Category / Awards

by emoryhistorydept

Chira Named Winship Distinguished Professor of History

Adriana Chira


Dr. Adriana Chira, Associate Professor of Atlantic World History, has been named Winship Distinguished Professor of History (effective September 1, 2025). Chira’s research and teaching specializations include: Atlantic history; Cuba in world history; race; slavery and the law; land tenure and property; and post-emancipation. This prestigious appointment recognizes Chira’s scholarly eminence and contributions to Emory’s mission.

Chira’s first book, Patchwork Freedoms: Law, Slavery, and Race beyond Cuba’s Plantation (Cambridge University Press, Afro-Latin America Series, 2022), focuses on enslaved and free Afro-descendants’ efforts to own landed property and to attain free legal status through claims to ownership filed inside first instance and appellate courts in Cuba during the nineteenth century. The book traces the political implications of these processes, arguing for a history of emancipation that pays attention to vernacular legalism and modes of claiming property. The project is based on extensive archival research within Cuba (in Havana and Santiago de Cuba) and Spain.


Patchwork Freedoms received the Outstanding First Book Prize from the Association for the Study of the Worldwide African Diaspora, the James A. Rawley Prize in Atlantic World History from the American Historical Association, the Peter Gonville Stein Prize for best book in non-US legal history from the American Society for Legal History, and the Elsa Goveia Prize for excellence in Caribbean history from the Association of Caribbean Historians. It has also received honorable mentions from the Latin American Studies Association (the Nineteenth Century Section) and from the Latin American and Caribbean Studies Section of the Southern Historical Association.

Chira has also authored multiple acclaimed scholarly articles, including:

  • “Freedom with Local Bonds: Custom and Manumission in the Age of Emancipation,” The American Historical Review 126.3 (September), 949-977
  • “Ampliando los significados de sevicia: Los reclamos de protección corporal de los esclavos en la Cuba del siglo XIX,” Páginas: Revista Digital de la Escuela de Historia de la Universidad de Rosario (Argentina) no. 33 (Sept./Oct.): https://revistapaginas.unr.edu.ar/index.php/RevPaginas/article/view/546
  • “Affective Debts: Manumission by Grace and the Making of Gradual Emancipation Laws in Cuba, 1817-1868,” Law and History Review 36.1 (winter), 1-33.

Chira teaches a range of thematic and placed-based courses, from “Human Trafficking in World History” to “History Lab: Puerto Rico.” She also created an Emory study abroad program in Cuba, which focuses on questions of food sovereignty and environmental history, that usually takes place during the Maymester semester.

Students and faculty on Cuba study abroad trip, 2024


Chira’s research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and by residential fellowships at Yale University (at the Agrarian Studies Center) and at Harvard University (with the Weatherhead Initiative in Global History).

by emoryhistorydept

Yannakakis Named Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History


Dr. Yanna Yannakakis has been named Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History in recognition of her excellent scholarship, outstanding teaching, and deep service to Emory. Yannakakis is a social and cultural historian of colonial Latin America with specializations in the history of Mexico, ethnohistory, the history of legal systems, and the interaction of indigenous peoples and institutions in Mexico. The new position is effective September 1, 2025.

Her most recent book, Since Time Immemorial: Native Custom & Law in Colonial Mexico (Duke University Press, 2023) was awarded the Peter Gonville Stein Book Award from the American Society for Legal History and the Friedrich Katz Prize in Latin American and Caribbean History, one of the top awards from the American Historical Association. Since Time Immemorial traces the invention, translation, and deployment of the legal category of Native custom, with particular attention to how Indigenous litigants and colonial authorities refashioned social and cultural norms related to marriage, crime, religion, land, labor, and self-governance in Native communities. The monograph was published open access with support from Emory’s TOME initiative.


