Category / Faculty

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Experimental Interdisciplinary Faculty Fellowship Supports Innovative Research Co-Led by Jeffrey Lesser

The Emory News Center recently published a profile of a research project co-led by Jeffrey Lesser, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor History. Lesser and research partner Uriel Kitron, Goodrich C. White Professor and Chair of the Department of Environmental Sciences, are examining “how the dynamics of human migration, disease transmission and access to health care have impacted a vibrant immigrant neighborhood in São Paulo, Brazil — one of the world’s largest megalopolises.” Check out the full article here.

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Mark Ravina on Posing New Questions through Digital Humanities

Dr. Mark Ravina recently authored a post on Digital Humanities Now titled “Smooth and Rough on the Highways of France.” Named an “Editor’s Choice,” the post examines how quantitative methods, in this case data visualization, can assist in posing new historical questions. Below is an excerpt from the article, which can be found in full here.

One way to conceptualize this complementarity [between social science and humanistic methods] is John Tukey’s observation that “data = smooth + rough,” or, in more common parlance, quantitative analysis seeks to separate patterns and outliers. In a traditional social science perspective, the focus is on the “smooth,” or the formal model, and the corresponding ability to make broad generalizations. Historians, by contrast, often write acclaimed books and articles on the “rough,” single exceptional cases. These approaches are superficially opposite, but there is an underlying symbiosis: we need to find the pattern before we can find the outliers. 

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Brett Gadsden at AJC Decatur Book Festival and in ‘The Christian Science Monitor’

Brett Gadsden, Associate Professor of African American Studies and History at Emory, recently joined best-selling novelist Greg Iles and Emory colleague Hank Klibanoff for a panel at the AJC Decatur Book Festival on cold cases from the Civil Rights era. Professor Gadsden teaches a course that involves undergraduates investigating cold cases in Georgia. The Christian Science Monitor published a feature on the panel and the work of the three panelists. The article can be found here.

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When Sugarcane Meets Oil: Tom Rogers’ Summer Research

Tom Rogers, Associate Professor of Modern Latin American History, spent the summer of 2015 conducting research in Southeastern Brazil. Rogers’ inquiry spanned from research in secret police and labor court archives to oral histories with local union leaders. The project examines agricultural transformation in late-twentieth-century Brazil with a particular focus on the nation’s 1975 National Alcohol Program that encouraged ethanol production from sugarcane. The Office of the Provost recently profiled Rogers’ research and teaching, which typify Emory’s teacher-scholar model and “focused international activity in Emory’s global strategies.” The article can be read in full here or by clicking on the image below.

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Slave Voyages, through a Digital Lens: Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database Receives Recognition and Support

The Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade database, accessible at slavevoyages.com, received a Digital Humanities Implementation grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) this year. The international project is lead by Robert W. Woodruff Professor of History Emeritus David Eltis, who teamed up with co-editors at the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship to enhance the website through funds provided by the NEH. The Voyages project was recently featured on the news page for the Office of the Provost at Emory. You can read the full article here or by clicking on the image below.

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Elena Conis at Decatur Book Festival Saturday, September 5

Dr. Elena Conis, Assistant Professor of History, will present at the Decatur Book Festival on Saturday, September 5 from 4:15-5:00pm. Dr. Conis will discuss her most recent book, Vaccine Nation: America’s Changing Relationship with Immunization, at the Marriott Conference Center A. Here is a brief description about the talk and Dr. Conis’ book:

With employers offering free flu shots and pharmacies expanding into one-stop shops to prevent everything from shingles to tetanus, vaccines are everywhere. The past fifty years have witnessed an enormous upsurge in vaccines and immunization in the United States: American children now receive more vaccines than any previous generation, and laws requiring their immunization against a litany of diseases are standard. Yet, while vaccination rates have soared and cases of preventable infections have plummeted, an increasingly vocal cross section of Americans have questioned the safety and necessity of vaccines. In Vaccine Nation, Elena Conis explores this complicated history and its consequences for personal and public health.

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Jeffrey Lesser on CNN.com: ‘Brazil Protests: What they Mean’

Dr. Jeffrey Lesser, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History, wrote an opinion piece for CNN.com titled “What Brazil’s Protests Mean.” Lesser, an expert in the history of Brazil and current fellow of the Intercultural Dialogues group at the Institute for Advanced Studies at the University of São Paulo, discusses recent anti-government demonstrations. Here is an excerpt from the end of the piece:

One of the many joys of being a historian is that I do not have to predict the future. But seeing the weekend’s demonstrations close up, one thing was very clear — the use of the street as a location for making political points looks set to continue. And in doing so, it suggests a healthy democracy in Brazil — even during these times of political, economic, and social uncertainty.

Jeffrey Lesser

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David Eltis and Allen Tullos Win NEH Digital Humanities Implementation Grant

Drs. David Eltis and Allen Tullos recently won a Digital Humanities Implementation Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). The NEH program “is designed to fund the implementation of innovative digital-humanities projects that have successfully completed a start-up phase and demonstrated their value to the field. Such projects might enhance our understanding of central problems in the humanities, raise new questions in the humanities, or develop new digital applications and approaches for use in the humanities.” Drs. Eltis and Tullos applied for funds to enhance the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database (also known as slavevoyages.org) by adding additional records about the intra-American movement of enslaved persons and to recode the underlying database to allow for long term sustainability.

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Dr. Joseph Crespino on “Go Set a Watchman” in ‘The New York Times’

Professor Joseph Crespino published the following article in The New York Times on July 16: “”Go Set a Watchman,’ released to much fanfare this week, may have been an apprentice work for Harper Lee’s classic 1960 novel, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird,’ but, in a way, the earlier book seems more sophisticated. It offers a subtle and surprising exploration of racial politics, and not merely because of the racist comments of Atticus Finch, one of the most beloved figures in American literature.” Crespino is the author of Strom Thurmond’s America (Hill & Wang, 2012).