Dr. Astrid M. Eckert, Interim Director of Undergraduate Studies and Associate Professor of History, recently co-edited a special issue of the journal Central European History. The March 2019 edition is entitled “New Narratives for the History of the Federal Republic.” Eckert co-authored the introduction, “Why Do We Need New Narratives for the History of the Federal Republic?,” with Frank Biess of UC San Diego. Read their introduction along with the other articles here.
Category / Faculty
Dr. Carol Anderson on Election Fraud and Voter Suppression in ‘The New York Times’
Dr. Carol Anderson recently published an opinion piece, “Our Democracy Is Being Stolen. Guess Who the Thieves Are,” in The New York Times. Anderson is Associated Faculty in the History Department and Charles Howard Candler Professor and Chair of African American Studies. Her piece addresses claims and realities of voter suppression and election fraud with a focus on the recent midterm election in North Carolina’s Ninth Congressional District. Anderson is, most recently, the author of White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Nation’s Divide (Bloomsbury, 2017). Read an excerpt below along with the full piece here.
“The real theft of American democracy happens through election fraud and voter suppression. And Republicans are the thieves.
“What happened in North Carolina during the 2018 midterms was a textbook case of election fraud. That’s when a candidate’s campaign sets out to manipulate vote tallies to steal an election.”
Mary L. Dudziak in ‘The Washington Post’: “The Toxic Legacy of the Korean War”
Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law Mary L. Dudziak recently published an article in The Washington Post on how the Korean War shaped the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches of the United States government. Dudziak, who is affiliated faculty in the History Department, charts how Harry S. Truman’s 1950 decision to authorize military action in the Korean peninsula without congressional authorization established a precedent that U.S. presidents have invoked since. Read an excerpt of Dudziak’s piece below and the full article, “The toxic legacy of the Korean War,” here:
“The Korean War precedent converged with and informed another practice. After Korea, authorizations for the use of military force became the primary way for Congress to exercise its constitutional power. This method has been around since 1798, when President John Adams sought authority to use the Navy to protect American ships during an undeclared naval war with France.
Authorizations replaced war declarations for even large-scale wars like the one in Vietnam. In 2001, Congress passed an Authorization for Use of Military Force approving armed conflict “against those nations, organizations, or persons” who had “planned, authorized, committed, or aided the terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001,” and those who had harbored them. Like the Korean War precedent, this had unexpected aftereffects. It was later interpreted to apply to groups that did not even exist at the time it was passed. Through this process, presidential war power has become a one-way ratchet. By failing to step in, Congress has acquiesced in the loss of its own power.”
‘HowStuffWorks’ Features Crespino’s ‘History 385: Right-Wing America’
This spring Jimmy Carter Professor of History and Department Chair Joseph Crespino is teaching a 385 course titled “Right-Wing America.” HowStuffWorks contributing writer John Donovan recently featured Crespino’s course in the article “Bridging the Chasm: Emory Class Delves Into America’s Right-wing History.” HowStuffWorks editorial board describes the website as a “source for unbiased, reliable, easy-to-understand answers and explanations of how the world actually works.” Read the full article here and check out Donovan’s observations from the first day of the spring course below.
“‘Donald Trump really defied what we thought we knew about American politics,’ Crespino tells his class that first day. ‘Trump’s election not only kind of upended what we thought were these iron laws of American politics’ — mainly, that candidates have to run toward the center to get elected — ‘but it also makes the American past look a lot different, you know? Things that we used to take for granted as kind of hiccups along the way all of a sudden look more important. And they look more ominous. And we begin to see that they weren’t just hiccups, but they’re kind of a recurring pattern.’
That pattern is what interests scholars. It’s what Crespino hopes his students will grasp, too; that the ideas and beliefs that drive right-wing America today didn’t begin with Trump. And they won’t disappear when he does, either.”
