Category / Conferences

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

Doctoral Candidate Olivia Cocking Wins Dissertation Fellowships


Doctoral candidate Olivia Cocking has won two fellowships to support her dissertation, titled “France After Empire: Migration, Citizenship, and Social Rights, 1946 – Present.” The European Union Studies Association awarded Cocking its Ernst Haas Dissertation Fellowship, and Emory’s Laney Graduate School awarded her the Emory University Women’s Club Memorial Fellowship. Cocking is completing research and dissertation write up in Paris. She has presented papers at the Society for the Study of French History conference in Manchester, UK, and the Groupe de recherche sur les orders coloniaux colloquium, in Nantes, France.

Cocking has also received honorable mention for the Edward T. Gargan Prize from the Western Society for French History for her paper “‘Je ne comprends pas pourquoi j’ai perdu tous mes droits’: Migration and Welfare in France After Empire.” She presented the paper at the society’s conference in San Francisco in November 2024.

Profs. Tehila Sasson, Judith Miller (co-directors), and Mariana Candido serve on her dissertation committee. 

by emoryhistorydept

Dr. Craig Perry (PhD, ’14) Presents New Research on Medieval Africa through Lens of Jewish Merchants

Dr. Craig Perry, a 2014 alum of the Emory History doctoral program and currently Assistant Professor of Middle Eastern Studies and Jewish Studies in Emory’s Tam Institute for Jewish Studies, presented new research at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds, England, in the summer of 2024. Based on a new English translation and analysis of a twelfth-century letter written by a Jewish merchant, Perry’s research offers new perspectives on the social history of medieval African societies and peoples. Read his reflection on the presentation, and elaboration on the research, here: “Prof. Craig Perry Presents Paper at the International Medieval Congress.” Perry completed his dissertation, “The Daily Life of Slaves and the Global Reach of Slavery in Medieval Egypt, 969-1250 CE,” under the advisement of Marina Rustow (faculty from 2003-2010).

by emoryhistorydept

Aldridge Presents Research at OAH Conference

Emory History PhD student Andrew Aldridge presented his research at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians this past spring. Aldridge was one of five students to present during the Graduate Student Lightning Research Round. His talk examined Blackness and criminality through the prism of cultural products like novels, comics, music, and television. Aldridge is beginning his third year in the program, and his research is advised by Drs. Carl Suddler and Daniel LaChance.

by emoryhistorydept

Brunner Receives Honorable Mention for Article from African Studies Association

Georgia Brunner

Congratulations to doctoral candidate Georgia Brunner on receiving honorable mention for her paper “Chaos, Possibility, and Foreclosure for Women’s Futures in Revolutionary Rwanda” in the category of Graduate Student Paper Prize from the African Studies Association. Brunner’s scholarship examines gender and colonialism in Africa, particularly late colonialism and early postcolonialism in Rwanda. Her dissertation, “Building a Nation: Gender, Labor and the Politics of Nationalism in Colonial Rwanda, 1916-1962,” is advised by Drs. Clifton Crais and Mariana P. Candido.

by emoryhistorydept

Menashe Receives Preyer Award from American Society for Legal History

Dr. Tamar Menashe, the Jay and Leslie Cohen Assistant Professor of History and Jewish Studies, has received the 2023 Preyer Award from the American Society for Legal History. Named for distinguished historian of the law of early America Kathryn T. Preyer, the award provides an honorarium and travel expenses for early career scholars to present a paper at the Society’s annual meeting. Menashe will deliver her paper, “A Person of the Imperial Supreme Court: Jewish Litigation in Speyer and the Struggle to Belong,” as a Kathryn T. Preyer Scholar at the late October 2023 meeting in Philadelphia.

by abritt

Doctoral Student Anjuli Webster to Present at Brown U. Workshop “Rivers on the Move”

The Mississippi River

History doctoral student Anjuli Webster was recently accepted to an international workshop at Brown University in June of 2023. Titled “Rivers on the Move,” the event will bring together environmental historians, hydrologists, and other historically-minded humanists and natural scientists to understand better how past and contemporary riparian change relate to social and political shifts, from economic development to legal frameworks. The workshop will result in an edited volume of interdisciplinary essays that aim to appeal to a wide range of riverine scholars and students. “Rivers on the Move” is organized by Bathsheba Demuth, Mark Healey, Giacomo Parrinello, and Larry Smith, with support from the Institute at Brown for Environment and Society, in collaboration with the project Shifting Shores, funded by an Emergence(s) grant of the City of Paris. Webster is currently conducting fieldwork for her dissertation, titled “Fluid Empires: Histories of Environment and Sovereignty in southern Africa, 1750-1900.”

by abritt

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.

by abritt

Anastasiia Strakhova to Present at Tam Institute Symposium

Graduate student Anastasiia Strakhova will present on her research at the upcoming Brickman-Levin Symposium, organized by the Tam Institute for Jewish Studies and Laney Graduate School. Strakhova’s talk is titled “Selective Emigration: Border Control and the Jewish Escape in Late Imperial Russia, 1881-1914.” The symposium will take place via Zoom on Wednesday, April 6, at 7pm.

Update – Find a recording of the event here: “The Brickman-Levin Symposium.”

by abritt

Undergraduate Honors Student Ryan Kelly Presents at International Conference

Ryan Kelly, a undergraduate honors student and history major, recently presented a paper at the virtual conference “In Sickness and in Health: Pestilence, Disease, and Healing in Medieval and Early Modern Art” along with Dr. Sharon T. Strocchia, Professor of History. Their talk was titled “Picturing the Pox in Italian Popular Prints, 1550-1650.” The event ran from January 12-13, 2021, and was hosted by the University of Haifa in Israel.