Category / Faculty

by emoryhistorydept

Anderson Maps Voter Intimidation Efforts in GA, Past and Present

Dr. Carol Anderson, Robert W. Woodruff Professor of African American Studies and Associated Faculty in the History Department, recently wrote an opinion piece in Democracy Docket, a news platform focused on voting rights and elections in the courts. Anderson’s article, “Intimidating Voters Is Nothing New in Georgia, It’s Just Easier Now,” outlines the range of voter intimidation efforts that took place in Georgia in the 2020 election and which have been made even easier through new laws in the lead up to the 2024 election. The article offers historical context, as well, as Anderson draws parallels to earlier eras of voter suppression. Read a quote from the piece below along with the full article.

“In December 2020, just weeks before a historic U.S. Senate runoff election in Georgia, True the Vote, a Texas-based right-wing group, challenged the voter registration of more than 250,000 Georgians, ‘offered a $1 million bounty and recruited Navy SEALs to oversee polling places,’ hoping that enough Americans would be purged from the rolls less than a month before a key election that would decide control of the Senate.  

“This was not the first time that the organization pulled a stunt like this. True the Vote had already received brushback pitches from the Department of Justice and authorities in Ohio, Texas and Wisconsin for submitting unverifiable lists, demanding the removal of voters even though a federal election loomed and intimidating voters. Indeed, True the Vote suggested that intimidation was key to its strategy. Earlier it had told its volunteers that the goal was to give voters a feeling ‘like driving and seeing the police following you.’ In short, to replicate the terror of ‘Voting while Black.'”

by emoryhistorydept

Lowery’s New Film ‘Lumbeeland’ Explores Impact of Drug Trade on Lumbee Communities


Dr. Malinda Maynor Lowery, Cahoon Family Professor of American History, has written and produced a new short film, titled Lumbeeland. With an all-Native crew and cast (the first film written, produced, and starring members of the Lumbee tribe), Lumbeeland explores the impact of the drug trade on Lumbee communities in Lowery’s birthplace of Robeson county, North Carolina. The film will premiere at the Lumbee Film Festival in July 2024, and the producers are in the midst of a fundraising campaign to support its release to wider audiences. Read a great piece about the origins and aims of the films here, and watch the trailer below.

by emoryhistorydept

Anderson Addresses More Challenges to Voting Rights Act on MSNBC

Dr. Carol Anderson, Robert W. Woodruff Professor of African American Studies and Associated Faculty in the History Department, recently appeared on MSNBC to discuss a new challenge to the 1965 Voting Rights Act. The eighth circuit federal appeals court overturned Section 2 of the Act, which gives private citizens the right to sue in the name of fair voting rights. Anderson appeared alongside Judith Browne Dianis, Executive Director of the Advancement Project. Anderson is the author of numerous books, including One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy (Bloomsbury, 2018). Watch the full MSNBC interview with host Charles Coleman: “New attack on Voting Rights Act threatens Black vote protections: ‘It’s a problem’.“

by emoryhistorydept

Klibanoff Pens Piece on Rosalynn Carter and Susan Ford Bales for AJC


Professor Hank Klibanoff, a Professor of Journalism and Associated Faculty in the History Department, recently published an article in the Atlanta-Journal Constitution. Titled, “When Rosalynn Carter tapped Gerald Ford’s daughter to serve on mental health advisory board,” the piece describes how the selection of Susan Ford Bales helped to maintain Carter’s connection to longtime friend Betty Ford. Rosalynn Carter passed away on November 19, 2023. She and her husband, former president Jimmy Carter, had strong ties to Emory. Read the full AJC article by Professor Klibanoff.

by emoryhistorydept

Abrahamson (PhD ’22) Wins Best Dissertation Prize from NECLAS

Abrahamson (center) accepting Best Dissertation Prize at the annual NECLAS meeting.


Dr. Hannah Rose Abrahamson (PhD 22) was recently awarded the prize for best dissertation from the New England Council of Latin American Studies. Abrahamson’s thesis, “Women of the Encomienda: Households and Dependents in Sixteenth-Century Yucatan, Mexico,” was also awarded the Maureen Ahern Award from the Latin American Studies Association – Colonial Section. Abrahamson is currently Assistant Professor of History at the College of the Holy Cross. Her dissertation was advised by by Dr. Yanna Yannakakis, Professor and Associate Department Chair.

by emoryhistorydept

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.

by emoryhistorydept

Malinda Maynor Lowery Discusses Native Pasts, Presents, and Futures in Walk & Talk with Josh Newton