Lipstadt Discusses the Reemergence of Public Antisemitism on ‘All Things Considered’
NPR’s Michel Martin, host of “All Things Considered,” recently interviewed Dr. Deborah E. Lipstadt about the resurgence of public antisemitism in the contemporary United States. Lipstadt is, most recently, the author of Antisemitism: Here And Now (Schocken, 2019). At Emory she holds positions as Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies and as associated faculty in the History Department. Read the full transcript of the interview here.
Ruby Lal’s ‘Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan’ Named Finalist for ‘L.A. Times’ Book Prize
Congratulations to Dr. Ruby Lal, Professor of South Asian Studies and affiliated faculty in the History Department. Lal’s recent monograph, Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan (W. W. Norton & Company, 2018), has been named a finalist in the History category for the 2018 L.A. Times Book Prize. Read more about Lal’s book here.
Jeffrey Lesser Lectures on “Bad Health in a Good Retreat” at the University of Cape Town’s African Centre for Cities
Bom Retiro’s Desinfectório Central, a key site of public health history in São Paulo. Image by Giuliana Saringer [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]
Bom Retiro was (and is) a small neighborhood in the huge megalopolis of São Paulo, Brazil. The mainly working class neighborhood has been populated since the end of the 19th century by immigrants, migrants from the impoverished Brazilian northeast, and Afro-Brazilian descendants of slaves. While the cultural backgrounds of the immigrants have shifted (from Italians, Spaniards and Portuguese Catholics in the early 20th century to East European Jews in the mid-20th century to Chinese, Korean, Paraguayan, and Bolivian immigrants today), the neighborhood has been viewed internally and externally as one where health (in the broadest sense of the word) is precarious. “Bad Health in a Good Retreat” analyzes the relationship between “Public Health” (as a state driven set of policies and linked enforcement) and “The Public’s Health” (how real people understand their own experiences). By focusing on one square block of Bom Retiro from about 1900 to the present I use archival and ethnographic methods to analyze the daily practices of residents and health officials, and the stories they tell about life, death, and the spaces in between.
Brian Vick Co-Edits ‘Securing Europe after Napoleon’ with Cambridge UP
Cambridge University Press recently released the edited volume Securing Europe after Napoleon: 1815 and the New European Security Culture, co-edited by Emory Professor of History Brian Vick. Vick’s collaborators are Beatrice de Graaf (Universiteit Utrecht, the Netherlands) and Ido de Haan (Universiteit Utrecht, the Netherlands). The volume includes a chapter by Vick, who is a specialist in Modern Germany and Central Europe in the Long Nineteenth Century, entitled “The London Ambassadors’ Conferences and Beyond: Abolition, Barbary Corsairs, and Multilateral Security In The Congress Of Vienna System.” A book launch in New York City will take place on February 27. More details and registration can be found at: bit.ly/after-napoleon.
Yanna Yannakakis and Co-Author Bianca Premo Discuss Forthcoming Article in the ‘American Historical Review’
The February edition of the American Historical Review will feature an article co-authored by Yanna Yannakakis and Bianca Premo entitled “A Court of Sticks and Branches: Indian Jurisdiction in Colonial Mexico and Beyond.” Yannakakis is Associate Professor of History and currently holds the Winship Distinguished Research Professorship in History. Premo is Professor of History at Florida International University. The American Historical Association recently published a podcast with Yannakakis and Premo about the article, which will appear as part of a forum titled “Indigenous Agency and Colonial Law.” Listen to the episode here: “Bianca Premo & Yanna Yannakakis: ‘A Court of Sticks and Branches.‘”
Deborah E. Lipstadt Discusses New Book and Antisemitism in Interview with ‘The New Yorker’
The New Yorker recently published an interview with Dr. Deborah E. Lipstadt, Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies and associated faculty in the History Department. Staff writer Issac Chotiner conducted the interview with Lipstadt, who recently published Antisemitism: Here and Now with Schocken. Read the full article on The New Yorker website: “Looking at Anti-Semitism on the Left and the Right: An Interview with Deborah E. Lipstadt.”