Category / Experiential Learning

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Summer 2024 Funding Opportunities for Undergraduates


Through the generous support of donors, the History Department is pleased to offer multiple funding opportunities for undergraduates in the summer of 2024 to pursue research, study, or experiential learning in the United States or abroad. Students graduating in the fall of 2024 or spring of 2025 are eligible. Applications should include a faculty letter of recommendation and be submitted electronically to Becky Herring by 4pm on March 4. Browse a summary of our funding programs below, and find more details on the Undergraduate Research section of our website.

  • The Loren & Gail Starr Award in Experiential Learning: The Undergraduate Studies Committee hopes to fund up to *5* experiential learning projects proposed by History majors or minors with junior or senior status. The awards, which can range from $500 to $3,000 each, are intended to support students who wish to use the knowledge & skills they have acquired in history courses to create or participate in projects in settings outside of the classroom. The committee seeks proposals from students that are bold, creative, & off-the-beaten path. The only rule is that engagement with the past be central to the experience undertaken by the student.
  • George P. Cuttino Scholarship for Independent Research Abroad: The Cuttino Scholarship is offered annually to rising senior history majors or joint majors in Emory College. The scholarship provides for a summer of research and travel abroad between the students’ junior and senior year. The stipend may be up to $10,000. All junior history majors and joint majors in Emory College with a cumulative G.P.A. of 3.0 or above are eligible. Early in the spring semester (normally mid-February) a notice with deadline for submission of Cuttino Scholarship applications to the Director of Undergraduate Studies is issued. The Cuttino Scholarship recipient is selected by the Department of History Undergraduate Committee.
  • George P. Cuttino Fellowship for Summer Programs Abroad: The Cuttino Fellowships for Summer Programs Abroad are offered annually to rising senior history and joint history majors in Emory College for study outside the United States in a summer study program. Priority is given to students enrolled in Emory Study Abroad programs. Several awards are given each year and can be as much as $4,000 each. The recipients of the fellowships must provide documentation of enrollment in an academic summer study abroad program in order to receive the awarded funds. Upon returning to Emory in the fall, the recipients must also provide documentation of their successful completion of the summer study program.
  • Theodore H. Jack Award for Independent Research in the US: The Theodore H. Jack Award is offered annually to an Emory College history major or joint history major who has attained senior status (75+ credit hours) at the time of the award. It provides modest funds for summer research in the United States outside the city of Atlanta on topics that deal in whole or in part with American history. It is expected that recipients will use the award to research an honors thesis, though students not in the honors program are welcome to apply.
  • James L. Roark Prize for Independent Research in the US: The James L. Roark Prize will be awarded annually to advanced undergraduate History majors (75+ credit hours). The award will provide funds for undergraduate research in American history to be conducted within the United States over one summer.Recipients will be expected to use the prize towards research for an honors thesis, or a similarly significant research project.
  • Bell I. Wiley Prize in U.S. History for Independent Research in the US: The Wiley Prize is offered annually to an Emory College history major or joint major who has attained senior status (75+ credit hours) at the time of the award. It provides funds for summer travel within the United States outside of the city of Atlanta in support of innovative research in the history of the United States. It is expected that recipients will use the award to research an honors thesis, though students not in the honors program are welcome to apply. All history and joint history majors with senior status in Emory College and with a cumulative G.P.A. of 3.0 or above are eligible.
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Chira to Lead Inaugural Study Abroad Program to Cuba


The Emory History Department will inaugurate a study abroad program in Cuba in May 2024. Titled “History, Environment, and Society,” the 4-credit program will be led by Dr. Adriana Chira, Associate Professor of History, and be run in collaboration with the Fundación Antonio Nuñez Jiménez de la Naturaleza y el Hombre in Havana and Learn from Travel. Highlights of the program include: experiencing a rumba street party, visiting a tobacco farm, and snorkeling at a starfish reserve. If you are interested and/or have questions, please contact Prof. Chira at adriana [dot] chira [at] emory [dot] edu.

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Students in Rodriguez’s ‘LatinX US History’ Class Make Altar for Día de los Muertos


Earlier this semester students in Dr. Yami Rodriguez’s course “LatinX US History” produced an altar for Día de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, on the first floor of Bowden Hall. Practiced in Mexico, especially, and throughout other Latin American countries, these altars are meant to celebrate loved ones who have passed and invite them to reunite with those still living. The “LatinX US History” course invited all to participate in the practice by displaying a picture or making an offering to a loved one. Read more about this wonderful project below.