Dr. Malinda Maynor Lowery, Cahoon Professor of American History, recently joined Senior Vice President of Advancement Josh Newton for an edition of his series Walk & Talk with Josh Newton. Lowery, a member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina and a historian of Native America, discusses her work as a scholar, teacher, documentary filmmaker, and tribal community member. Since coming to Emory from UNC-Chapel Hill in 2021, Lowery has been instrumental in facilitating Emory’s reckoning with practices of dispossession and colonialism, including by helping to craft the university’s Land Acknowledgement and creating a deep, reciprocal partnership with the College of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Lowery will lead Emory’s new Center for Native American and Indigenous Studies, set to launch in the 2023-24 academic year. Watch her conversation with Newton, which also includes discussion of what drew her to the History Department, here: “Understanding the present begins in the past.”

by emoryhistorydept

Andrade Provides Insight on Ancient Grenades Found along Great Wall


Dr. Tonio Andrade, Professor of History, was recently quoted in a Newsweek article about the historic discovery of 59 ancient stone grenades along the Badaling section of the Great Wall, just about 50 miles away from the center of Beijing. This is the first munition of this type that archeologists have found along the Great Wall. Andrade, a specialist in Chinese and Global History and author of the 2016 book The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History (Princeton UP), provides context for the archeological find with insights on the history of Chinese military technologies. Read an excerpt citing him below along with the full article: “Ancient ‘Grenades’ Discovered Along Great Wall of China.”

“‘Bombs were used in China certainly by the middle of the Song Dynasty (960-1279 A.D.)—and used in the many wars the Song and its neighbors fought, hurled by hand or by catapult. It’s known that when Ming Dynasty leaders rebuilt and renovated the Great Wall, they defended it with gunpowder weapons,’ Tonio Andrade, a professor of Chinese and Global History at Emory University, who was not involved in the latest research, told Newsweek.

“‘In fact, the Ming Dynasty had more soldiers equipped with gunpowder weapons than any other state in the world, and it was in the Ming and in the preceding Yuan Dynasty (toward the end) that the gun evolved out of a weapon often called the fire-lance, a sort of stick with a barrel at the end that was loaded with gunpowder and, often, various other items, like rocks or iron. It’s a fascinating history.'”

by emoryhistorydept

Billups Investigates Global Dimensions of Anti-semitism with Support from TIJS, Lesser

Sixth-year doctoral candidate Robert Billups, who is currently the 2023–2024 Ambrose Monell Foundation Funded National Fellow in Technology and Democracy for the Jefferson Scholars Foundation in Charlottesville, Virginia, recently authored a reflection about his research on the global dimensions of anti-semitism for Emory’s Tam Institute for Jewish Studies (TIJS). Billups recounts how a story heard in his childhood home of Meridian, Mississippi, about the attempted bombing of a local temple led him to research in Emory’s archives and, ultimately, to discern links between anti-Black racial violence and anti-semitism among right-wing extremists. Billups realized those links had global dimensions, as well, and secured financial support from the TIJS to conduct research abroad. With the counsel and support of Dr. Jeffrey Lesser, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History, Billups chose to pursue his inquiry in the British Foreign Office in London, which contained mid-20th century records from officials in British consulates and embassies around the world worried about the resurgence of fascism and antisemitism. Read Billups’ full reflection here: “Graduate Student Researches Antisemitism at the British Archives.”

by emoryhistorydept

Lesser Contextualizes Brazil’s Warm Welcome for Venezuelan Migrants


Dr. Jeffrey Lesser, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History, was recently quoted in a Bloomberg article about the Brazilian government’s acceptance of scores of migrants from Venezuela. The piece outlines why officials in Brazil, contrary to their peers in other countries around the world, are welcoming migrants into the nation. Lesser is an expert on public health, ethnicity, immigration, and race, especially in Brazil. His newest book, Living and Dying in São Paulo, will be published with Duke University Press in 2024. Read an excerpt from the Bloomberg piece below, along with the full article: “Brazil Is Embracing the Migrant Crisis That Everyone Else Wants to Avoid.”

“‘We notice in Brazil that immigrant integration seems to occur at a relatively more consistent and rapid level than in the United States,’ said Jeffrey Lesser, a historian at Emory University.

“Lesser says Brazil began to rely more on immigrants to fill jobs in the ‘corporate arena’ after slavery was abolished in 1888. Immigration rules are also far less strict than in the US. In recent decades, Brazilian officials have given amnesty several times to groups of undocumented foreigners or those who overstayed visas, allowing them to obtain legal status.”