Category / Faculty

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Lesser Named 2022 Eleanor Main Graduate Faculty Mentor

Congratulations to Dr. Jeffrey Lesser, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History and Director of the Halle Institute for Global Research, on receiving the 2022 Eleanor Main Graduate Faculty Mentor Award. Named for an extraordinary Emory faculty member, mentory, and leader, the Main award has the following aims: to recognize outstanding faculty who are engaged in the Emory/LGS community and academic or professional communities related to their discipline through mentorship; to legitimize the importance of mentoring of graduate students within the larger context of graduate education; and to foster mentoring of the highest quality. Lesser’s nomination was supported by faculty in multiple programs across campus as well as PhD program alumni, who cited him as an inspiring mentor of graduate students. The award will be presented at the 2022 commencement ceremony.

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Payne Wins 2022 Emory Williams Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award

Congratulations to Dr. Matthew J. Payne, Associate Professor of History, on winning the 2022 Emory Williams Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award. This award was established by Emory Williams, a 1932 Emory College alumnus and long-time trustee, and recognizes faculty who strive for excellence in teaching, curriculum development, pedagogy, and educational innovation. The award recognizes faculty members who teach undergraduate students at Emory College of Arts and Sciences, Goizueta Business School, Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, and Oxford College. Dr. Payne has excelled in fostering participation, inquiry, and creative expression in the classroom, exemplified the highest quality of teaching scholarship through teaching and mentoring students, retained a continual record of outstanding accomplishment and ongoing commitment to teaching, and made significant contributions that impact and advance Emory. Payne will be recognized at the 2022 Commencement ceremony.

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Anderson Discusses the State of American Democracy on CBS News

Dr. Carol Anderson was recently a guest on CBS News, where she discussed the state of American democracy. Anderson offers historical context about both the distant and recent roots to undemocratic practices in the U.S. Anderson is Charles Howard Candler Professor and Affiliated Faculty in the History Department. Watch the full interview here: “Concerns raised about the future of democracy in America.”

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U.S. Senate Confirms Lipstadt to Antisemitism Post

The United States Senate has confirmed Emory historian Deborah E. Lipstadt to serve as a special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism across the globe. Although Republicans in the Senate delayed Lipstadt’s confirmation for months, she received unanimous approval in the vote on March 30. Lipstadt is Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies and Associated Faculty in the History Department. Read more about the envoy position and recent confirmation here: “Historian Deborah Lipstadt confirmed as envoy to combat antisemitism after push from Jewish groups.”

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Anderson Interviewed on FAIR Podcast ‘CounterSpin’

Dr. Carol Anderson was recently interviewed on CounterSpin, the weekly radio show of the national media watch group Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). Anderson discusses the relationship between white supremacy and the struggle for democracy in the United States, including by drawing on her most recent book, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America (Bloomsbury, 2021). Anderson is Charles Howard Candler Professor of African-American Studies and Affiliated Faculty in the History Department. Read and listen to the FAIR piece here: “Carol Anderson on History, Race and Democracy.”

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Jia-Chen Fu in ‘Atlas Obscura’: “The Secret Maoist Chinese Operation to Conquer Malaria”

Dr. Jia-Chen Fu, Associate Professor of Chinese and Affiliated Faculty in the History Department, recently published an article in Atlas Obscura. Titled “The Secret Maoist Chinese Operation to Conquer Malaria,” the piece recounts the discovery of the most powerful antimalarial drug available today by a young Chinese medical researcher named Tu Youyou in the 1960s-’70s. The breakthrough came during the Cultural Revolution in China and the Vietnam War, context within which Fu situates Youyou’s signal achievement. Read the full story here.

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Anderson Contributes to ‘NYT’ Panel “Where Does American Democracy Go From Here?”

Dr. Carol Anderson recently contributed to a New York Times panel focused on the theme “Where Does American Democracy Go From Here?” The six panelists offer historical and contemporary perspectives on the state of democracy in the U.S., which has fallen in recent rankings that measure the vitality of democracies across the globe. Anderson is Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies and Associated Faculty in the History Department. She is the author, most recently, of The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America (Bloomsbury Press, 2021). Read one of Anderson’s contributions to the panel below and find the full piece here.

“Anderson: What we’re seeing, I liken it to a land, sea and air attack. The land attack is on voting rights. That is one of the ways that you begin to undermine democracy. The sea attack are these attacks against teaching critical race theory and “divisive” topics, so you can erase people from American history and erase the role of various people in American history. And the air attack is the loosening of Texas and Tennessee both passed laws allowing for permitless carrying of firearms in 2021; the Georgia State Legislature passed a similar bill this year. This is a full-blown assault on American democracy that’s going after voting rights, that’s going after education and that is reinforcing political violence as an acceptable method of bringing about your political aims. That’s where we are, and that’s why this moment is so dangerous.“

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Strocchia Awarded Fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton)

Dr. Sharon T. Strocchia, Professor of History and Department Chair, was awarded a fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton for the Fall of 2022. As a member of the School of Historical Studies, Strocchia will continue work on her new book project, “Health for Sale: Marketing Medical Trust in Late Renaissance Italy.”

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Klibanoff Comments on Hate Crimes Convictions in Arbery Case for WABE

Hank Klibanoff, James M. Cox Jr. Professor of Journalism and Associated Faculty in the History Department, was recently a guest on WABE’s Closer Look with Rose Scott. Klibanoff discussed the recent convictions – on all counts – of the three men who killed Ahmaud Arbery in a federal hate crimes trial. Klibanoff hosts the “Buried Truths” podcast and serves as the director of the Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project at Emory. He was also recently confirmed to the Federal Civil Rights Cold Case Review Board. Listen to the interview here: “Jury Finds Ahmaud Arbery Killers Guilty On All Counts.”

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Strocchia and Kelly Publish Co-Authored Article in ‘Renaissance Studies’

Dr. Sharon T. Strocchia, Professor of History and Department Chair and her former honors student Ryan Kelly published a co-authored article titled “Picturing the Pox in Italian Popular Prints, 1550-1650” in the flagship British journal Renaissance Studies in March. The article drew on material from Kelly’s honors thesis, which received highest honors in May 2021. Read the article abstract below along with the full piece here.

“The disease commonly known as the ‘pox’ or the ‘French Disease’ ravaged the European continent following its initial appearance circa 1495. Its devastating physical effects and sensory assaults, ranging from stinking sores to baldness and collapsed noses, invited both a social and medical evaluation of what was quickly recognized to be a sexually transmitted disease. Despite the prevalence and visibility of the pox in sixteenth-century Europe, its visual language has not been studied in much depth. This essay examines how cheap narrative prints issued between 1550 and 1650 helped construct the iconography of pox and disseminate medical information about it in late Renaissance Italy. Focusing on a group of best-selling Venetian and Roman prints, the essay argues that multimedial picture stories combining text and image provided one of the many sources of vernacular information by which Italians learned to read the body. In recounting stories of diseased prostitutes and their clients in vivid detail, these prints expanded vernacular health literacy and provided a ready-made language of disease. The prints analysed here enjoyed enormous social reach as components of a new health-promoting, communicative object – the hand-held paper fan – whose popularity cemented visual and epistemic connections between pox and prostitution.“