Category / Graduate Students

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Becca de Los Santos Wins AHA Prize for Undergraduate Research

First-year graduate student Becca De Los Santos has been awarded the American Historical Association’s Raymond J. Cunningham Prize, given annually for the best article published in a journal and written by an undergraduate student. She published the prize-winning article, “Inversion of the Top-Down Operation: Enslaved Voices and French Abolitionism in 1840s Senegal,” in the Spring 2024 edition of Herodotus while in her senior year at Stanford University. Her related undergraduate honors work also received accolades. Titled “‘Poor Souls’ and ‘Dangerous Vagabonds’: The Enslaved Pursuit of Liberation in Post-Abolition Senegal, 1848-1865,” her thesis received the Josephine Baker Undergraduate Honors Thesis Prize and the Robert M. Golden Medal for Excellence in the Humanities and Creative Arts at Stanford.

As a first-year doctoral student, Becca is interested in slavery, abolition, and emancipatory trajectories in the nineteenth-century French Empire. In particular, she seeks to examine how individuals negotiated their livelihoods after emancipation through laws and customs. Her geographic areas of interest include Senegal, Réunion, French Guiana, and Guadeloupe. Her faculty advisers are Mariana P. Candido, Adriana Chira, and Clifton Crais.

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Welcoming New Doctoral Students

The Emory History Department is excited to welcome six new doctoral students to the department in the fall 2024 semester. The students’ specializations encompass – and compellingly transcend – an array of geographic, thematic, and chronological borders. Read abridged profiles of the new graduate cohort below and follow the links to read their full biographies on the History Department website.

Jessica Alvarez Starr received her B.A. (Spanish and History) and M.A. (Latin American Studies) from the University of Florida. Her undergraduate and master’s research focused on antislavery and anticolonial activism in nineteenth-century Puerto Rico, topics that she plans to expand upon for her dissertation. Her graduate work will be advised by Drs. Adriana Chira and Yanna Yannakakis.

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Becca de los Santos received her B.A. (French and History) from Stanford University. As an undergraduate she worked on the Senegal Liberations Project and conducted research in France and Senegal for her prize-winning honors thesis. Her graduate research interests include slavery, abolition, and emancipatory trajectories in the nineteenth-century French Empire, especially Senegal, Réunion, French Guiana, and Guadeloupe. Drs. Mariana P. Candido, Adriana Chira, and Clifton Crais will advise her work.

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Minju Kang received her B.A. from Ajou University and M.A. Seoul National University. Her master’s work focused on early modern Japan, particularly the impact of shogunate and domain policies on a small city in the Kantō region. Kang’s dissertation is tentatively titled “State Power and Local Society: Shogunate-Domain Relations in Japan’s Transition from the Early Modern to the Modern Era.” Drs. Laura Nenzi and Tonio Andrade will advise Kang’s work.

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Tymesha-Elizabeth Kindell received her B.A. in History and Sustainable Development from Columbia University. A native of Atlanta, her research centers on race, social, and sports movements in the nineteenth and twentieth century U.S., especially in the American South during the New South Era. Drs. Carl Suddler and Jason Morgan Ward will advise Kindell’s work.

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Pauli Purim Manfredini received her B.A. and M.A. from the Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Paraná. Her research focuses on histories of gender and health, particularly in twentieth-century Brazil. Her dissertation is tentatively titled, “From Menstruation to Menopause: The Medicalization of Women’s Bodies in Early 20th-Century Brazil.” Drs. Jeffrey Lesser, Thomas D. Rogers, and Kylie M. Smith will advise her work.

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Yuan Wang received his B.A. from Anhui University and master’s degrees from Shanghai International Studies University and Duke University. His research tracks China’s unique developmental path to modern prosperity in a global context and since early modern period. His doctoral work will examine China’s silk industry and its maritime trade, particularly from 1540 to 1690. Wang’s graduate work will be advised by Drs. Tonio Andrade and Laura Nenzi.

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Webster Co-Edits Special Issue of ‘African Economic History’

Doctoral candidate Anjuli Webster recently co-edited, together with Dr. Ndumiso Dladla of the University of Pretoria, a special issue of the journal African Economic History titled “Economic Sovereignty in South Africa.” Webster also co-authored one of the articles in the issue with Dladla, titled “Who conquered South Africa? Neocolonialism and Economic Sovereignty.” The abstract of their pece is featured below, and the special issue can be accessed via Project MUSE. Webster is currently completing her dissertation, “Fluid Empires: Histories of Environment and Sovereignty in southern Africa, 1750-1900,” under the advisement of Drs. Clifton Crais, Mariana P. Candido, Yanna Yannakakis, and Thomas D. Rogers.

“The right of conquest is a doctrine in the theory of international law in terms of which victory in war entitles the victor both to the title to territory of the vanquished as well as sovereignty over them. Far from being a mere event, however, conquest is an ongoing process, structure, and relation of domination. Despite the widely celebrated “transition to democracy” and the supposed triumph of popular sovereignty in South Africa in the past three decades, we argue that South Africa’s “democratic” constitutional order remains firmly rooted in the dubious right of conquest asserted since the defeat of its indigenous people in the unjust wars of Western colonization, which began in the mid-seventeenth century. In this article we critically reflect on South African historiography by asking “Who conquered South Africa”? The question is necessary because sovereign power is both misunderstood and obfuscated in South African contemporary history and public discourse. We argue that conquest, and its attendant concepts of sovereignty and war, are deliberately underemphasized in South African historiography despite being at the root of problems regarding economic sovereignty. Our argument considers the problem of succession to conquest, in terms of which both the title to territory and sovereignty over the conquered is transferred from the conqueror to another party who then enjoys these entitlements and powers. We trace various successors in title to Conquest South Africa, and show that their economic power originates in the right of conquest. Their ownership of South Africa’s natural resources originates in the title to territory acquired through its disseisin following the conquest of the indigenous people, and in the same way their continued de facto sovereignty over that population now takes the form of the wanton and relentless exploitation of their labor power.“

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Aldridge Presents Research at OAH Conference

Emory History PhD student Andrew Aldridge presented his research at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians this past spring. Aldridge was one of five students to present during the Graduate Student Lightning Research Round. His talk examined Blackness and criminality through the prism of cultural products like novels, comics, music, and television. Aldridge is beginning his third year in the program, and his research is advised by Drs. Carl Suddler and Daniel LaChance.