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Arts and Social Justice Fellow Collaborates with Mortimer’s ‘Intro. to Native American History’

Atlanta-based painter and social practice artist Bird Harris, a 2023-24 Arts & Social Justice (ASJ) fellow at Emory, has worked this past semester with Dr. Loren Michael Mortimer‘s class “HIST 285: Introduction to Native American History.” Now in its fourth year, the ASJ program pairs artists in Atlanta with faculty across schools at Emory to “reimagine an existing course, injecting a creative approach to addressing the social justice issues that surfaced within class conversations.”

Harris led students in the course on a Radical Noticing Walk through the sacred Ocmulgee Mounds National Historic Park during their historic trip to the 31st Ocmulgee Indigenous Celebration in September of this year. That walk formed part of a broader project she has developed with students in Mortimer’s class, titled “Land as Living Memory.” Mortimer is Provost Postdoctoral Fellow in Native American history in the History Department. His book manuscript, Kaniatarowanenneh Crossings: Indigenous Power and Presence in the St. Lawrence River Watershed, 1534-1842, is under advance contract with University of Nebraska Press.

“I believe the earth has a long memory and that we, often intentionally, do not. I view my roles as an artist, mother, historian, and citizen as deeply intertwined and linked to the same core responsibilities: interrogate imbalances, reckon with hard histories, create beauty, and work towards a future of natural equilibrium. Having just moved my family from our home in New Orleans, one of the fastest disappearing land masses in the world, my work is a meditation on land loss, the multiple histories of American land, and mothering in the face of ecological collapse.”

Bird Harris, Artist Statement
by emoryhistorydept

Goldstein to Lead TJIS Poland Study Abroad in Summer 2024

Students and faculty, including Dr. Ellie R. Schainker, in the inaugural TJIS Poland study abroad in 2023.

The Tam Institute for Jewish Studies launched a study abroad program to Poland in the summer of 2023 titled “Jews of Poland: History and Memory.” Dr. Ellie R. Schainker, Arthur Blank Family Foundation Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies, led the inaugural trip. Building on the successes of last year, the TJIS will offer an expanded trip this year, led by Associate Professor of History Dr. Eric Goldstein. The 11-day, 1-credit program will take students to Poland from May 19-30, 2024. The Berger Family Fund, established by Bruce, Michelle, and Emily Berger 23C with the purpose of supporting student experiential learning on topics related to antisemitism, Jewish life, and Jewish history, will allow TIJS to heavily subsidize the program for students. Read more about the experience from a student’s perspective from last year, and find about more information about the 2024 trip.

“Jewish engagement with Poland and Eastern Europe is a story of huge contrast,” Goldstein shares.  “It’s a story of vibrant Jewish life – it was the largest center of Jewish life in the world for many decades, if not centuries – and also a site of immense tragedy.  And then, in recent years, a site of a kind of cultural rebirth.  So I think (Poland) really provides a lot of very interesting tensions, interesting questions.”

As they unpack these tensions and questions, students will split time between Krakow and Warsaw where they’ll engage in dialogue with contemporary Polish and Polish-Jewish activists, university students, and cultural and community leaders.  Additionally, the program will feature excursions to historical locations such as the Auschwitz-Birkenau camps, Wieliczka Salt Mines, and – new to this year – a former “shtetl.”  A shtetl “was a typical small town where Jews in Eastern Europe lived, especially in the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries,” Goldstein explains.  “So we’ll not only have a chance to explore how Jews lived in the larger cities, but this kind of classic example of how they lived in the countryside as well.”