Yannakakis’ first book, The Art of Being In-Between: Native Intermediaries, Indian Identity, and Local Rule in Colonial Oaxaca (Duke University Press, 2008), examined how native cultural brokers negotiated with Spanish courts and the Catholic Church to open and maintain a space for the political and cultural autonomy of indigenous elites and their communities during Mexico’s colonial period. The book won the 2009 Howard Francis Cline Memorial Award from the Conference on Latin American History for the best book on the history of Latin America’s Indigenous peoples.

Yannakakis has co-edited or co-authored multiple other books and articles, including Indigenous Intellectuals: Knowledge, Power, and Colonial Culture in Colonial Mexico and the Andes (Duke University Press, 2014) (with Gabriela Ramos), Los indios ante la justicia local: intérpretes, oficiales, y litigantes en Nueva España y Guatemala siglos XVI-XVIII (Colegio de Michoacán, 2019) (with Luis Alberto Arrioja Díaz Viruell and Martina Schrader-Kniffki), “A Court of Sticks and Branches: Indian Jurisdiction in Colonial Mexico and Beyond,” American Historical Review (February 2019) (with Bianca Premo), and the special issue “Law, Politics, and Indigeneity in the Making of Ethnohistory: Perspectives from Latin America, Africa, and the Pacific,” Ethnohistory (70:2, 2023) (with Miranda Johnson).


Yannakakis is also the coordinator on an ongoing, open access digital humanities project, titled “Power of Attorney: Native People, Legal Culture, & Social Networks in Mexico.” Read more about this project: “Recent Faculty Publications: Q & A with Yanna Yannakakis about ‘Power of Attorney.’”

by emoryhistorydept

Alex Minovici (C ’25) Receives Inaugural Fox Center Undergraduate Honors Award

Recent Emory graduate and history major Alex Minovici has been selected as the inaugural recipient of the Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry’s Undergraduate Honors Award for the thesis, “Singe Spaima: The 1989 Revolution and the Politics of Violence in Socialist and Post Socialist Romania.” Minovici, who completed a double major in Philosophy, Politics, and Law, produced the thesis as an Undergraduate Honors Fellow at the Fox Center over the 2025-26 academic year. “Singe Spaima” received Highest Honors from the Emory Department of History.

Minovici offered reflections on the thesis and experience as a fellow at the Fox Center in conversation with Karl-Mary Akre (Fox Center Communications and Outreach Coordinator). Read an excerpt below along with their full conversation.

“…what truly gives Romanian people power in their new democracy is remembering the violence and trauma with the express purpose of holding state officials accountable; refusing to forget abuses. Memory can be an act of resistance. Along these lines, I feel as if my thesis is part of a broader effort to document, remember, and respect the trauma that Romanians experienced in recent history.”

by emoryhistorydept

Jessica Alvarez Starr to Intern with Puerto Rico Archival Collaboration

Jessica Alvarez Starr, a first-year PhD student, will be serving as an intern with the Puerto Rico Archival Collaboration (PRAC) Summer 2025 Graduate Student Internship Program. As part of this 8-week program, Jessica will gain valuable exposure to collections in the Archivo General de Puerto Rico (AGPR) and the University of Puerto Rico’s Colección Puertorriqueña (CPR). Jessica will work alongside archivists to aid in organizing, transcribing, and digitizing efforts for the AGPR while developing their own research project on enslavement and emancipation practices in Mayagüez, Puerto Rico. As an intern, Jessica will receive a stipend to cover travel and living costs for their work in San Juan. They are grateful for the opportunity to conduct archival research, gain preservation skills, and develop connections with scholars to advance their studies. Read more information about the PRAC internship. Their dissertation, tentatively titled “Revolutionary Rhetoric: Antislavery and Anticolonial Alliances in Nineteenth-Century Puerto Rico,” is advised by Drs. Adriana Chira and Yanna Yannakakis.



by emoryhistorydept

Fields-Black’s ‘COMBEE’ Wins 2025 Pulitzer Prize

Dr. Edda L. Fields-Black (BA, ’92) has received the 2025 Pulitzer Prize in History for her book COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War (Oxford UP, 2024). The committee for the prestigious award lauded Combee as a “richly-textured and revelatory account of a slave rebellion that brought 756 enslaved people to freedom in a single day, weaving military strategy and family history with the transition from bondage to freedom.” Combee also won the 2025 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, given annually to a work that enhances the general public’s understanding of Abraham Lincoln, the American Civil War soldier, or the American Civil War era. The Pulitzer Prize in History was shared this year with Native Nations: A Millennium in North America, by Kathleen DuVal (UNC).

