in the Worlds of Rudolf H. Sauter: A Cultural History of a Creative Life reveals its subject as a creative figure in his own right who produced an intriguing body of artistic and literary work spanning from World War I through the Cold War. Additionally, connected to his leadership of the NLM History of Medicine Division, Reznick recently co-authored “History matters: in the past, present & future of the NLM” in the Journal of the Medical Library Association. The article explains how—since the release of the 2015 report of the NIH’s Director’s advisory committee on the future of the National Library of Medicine—history continues to matter at NLM with its History of Medicine Division achieving many collaborative contributions toward the advancement of the library in the 21st century and for the benefit of historical research today and tomorrow.
Dr. Sean T. Byrnes (PhD, ’14) Publishes ‘Disunited Nations’ with LSU Press
Congratulations to Dr. Sean T. Byrnes, a 2014 graduate of the PhD program in history, on the publication of his first book, Disunited Nations: US Foreign Policy, Anti-Americanism, and the Rise of the New Right. Louisiana State University published the monograph. Byrnes is an instructor of history at Western Governor’s University. Read the description of the book below and find out more here.
Disunited Nations explores American reactions to hostile world opinion, as voiced in the United Nations by representatives of the Global South from 1970 to 1984. Sean T. Byrnes suggests this challenge had a significant impact on US policy and politics, shaping the rise of the New Right and neoliberal visions of the world economy. Integrating developments in American political and diplomatic history with the international history of decolonization and the “Third World,” Disunited Nations adds to our understanding of major transitions in foreign policy as the US moved away from the expansive internationalist global commitments of the immediate postwar era toward a more nationalist and neoliberal understanding of international affairs.
Fulbright Awards Support Research by Brunner and Steinman
Two History Department students have received research awards through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. PhD candidate Georgia Brunner will study and research gender, labor, and identity between 1918-1985 in the building of Rwanda. Undergraduate alum Jesse Steinman (21C), a history and German studies double major, was selected for the Fulbright Community-Based Combined Award in History for a project developing an interreligious educational program about Graz, Austria’s Jewish history. Read the full list of Emory students selected for Fulbright awards this season here.
Michael Camp (PhD, ’17) Publishes Piece in ‘Salon’
Dr. Michael Camp, a 2017 graduate of the doctoral program, recently published an article in Salon. The piece, “Sorry, Republicans: Joe Biden isn’t Jimmy Carter — and these aren’t the 1970s,” interrogates the comparisons that political opponents of Joe Biden have made between the current U.S. president and ex-president Jimmy Carter. Camp is the author of Unnatural Resources: Energy and Environmental Politics in Appalachia after the 1973 Oil Embargo (University of Pittsburg Press, 2019). Read an excerpt of the Salon piece below along with the full article.
“Perhaps it’s understandable that the Trumps might want to link Biden to Carter, who left office in 1981 in shame, having been thoroughly defeated in his bid for re-election by Ronald Reagan. But the comparison likely won’t stand for long, because our current situation bears little resemblance to the political morass of the late 1970s that doomed Carter’s quest for a second term in office.”
Alumni Update: Kate McGrath (PhD, ’07)
Dr. Kate McGrath, a 2007 graduate of the doctoral program, was recently promoted to Associate Dean of the Carol A. Ammon College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences at Central Connecticut State University. McGrath completed her degree in Medieval history with a dissertation titled “Medieval Anger: Rage and Outrage in Eleventh- and Twelfth-Century Anglo-Norman and Northern French Historical Narratives.” Her dissertation research has informed multiple publications since, including the book chapter “The ‘Zeal of God’: The Representation of Anger in the Latin Crusade Accounts of the 1096 Rhineland Massacres,” published in the edited collection Slay Them Not: Jews in Medieval Christendom (Leiden: Brill, 2013). Read more about McGrath’s work here.
Alumni Update: Ellen G. Rafshoon (’01 PhD)
The History Department recently received an alumni update from Dr. Ellen G. Rafshoon, a 2001 graduate of the doctoral program. This year Dr. Rafshoon was promoted to Professor at Georgia Gwinnett College. In addition, she won the school’s outstanding faculty for student engagement award, a recognition that includes the honor of leading the student processional at GGC’s graduation ceremony. Rafshoon’s most recent publication is “Pave it Blue: Georgia Women and Politics in the Trump Era,” in Stacie Taranto and Leandra Zarnow, Suffrage at 100: Women in American Politics Since 1920 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020). The essay is based on interviews that she conducted with neophyte activists and candidates who contributed to the Blue Wave in Georgia.
Michael Camp (PhD, ’17) Publishes Chapter in ‘Energy in the Americas: Critical Reflections on Energy and History’
Dr. Michael Camp, a 2017 graduate of the doctoral program, has written a chapter in a forthcoming volume Energy in the Americas: Critical Reflections on Energy and History (University of Calgary Press). Camp’s chapter is titled “Tellico Dam, Dickey Dam, and Endangered Species Law in the United States during the 1970s.” The volume grew out of an energy history conference convened in Calgary in October 2014. The University of Pittsburg Press published Camp’s first book and a related project, Unnatural Resources: Energy and Environmental Politics in Appalachia after the 1973 Oil Embargo, in 2019. Dr. Joseph Crespino, Jimmy Carter Professor of History and Department Chair, served as Camp’s advisor.
Alumni Update: Richard Rawls (PhD, ’02)
Dr. Richard S. Rawls, a 2002 graduate of the doctoral program, recently provided the department with an update. Rawls holds a dual appointment in the History and Religion Departments at Georgia Gwinnett College. His recent publications include co-editing the book Curriculum Internationalization and the Future of Education (IGI Global, 2018) with Semire Dikli and Brian Etheridge. He authored two chapters in the volume: “Internationalizing a Course on the Cultural and Intellectual History of the Ancient World” and “Reflecting on New Faculty Training: Internationalized Learning Essentials” (with Semire Dikli). Rawls also composed the encyclopedia article “Peloponnesian War” for The Encyclopedia of Diplomacy (Wiley-Blackwell, 2018).
Celebrating Doctoral Program Graduates: Drs. López Fuentes, Lu, and Ramsay
Congratulations to three doctoral students from the History Department who received their degrees in the course of the 2020-’21 academic year. Julia López Fuentes completed her degree in the summer of 2020. López Funtes’s dissertation, “Thinking Europe, Thinking Democracy: The Struggle for European Democracy in Spain, 1949-1986,” was overseen by S C Dobbs Emeritus Professor Walter Adamson and Associate Professor Astrid M. Eckert. Rebekah A. Ramsay also finished in the summer of 2020. Overseen by Associate Professor Matthew Payne, Ramsay’s dissertation was titled “Kindling the Hearths of Culture: Kazakh Citizenship and Cultural Revolution on the Soviet Frontier, 1917-1937.” Cheng-Heng Lu completed in the fall of 2020 under the advisement of Professor Tonio Andrade. His dissertation was titled “The Art of Being an Imperial Broker: The Qing Conquest of Taiwan and Maritime Society (1624-1788).”