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Kheyal Roy-Meighoo (C23) Pursues MA in Animation as Fulbright in UK


Kheyal Roy-Meighoo, a 2023 Emory College graduate who completed double majors in History and Film and Media, received a Fulbright Open Study/Research fellowship to pursue a master’s degree in animation at the Arts University Bournemouth. Roy-Meighoo works at the intersection of social justice and film, and, as her Fulbright profile notes, “she has made it her mission to think critically about diversity through art, discover new forms of storytelling through animation, and uncover histories that have not yet been told.” For her master’s thesis, Roy-Meighoo plans to produce a stop motion animated film about identity, loss, and resilience in the Asian diaspora through the narrative arc of a young girl watching her grandmother cook. Roy-Meighoo was also the recipient of the 2022 Loren & Gail Starr Award in Experiential Learning for a short animated film, titled “Backwards,” about the historical connections between the Covid-19 pandemic and Asian exclusion laws. Roy-Meighoo is Emory’s first recipient of the Open Study/Research Fulbright fellowship to the UK.

by emoryhistorydept

Emory Undergraduates, Including ‘HIST 285: Intro to Native American History,’ Visit Ocmulgee Mounds

Emory students and faculty gathered on the stairs of the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historic Park.

Students in Dr. Michael Mortimer’s class “HIST 285: Introduction to Native American History” recently visited one of the most sacred sites in the ancestral homeland of the Muscogee People, the Ocmulgee Mounds, for the 31st Ocmulgee Indigenous Celebration. The Provost Postdoctoral Fellow in Native North American History, Mortimer co-organized the trip with Dr. Debra Vidali (Anthropology) and Heidi Aklaseaq Senungetuk (Music). Undergraduates from Vidali’s “Anthropology 190–Land, Life, and Place” and Senungetuk’s “Music 460RW–North American Indigenous Music and Modernity,” along with students from Emory’s Native American Student Association, also joined the chorot of 35 students and faculty. Their trip marked the first time that Emory University has organized an official journey to the Ocmulgee Mounds National Historic Park. The History Department was a co-sponsor of this event. Read more about the experience from Jessanya Holness, an undergraduate who travelled to the Ocmulgee Mounds and wrote a news story for the site Native American and Indigenous Engagement at Emory: “Relational Accountability and Place-Based Learning: Emory Students Participate in 31st Annual Ocmulgee Indigenous Celebration.”

by emoryhistorydept

Clio Prizes Awarded for Outstanding Undergraduate Research in History

Clio, Muse of History in Greek Mythology

Four Emory College undergraduates were recently recognized for outstanding historical research through the History Department’s Clio Prizes, awarded annually to the best research paper in a junior/senior History Colloquium and to the best paper in a Freshman History Seminar. This year’s recipients are:

For the best paper written in a freshman seminar

  • Ethan Hill, “Are Video Games Causing Violence?” (Nominated by Prof. Judith Miller)
  • Thora Jordt, “Zapata’s Ghost: The Reinterpretation of Revolutionary Agrarian Values and Symbolism in the Zapatista Movement” (Nominated by Prof. Yanna Yannakakis)

For the best research paper written in a junior/senior colloquium

  • Tori Jordan, “Reproducing Slavery” (Nominated by Prof. Yami Rodgriguez)
  • Yingyi Tan, “Meat and Modernity” (Nominated by Prof. Laura Nenzi)

Congratulations to the 2022-23 winners! Find the archive of all past winners here.

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Undergraduate Research Featured in Summer Funding Presentations Oct. 20

Matthew Croswhite and Harrison Helms

Over the summer of 2023, two undergraduate History students, Matthew Croswhite and Harrison Helms, conducted riveting research on various topics and participated in exciting travel experiences with the help of funding awards they received from the History Department. Please join us on Oct 20, 2023, from 1-2pm as our summer funding recipients give presentations detailing their use of the scholarship funds for their travel and research. For more information on the History Department’s travel funding awards and fellowships, please visit our website: Travel Funding.

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Rodriguez and Olivo Help to Usher in Exhibit on Latinx Photography


Dr. Yami Rodriguez, Assistant Professor of History, recently delivered opening remarks at the newest exhibit at the Michael C. Carlos Museum, titled “You Belong Here: Place, People, and Purpose in Latinx Photography.” A historian of Latinx communities, particularly those in the U.S. South, Rodriguez provided illuminating context for the exhibit by offering a chronology of relationships between Latinx communities in Atlanta and Emory University. Senior History major and Carlos Museum intern Cassandra Olivio, who worked with Rodriguez to secure the internship, created an interactive activity to accompany the exhibit. Read an excerpt from Rodriguez’s opening remarks along with a brief Q&A with Olivio about her experience below.

