Category / Awards

by abritt

Chira Wins Article Prize from the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians

Cover of the September 2021 volume of The American Historical Review.

Dr. Adriana Chira, Assistant Professor of History, was recently awarded an article prize from the Berkshire Conference of Women Historians. The prize recognizes Chira’s 2021 article in The American Historical Review, titled “Freedom with Local Bonds: Custom and Manumission in the Age of Emancipation.” The annual award goes to the best article in any field by a woman scholar. The prize committee praised the article’s “creativity in scholarship and expression” and “found Chira’s work to be innovative in its approach and exploration of those seeking manumission from slavery.”  The report continued: “Considering social networks as a ‘resource’ in the manumission process offers a new facet for understanding this matrix. Chira also considers the grey area between enslaved and free, building on scholarship considering the nature of identity and freedom among enslaved peoples.” Read the abstract from the article below.

“Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, across Latin America, expansive rural communities of African descent forged freedom from below in the shadows of highly exploitative extractive economies. Their efforts push us to reconsider established genealogies of the age of emancipation. Freedom through conditional manumission and enslaved people’s reliance on social networks to obtain it opened the door to custom inside first-instance district courts in such areas. Judges turned to vernacular understandings of rights and obligations as they clarified the ambiguous statuses of the conditionally freed for which written law offered few provisions. Through manumission and legal actions to defend freedom, peasants of African descent on the margins of the global economic system grounded their rights in state structures as local custom. Black freedom within such territories represents a mode of community governance that remains invisible if studied by focusing on mobility or nation building. Seen from a place such as Santiago de Cuba, the nineteenth century was not just a time when Africans and Afro-descendants pursued social inclusion through ideologies of national citizenship and diasporic connections. It was also a time of freedom through membership in local communities, which women and families were especially instrumental in forging.“

by abritt

Chira Wins Agricultural History Society Prize for ‘AHR’ Article

Dr. Adriana Chira, Assistant Professor of Atlantic World History, has won the Agricultural History Society’s Wayne D. Rasmussen Award for the best article on agricultural history not published in the journal Agricultural History. Chira’s article, “Freedom with Local Bonds: Custom and Manumission in the Age of Emancipation,” was published in the American Historical Review in September of 2021. Read the abstract of Chira’s piece below and learn more about the awards offered by the Agricultural History Society here.

“Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, across Latin America, expansive rural communities of African descent forged freedom from below in the shadows of highly exploitative extractive economies. Their efforts push us to reconsider established genealogies of the age of emancipation. Freedom through conditional manumission and enslaved people’s reliance on social networks to obtain it opened the door to custom inside first-instance district courts in such areas. Judges turned to vernacular understandings of rights and obligations as they clarified the ambiguous statuses of the conditionally freed for which written law offered few provisions. Through manumission and legal actions to defend freedom, peasants of African descent on the margins of the global economic system grounded their rights in state structures as local custom. Black freedom within such territories represents a mode of community governance that remains invisible if studied by focusing on mobility or nation building. Seen from a place such as Santiago de Cuba, the nineteenth century was not just a time when Africans and Afro-descendants pursued social inclusion through ideologies of national citizenship and diasporic connections. It was also a time of freedom through membership in local communities, which women and families were especially instrumental in forging.“

by abritt

Sharon Strocchia Awarded Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study

Emory Professor of History Sharon Strocchia has been named a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, NJ for the Fall 2022 term. One of the world’s foremost centers for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry, IAS brings together over 200 scholars from around the world every year. Fellows are selected through a highly competitive process for their bold ideas, innovative methods, and deep research questions.

Research at IAS is conducted across four Schools – Historical Studies, Mathematics, Natural Sciences and Social Science – to push the boundaries of human knowledge. Past IAS members include 35 Nobel Laureates, and the site has hosted scholars ranging from Albert Einstein to Clifford Geertz.

During the fellowship, Strocchia will have the opportunity to pursue uninterrupted scholarly work, share her research, and receive feedback from other participants in an intellectually stimulating and generative environment. She will use the time to work on her next book project, tentatively titled Health for Sale: Marketing Medical Trust in Late Renaissance Italy.

“My book examines how trust in new pharmaceutical remedies was built in sixteenth and seventeenth-century Italy,” said Strocchia. “It asks how Renaissance markets balanced concerns about safety and efficacy with the need for medical innovation, given the changing disease environments caused by early globalization. Many of the questions I explore – the award of patent privileges, the use of human subjects in drug trials, the development of trademarks and brand names – have important implications for understanding the long-term development of Western pharmaceutical markets.”

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Annie Fang Li (’22) Named Marshal Scholar

2022 honors student Annie Fang Li has received a Marshall Scholarship for postgraduate study at the University of Oxford. She wrote her honors thesis with Dr. Chris Suh on “San Francisco Chinatown to the American South: Chinese American Christians in the Civil Rights Movement, 1963-1966.” Annie did a double major in History & Sociology. There are many professors who enriched her time at Emory, including her Honors Thesis committee members, Dr. Suh, Dr. Carol Anderson, & Dr. Helen Jin Kim (Candler School of Theology). In addition, she is grateful to Dr. Tracy L. Scott (Sociology), Dr. Pamela Hall (Religion), and Dr. Tehila Sasson (History). Courses with Dr. Anderson (Civil Rights Movement) and Dr. Suh (Asian-American History) led Annie to declare a major in History.

