Category / Faculty

by abritt

Emory Historians Celebrated in ‘Feast of Words’

Each year the Emory Center for Faculty Development and Excellence, Emory Libraries, and the Emory Barnes and Noble Bookstore host the “Feast of Words,” an event celebrating Emory faculty who have written or edited books in the prior year. This year’s edition, which took place via Zoom, featured multiple works published by History Department faculty, associated faculty, and an alumnus between September 2020 and August 2021. Find a list of those faculty below, along with their publications, and watch the full virtual celebration here.

Anderson, Carol (African American Studies). The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America. Bloomsbury.

Andrade, Antonio (History). The Last Embassy: The Dutch Mission of 1795 and the Forgotten History of Western Encounters with China. Princeton UP.

Dudziak, Mary (Law) and Mark Philip Bradley, eds. Making the Forever War: Marilyn Young on the Culture and Politics of American Militarism. U of Massachusetts P.

Guidotti-Hernandez, Nicole (English). Archiving Mexican Masculinities in Diaspora. Duke UP.

Lal, Ruby (Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies). Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan. Penguin Random House, India.

Pardo, Rafael (Law), Paul Barron, and Mark Wessman. Secured Transactions: Problems and Materials. West Academic.

Perry, Craig (Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies and Jewish Studies), David Eltis (History, emeritus), Stanley Engerman, and David Richardson, eds. The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 2, AD 500 – AD 1420. Cambridge UP.

by abritt

‘TIME’ Features Research Conducted by Klibanoff and Students for ‘Buried Truths’ Podcast

TIME recently featured historical research conducted by the Emory team behind the “Buried Truths” podcast. Season three of the podcast, which is led by James M. Cox Jr. Professor of Journalism Hank Klibanoff and comprised of Emory undergraduate students, focused on the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. The researchers identified various direct descendants of Arbery, including an enslaved local leader in agriculture and environmental engineering, Bilali Mohammed, through census research. Read an excerpt from the TIME piece below along with the full article: “What Ahmaud Arbery’s Death Has Meant for the Place Where He Lived.”

“In the 1700s, some of Watts and Arbery’s shared ancestors arrived in the region in a group of enslaved families brought to Sapelo Island to cultivate rice, cotton and indigo to enrich their white slaveholders. On his father’s side, Arbery was also the direct descendant of Bilali Mohammed, an enslaved man originally from West Africa brought to the island after first being enslaved in the Caribbean, according to the team of students behind Atlanta Public Radio’s Buried Truths podcast. The students, lead by Hank Klibanoff, director and co-teacher of the Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project at Emory University, were able to confirm that lineage by hunting through Census and other records after a detailed tip shared by Barger, something of a local-history buff. Mohammed—whose slaveholder represented Georgia in the U.S. Congress—was an important source of African agricultural and engineering techniques befitting a climate where rice will grow; that knowledge was key to making Brunswick a prosperous center of economic and cultural activity. Mohammed left behind a 13-page Arabic-language manuscript that is today in the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript collection at the University of Georgia.“

by abritt

Anderson Critiques Long Pattern of Demonizing Black Victims like Arbery for ‘CNN’

Dr. Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor and Associated Faculty in the History Department, was recently quoted in a CNN article chronicling the murder trial of Ahmaud Arbery. Titled “Demonizing Black victims is an old racist trope that didn’t work for defense attorneys this time,” the piece discusses how attorneys in the trial sought to demonize, dehumanize, and criminalize Arbery. Anderson offers historical context about this rhetorical strategy and violent practice across centuries of U.S. history. Read an excerpt below along with the full piece here.

From assertions that Black pastors might frighten jurors to a remark about Arbery’s “long, dirty toenails,” the defense’s strategy was rife with rhetoric that sought to dehumanize and devalue Black Americans.
“What I saw was the defense preying on White fears,” said Carol Anderson, a historian and the chair of African American studies at Emory University. “The ‘long, dirty toenails’ — that is an old trope of the ‘Black Beast.’ That is the stuff coming out of Reconstruction and Jim Crow.”

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Senior History Major Annie Li Wins Prestigious Marshall Scholarship

Annie Li in front of Bowden Hall

Congratulations to senior Annie Li, a history and sociology double major, on being selected for the prestigious Marshall Scholarship. Li is one of 41 students selected nationwide for the award, which supports up to three years of graduate study at any institution in the U.K. As the Emory News Report explains, “Li will pursue a master’s of philosophy with a focus on Christian ethics at the University of Oxford, researching the theological motivations behind transnational social movements. The work expands on her honors thesis, which examines the motivations of Chinese-American activists from San Francisco’s Presbyterian Church in Chinatown (PCC) who participated in the Civil Rights Movement in the South and the Asian American Movement in the West.” Li’s honors thesis, “Chinese-American Christians in the Civil Rights Movement, 1963-1968,” was advised by Dr. Chris Suh, Assistant Professor of History. Read more about Li’s award here: “Emory senior Annie Li selected as a Marshall Scholar for study in U.K.”