Fields-Black received a BA from Emory College in 1992 and is now Professor and Director of the Dietrich College Humanities Center at Carnegie Mellon University. Read an excerpt from an interview with Fields-Black below and a feature article about the award: “Carnegie Mellon Professor Wins 2025 Pulitzer Prize in History.”

“In 2025, it is hard for Americans to fathom Harriet Tubman’s courage and selflessness, going back into what I call the “Prison House of Bondage” so many times to rescue family, friends and members of her community on the Maryland Eastern shore when she could have led a relatively comfortable life as a free woman in Philadelphia, St. Catherines, Canada or Auburn, New York. Then, during the Civil War, she risked her freedom and her life to go down to Beaufort, South Carolina, and rescue enslaved people she did not know, and (as she told to her biographers) whose dialect and culture she could not understand. Risking her freedom and her life so that other enslaved people could be free was a supreme act of bravery.“

by emoryhistorydept

Celebrating 2025 Senior Prize Winners

On April 30 the History Department will gather for the annual Senior Celebration to honor history major, joint major, and minor graduates. Five graduating students will receive senior prizes for their exceptional contributions to undergraduate historical inquiry at Emory. The senior prize recipients are:

James Z. Rabun Prize for the Best Record in American History – Matthea Boon

Named for former professor James Z. Rabun, this prize is awarded annually to the graduating senior history major or joint major in Emory College who has achieved the best overall record in American history courses.

The African, Asian, and Latin American History Prize for Best Record in African, Asian, and Latin American History – Rebecca Casel

Established in 2015, this award is given annually to the graduating senior history major or joint major in Emory College who has achieved the best overall record in African, Asian, and Latin American history courses. 

George P. Cuttino Prize for the best record in European History – Ezekiel Jones (Co-recipient)

Established in 1984 to honor Professor George P. Cuttino, this prize is awarded annually to the graduating senior history major or joint major in Emory College who has achieved the most outstanding record in European history courses. 

The Matthew A. Carter Citizen-Scholar Award – Alex Minovici

Established in memory of Matt Carter, who graduated from Emory in May 2000 with High Honors in History, this award is given each year to the graduating history major or joint major in Emory College who exemplifies the qualities that made Matt Carter such an outstanding individual: high academic achievement and good works in the community.

George P. Cuttino Prize for the best record in European History – Samantha Stevens (Co-recipient)

Established in 1984 to honor Professor George P. Cuttino, this prize is awarded annually to the graduating senior history major or joint major in Emory College who has achieved the most outstanding record in European history courses. 

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Graduate Student Gerardo Manrique de Lara Ruiz Receives IAS Prize


Congratulations to third-year History graduate student Gerardo Manrique de Lara Ruiz on receiving the 2025 Graduate Student Prize from the Institute of African Studies (IAS) at Emory. This prize is presented biennially to a graduate student who has made significant contributions to the IAS, including consistent and meaningful participation in the IAS seminar and a notable impact on the academic life of the Institute. Manrique de Lara Ruiz’s research interests include colonial rule, deliberative politics, sovereignty, and customary law in 20th-century Southern Africa (Botswana and Lesotho). Drs. Clifton Crais and Mariana P. Candido serve as Manrique de Lara Ruiz’s advisors.

by emoryhistorydept

Fields-Black’s ‘COMBEE’ Wins Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize

Dr. Edda L. Fields-Black (BA, ’92), Professor and Director of the Dietrich College Humanities Center at Carnegie Mellon University, has received the 2025 Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize for her book COMBEE: Harriet Tubman, the Combahee River Raid, and Black Freedom during the Civil War (Oxford UP, 2024). COMBEE offers the fullest account to date of Tubman’s Civil War service, including her role in the momentous 1863 raid that led to the freeing of nearly 800 people. The Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, which includes an award of $50,000, is given annually to a work that enhances the general public’s understanding of Abraham Lincoln, the American Civil War soldier, or the American Civil War era.