Yami Rodriguez, Opening Remarks (excerpt)

“The effort to showcase a Latinx photography exhibit at Emory led me to consider change over time, and how this exhibit contributes to a long legacy of students, staff, and faculty that have worked to highlight and make space for Latinx experiences and voices at this institution. I therefore want to briefly highlight the collaborative work that has been and continues to be necessary in order to make a statement like ‘You Belong Here’ ring true.

“In 1989, for example, Mariali Fuster, Maritza Ortiz and Gerardo Tosca, along with other students, were ‘primarily responsible for raising interest in having Emory celebrate’ Hispanic Heritage Month. A list of events included Spanish club meetings, lectures on US and Latin American history, and community meals. Three years later in 1992 members of the Latin American Awareness Organization (or, LATINO) at Emory had the stated goal of ‘bring[ing] together the Latino students and to educate both the Emory community and the Atlanta community-at-large about Latinos and Latin America.’ And just three years later a staff member explained in scrap notes how she ‘received more than 50 calls regarding the services and resources’ provided by the Office of Multicultural Programs and Services because many Latinx parents whose children had been accepted to Emory could not afford tuition. As the population of Latinx students at Emory grew at the turn of the century, so did awareness of the populations’ needs and, at times, demands. A Latino Task Force made up of students, staff and faculty established in 2000, for example, advocated for increased Latino student enrollment and staff increases, along with a call for establishing ‘Latino Studies.’ The call for Latinx Studies would be renewed in 2018 with student-led advocacy. Over the decades, Latinx academic, social, political, and cultural presence has shaped our Emory communities and the possibilities for inclusion on and off campus…The Latinx community today at Emory, in Metro Atlanta, and the South more generally, is diverse, multilingual, and actively in search of spaces that can speak to some aspects of this complex, constructed category we know as Latinidad. I’m hopeful that the Carlos Museum is one of many spaces on campus that can commit to maintaining a sustainable, non-extractive, and mutually beneficial relationship with Latinx communities at Emory and across Georgia as we seek to make our institutions more inclusive and representative of the worlds we move through.”

*Remarks were informed by archival materials in the Rose and research conducted by undergraduate student Arturo Contreras for his work on the “Consciousness is Power: A Record of Emory Latinx History.” Efforts to digitize this Fall 2022 pop-up exhibit are currently underway in our history course, “The Migrant South.”

Q&A with Cassandra Olivo, History Major and Carlos Museum Intern

How did you become an intern at the Carlos Museum, and how has this experience shaped your time at Emory?

I was able to secure my internship at the Carlos Musuem through the help of Professor Rodriguez. She informed me that the museum was looking for two students to create an interactive component for the exhibition, and I applied because she informed me that the knowledge and skills that I had acquired from my history courses could be applicable in the creation of this component.

As a student who must also work to be able to study at this institution, I have found it hard to make time to visit the museum; thus, this experience provided me with the opportunity to explore and interact with a space that I would have not engaged with otherwise.

Have you seen intersections between your role at the Carlos and your history coursework? How so?

Yes, I have. I have taken a few classes where we have discussed the forms of resistance used by enslaved people, and a piece by artist Joiri Minaya not only allowed me to see how art could be crafted to represent this history, but added to my knowledge because I learned that enslaved women in the Barbados used the ayogwiri plant to induce abortions because they did not want their children to be thrusted into slavery. This piece does an excellent job at displaying how art can be utilized as a medium that both communicates and educates the public about historical events.

The exhibit you worked on highlights themes of identity, community, and belonging, with the interactive you co-created for the exhibit asking visitors to reflect on these themes. Can you share a bit about how your own identity, community, and/or sense of belonging informed your work at the Carlos and your time at Emory?

As the daughter of Mexican-immigrant parents who can barely read and write in English, I wanted to design the interactive in a way, which included translating the questions into Spanish, that would feel inviting to these kinds of individuals. The silence that Latinx populations face does not result from the community’s lack of expression on topics, but rather the linguistic barriers that limit their self-expression. Growing up, I always viewed my upbringing as a limitation, but this internship has made me realize that my experiences allow me to be an effective advocate for the needs of the community.

There have been instances where I was the only person of Latinx descent in my class, and it felt isolating at times. This feeling compelled me to create a space where individuals would not only be able to reflect on their own experiences, but also read the stories of others similar to them and see that they were not alone.