Annie held a James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race & Difference Undergraduate Honors Fellowship to support her thesis writing. During her time in college, Annie served as founding Editor-in-Chief of Emory In Via, a journal of Christian thought. As an IDEAS fellow, she was the Communications Fellow and Teaching Assistant for two sidecar classes. She was also involved in Residence Life, Asian Pacific Islander Desi American Activists (APIDAA), and Journey Church of Atlanta.

Congratulations, Annie!

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Arturo Luna Loranca Receives Sheila Carson Dissertation Completion Fellowship

Doctoral candidate Arturo Luna Loranca has been awarded the 2022-’23 Sheila Carson Dissertation Completion Fellowship. The fellowship provides financial support for an advanced graduate student in the History doctoral program to complete their dissertation. Loranca’s dissertation “Canines and the Making of Mexico City: Three hundred years of human-dog encounters, 1521-1821,” is advised by Drs. Javier Villa-Flores, Yanna Yannakakis, and Karen Stolley.

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Emory Honors Lesser, Payne, and Suh for Teaching and Advising

Deboleena Roy (right), senior associate dean for faculty in Emory College of Arts and Sciences, presented the Emory College Award for Academic Advising to Chris Suh, assistant professor of history, during the college’s diploma ceremony.

Multiple History Department faculty were recognized at the conclusion of the spring 2022 semester with honors and awards from the university. Dr. Jeffrey Lesser, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor and Director of the Halle Institute for Global Learning, was awarded the Eleanor Main Graduate Student Mentor Award. Dr. Matthew J. Payne, Associate Professor, received the Emory Williams Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award. Dr. Chris Suh, Assistant Professor, was given the Emory College Award for Academic Advising. Read about other honors and awards conferred at the spring 2022 commencement: “Faculty and staff honored for excellence in teaching, mentoring and more.”

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Menashe Awarded the Fritz Stern Dissertation Prize by the German Historical Institute 

Incoming faculty member Dr. Tamar Menashe, a historian of late medieval and early modern Jewish and European history, was recently awarded the Fritz Stern Dissertation Prize by the German Historical Institute. Menashe’s dissertation is titled “The Imperial Supreme Court and Jews in Cross-Confessional Legal Cultures in Germany, 1495-1690.” A graduate of Columbia University, Menashe will join Emory’s Department of History and the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies this fall as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow. She will begin her appointment as the Jay and Leslie Cohen Assistant Professor of History and Jewish Studies in Fall 2023. 

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Graduate Student Olivia Cocking Wins SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship

Graduate Student Olivia Cocking recently received a doctoral fellowship from the Social Science and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) of Canada. The generous multi-year fellowships “support high-calibre students engaged in doctoral programs in the social sciences and humanities.” Cocking’s work centers on the history of women and gender in nineteenth- and twentieth-century France, particularly how gender shapes experiences of urban life. Drs. Judith A. Miller and Elizabeth Goodstein serve as Cocking’s dissertation supervisors.

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History Honors Student Hannah Charak Wins James Z. Rabun Prize in American History

Congratulations to History Honors student Hannah Charak on winning the James Z. Rabun Prize in American history, given by the History Department each year to the graduating senior with the best record in that field.  Hannah’s Senior Honors thesis, “Terror from the Top Down: Violence & Voter Suppression in the Postwar South,” was directed by Prof. Jason Ward.  She was among the Spring 2022 inductees to the Phi Beta Kappa Society.

She writes that “Professor Hank Klibanoff’s class [on Civil Rights Cold Cases] was very formative for me.” She continued her work with him through research on the Ahmaud Arbery case (which became Season 3 of Buried Truths podcast). In the Fall of 2021, she was a teaching assistant for his Cold Cases class. She found the “TA role was really interesting, as it allowed me to get a glimpse of what teaching a class would be like.”  She also “enjoyed Dr. Joseph Crespino’s and Dr. Maria Montalvo’s classes very much.” She did research for both of their projects at various points over the past couple of years. She praises Dr. Jason Ward, her adviser, who “has probably influenced me the most during my time at Emory. I’ve been taking his classes since freshman year, which have inspired me to consider history as a profession.”

This prize was established in 1981 on the occasion of the retirement of Professor James Z. Rabun after thirty-four years’ service in the Department of History. In awarding this prize, the department also honors Professor Rabun’s distinctive traits of courtesy, integrity, wisdom, and unselfish devotion to his students and colleagues. The Rabun Prize consists of a book in the field of American history.

The prize was awarded on April 27 at the History Department’s Senior Celebration.

Many congratulations, Hannah!

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Billups Awarded Grant for Research at the Southern Baptist History Library and Archives 

Graduate student Robert Billups has received a Lynn E. May Study Grant to support research at the Southern Baptist History Library and Archives in Nashville, TN. Billups received the same grant in 2020 to support work on an article project. The upcoming research will directly inform Billups’s dissertation, “‘Reign of Terror’: Anti–Civil Rights Terrorism in the United States, 1955–1976,” which investigates violence against participants in the mid-20th-century Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. Congratulations, Robert!