Fields-Black received her undergraduate degree in history and English from Emory and her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. Her research specializations include the transnational history of West African rice farmers, peasant farmers in pre-colonial Upper Guinea Coast and enslaved laborers on rice plantations in the antebellum South Carolina and Georgia Lowcountry. Indiana UP published her first book, Deep Roots: Rice Farmers in West Africa and the African Diaspora, in 2014. She has also produced compelling work about that past that transcends disciplinary boundaries. She served as executive producer and librettist of “Unburied, Unmourned, Unmarked: Requiem for Rice,” a contemporary classical and multimedia symphonic work and the first symphonic work about slavery on rice plantations.

Read a quote from Dr. Fields-Black about receiving the prize below and find the press release from the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History here.

“I am thrilled to receive this award and honored to be the vehicle through which the story of Harriet Tubman’s Civil War service and the Combahee River Raid are told. I came to the history of the Combahee River Raid through my many years of work on rice-growing technology, rice fields, and rice laborers (free and enslaved) on both sides of the Atlantic and my passion for uncovering new sources and methods, which reveal the voices of Africans and people of African descent who did not author written sources. I aspired to tell the history of the Combahee River Raid from the perspectives of the people who participated in it, Harriet Tubman, the 2nd South Carolina Volunteers, and the Combahee freedom seekers who liberated themselves in the raid. This was no small feat since they were all formerly enslaved and the overwhelming majority were illiterate.“

by emoryhistorydept

Four Majors Named to Emory 100 Senior Honorary

Four Emory History Department majors have been named to the Emory 100 Senior Honorary, an award program that recognizes exceptional student leaders in the graduating class. Majors Emilyn Hazelbrook, Klaire Mason, Alexander Moss, and Adelaide Rosene joined the honorees this year. Members of this prestigious group, which is marking its 20th year in 2025, are campus leaders, thought provokers, dynamic athletes, academic mentors, and community influencers. They have made meaningful contributions at Emory and are working to create a lasting impact in communities worldwide. Members of 100 Senior Honorary come from Oxford College, Emory College, Goizueta Business School, and the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing. Past honorees continue to shape Emory’s future by mentoring students, supporting admissions, leading alumni chapters, organizing reunions, and serving on leadership boards. Read more about this program here.

by emoryhistorydept

Sanders Chronicles the Impacts of “Segregation Scholarships”

Dr. Crystal R. Sanders, Associate Professor of African American Studies and Associated Faculty in the History Department, recently published A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships, and the Debt Owed to Public HBCUs with UNC Press. The book chronicles the little-known history of “segregation scholarships,” a pre–Brown v. Board of Education practice wherein southern states paid to send Black students out of state for graduate education instead of creating separate but equal graduate programs at tax-supported Black colleges or by admitting Black students to historically white institutions. A finalist for the 2025 Association for the Study of African American Life and History Book Prize, A Forgotten Migration was also the focus of a recent piece in Forbes. Read an excerpt from that piece, in which Sanders explains the genesis of the project, along with the full article: “A History Of ‘Segregation Scholarships’ And The Impact On HBCUs.”

“Growing up in rural North Carolina, I noticed that many of the retired Black public school teachers in my church had master’s degrees from NYU and Columbia University’s Teachers College. Quick math let me know that they had earned these degrees in the late 1940s and early 1950s. I asked my father why these women had chosen to go so far away for graduate school and he answered my question with a question: ‘Did they really have a choice?’” Sanders elaborated, “My dad’s comments stayed with me and I began exploring the credentials of Black public school teachers in the decades before desegregation and realized that Black teachers all over the South seemed to have these degrees from northeastern and midwest institutions.”