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“Visions of Slavery,” Co-Organized by Walter C. Rucker, Awarded Prestigious Mellon Foundation Grant

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded Emory College a $225,000 grant for a year-long investigation of the histories of unfreedom in the Black Atlantic. The grant will support a symposium titled “Visions of Slavery,” which is co-organized by Dr. Walter C. Rucker, Professor of History, and Bayo Holsey, Associate Professor of Anthropology. The event will take place as a part of Mellon’s 2022-2023 Sawyer Seminar series and involve faculty from other university campuses across Atlanta. History Department faculty Mariana Candido and Adriana Chira are part of the working group for the seminar. Read more about the symposium via the Emory News Center as well as the Department of African American Studies.

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Dr. Mariana Candido Elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society

Congratulations to Dr. Mariana Candido, Associate Professor of History, on being elected a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. This honor recognizes Candido’s outstanding scholarship on the history of slavery, the Atlantic slave trade, African history, and women and the African diaspora. The 150-year-old Royal Historical Society is the foremost organization in the UK, representing history as a discipline and historians as a group.

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Anderson Interviewed on FAIR’s “CounterSpin”

Charles Howard Candler Professor Carol Anderson was recently interviewed on CounterSpin, the weekly radio show of FAIR (“Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting”). Anderson discusses the relationship between white supremacy and American democracy, past and present. Read an excerpt from the interview below and find the full conversation here: “White Supremacists Were Willing to Hold the United States Hostage“

“what struck me—and this really began to come out for me as I was working on my latest book, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America, was the way that white supremacists were willing to hold the United States of America hostage in order to advance their white supremacist ideology, in order to embed it into the bedrock foundation of this nation. And that they were willing to destroy the United States if they didn’t get their way. And for that, they should have been held accountable. But instead, they were revered. Instead, they were allowed to walk away. And that lack of accountability, over and over and over, only emboldens the white supremacists, and puts the United States of America and its ideas and this democracy at risk.”

by abritt

Klibanoff Discusses Conviction of Ahmaud Arbery’s Killers on WABE

Hank Klibanoff, James M. Cox Jr. Professor of Journalism and Associated Faculty in the History Department, was recently interviewed on “A Closer Look,” a program of the Atlanta NPR affiliate station WABE. The interviewed focuses on the guilty conviction of the three men who killed Ahmaud Arbery. Klibanoff dedicated season three of his podcast, “Buried Truths,” to the Arbery case. Listen to the WABE interview here: “Jury Finds All 3 Men Accused of Killing Ahmaud Arbery Guilty of Murder.”

by abritt

Lipstadt Describes “Surrealistic” Experience Testifying in “Unite the Right” Trial

Dr. Deborah E. Lipstadt, Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies and Associated Faculty in the History Department, recently recounted what she described as the “surrealistic experience” testifying in the Charlottesville, VA, trial against the organizers of the deadly 2017 “Unite the Right” rally. Lipstadt served as an expert witness for the trial and was cross-examined by one of the defendants. Read an excerpt from the HuffPost’s coverage of the trial below along with the full article here: “Experts Describe ‘Surrealistic’ Process Of Putting Charlottesville’s Nazis On Trial.”

“On the stand, Lipstadt read aloud some of the planning messages sent by the event’s organizers. She testified that she was ‘taken aback‘ by the level of anti-Semitism and the adulation for Nazi Germany evident in the discussions.

“‘On one hand, I could feel like I was in the classroom, teaching about anti-Semitism and teaching about its connection to white supremacy,’ Lipstadt told HuffPost about her experience as an expert witness. ‘This was a call to arms. This was a call to violence. If you read their statements, it’s just overwhelming.‘”

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Anderson Discusses Rittenhouse Trial Verdict on WNYC’s ‘The Brian Lehrer Show’

Charles Howard Candler Professor Carol Anderson was recently a guest on the WNYC program ‘The Brian Lehrer Show.’ The conversation centered on the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed Joseph Rosenbaum and Anthony Huber, and injured Gaige Grosskreutz, during protests in Kenosha, WI, in 2020. Listen to the full conversation here: “Professor Carol Anderson on the Rittenhouse Verdict.”