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Billups Investigates Global White Supremacist Networks in South Africa

Earlier this year, Emory History Department PhD candidate William (Robert) Billups investigated connections between antisemitic networks in South Africa and civil rights opponents in the US South. Emory’s Tam Institute for Jewish Studies (TIJS) supported Billups’ research on this topic, which included three weeks at two South African archives, the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and the University of the Free State’s Archive for Contemporary Affairs. Records from those archives helped Billups to understand the links between some US civil rights opponents and far-right groups outside of the US.

In an excellent reflection on the research published by the TIJS, Billups writes:

“As KKK members increasingly perpetrated violence in the civil rights South, some white South Africans sought to join US-based KKK organizations. To study South African Klan members, I spent two weeks in the Archive for Contemporary Affairs in Bloemfontein. Following guidance from the South African historian Milton Shain and the archivist Lwazi Mestile, I focused on the papers of Ray Rudman, South Africa’s self-described Klan leader during the 1950s and 1960s. Rudman’s papers contained letters and recruitment materials about joining a Klan organization based in Waco, Texas.

I expected white South African Klan recruits to describe their opposition to the anti-apartheid movement, a liberation movement that in many ways paralleled the US civil rights movement, as their main motive for joining. Some did. But to my surprise, antisemitic beliefs that far-right South Africans shared with US-based Klan leaders seemed to them an equally important connection, if not a more important one. They described entering the Klan as joining US white supremacists in fighting the supposed international Jewish conspiracy that they falsely believed controlled world communism, the civil rights movement, and the anti-apartheid movement.”

Billups received his doctorate in May 2024. He completed his dissertation, “‘Reign of Terror’: Anti–Civil Rights Terrorism in the United States, 1954–1976,” under the advisement of Drs. Joseph Crespino and Allen Tullos. Billups was recognized for his stellar record of research with the Laney Graduate School’s Outstanding Scholarly Research Award.

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Celebrating 2024 Graduates

From Left to Right: Dr. Jason Morgan Ward, Dr. William (Robert) Billups, Dr. Georgia Brunner, Dr. Marissa L. Nichols, Dr. Yanna Yannakakis, Dr. Kyungtaek Kwon, Dr. Matthew J. Payne, Dr. Melissa Faris Gayan.

The Emory History Department celebrates the graduate and undergraduate students who are completing their studies and degrees this spring. Five Emory History doctoral students will be recognized at the Laney Graduate School Diploma Ceremony on Friday, May 10. They are:

  • William (Robert) Billups, “‘Reign of Terror’: Anti–Civil Rights Terrorism in the United States, 1954–1976,” advised by Drs. Joseph Crespino and Allen Tullos
  • Georgia Brunner, “Building a Nation: Gender, Labor and the Politics of Nationalism in Colonial Rwanda, 1916-1962,” advised by Drs. Clifton Crais and Mariana P. Candido
  • Melissa Faris Gayan,* “The First Crack in the Ice: How the 1956 Protests Altered Soviet Cold War Hegemony,” advised by Dr. Matthew Payne
  • Kyungtaek Kwon,* “Identifying the City: Komsomol’sk-na-Amure Transformation from Military Outpost to the City of Youth in the Soviet Far East, 1932-1982,” advised by Dr. Matthew Payne
  • Marissa L. Nichols,* “Nurses, Indigenous Authorities, and Rural Health in Oaxaca, Mexico, 1934-1970,” advised by Dr. Yanna Yannakakis

*completed in summer 2023

Find out more information about all Emory commencement events here.

Congratulations, graduates!

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Marissa L. Nichols (PhD ’23) Awarded Prestigious 2024 ACLS Fellowship


The Emory University History Department is proud to celebrate Dr. Marissa L. Nichols, a 2023 alum, on being awarded a 2024 ACLS Fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). The ACLS Fellowship Program supports scholars who are poised to make original and significant contributions to knowledge in any field of the humanities or interpretive social sciences.

Nichols has been recognized as one of 60 exceptional early-career scholars selected through a multi-stage peer review from a pool of 1,100 applicants. ACLS Fellowships provide up to $60,000 to support scholars during six to 12 months of sustained research and writing. Awardees who do not hold tenure-track faculty appointments receive a supplement of $7,500 for research or other personal costs incurred during their award term.

Nichols currently holds a postdoctoral fellowship at the Center for Healthcare History and Policy in Emory’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing. The ACLS fellowship will support the writing of her book project, “The Backbone of Rural Health: Nursing and Indigenous Healing in Oaxaca.” Based on her dissertation, which was advised by Dr. Yanna Yannakakis, the manuscript traces how rural nurses and Indigenous communities shaped the expansion of rural healthcare in mid-twentieth-century Oaxaca, Mexico. It relies on research from archives and libraries in Mexico as well as oral histories conducted primarily as part of her dissertation research.

“The applications we received this year were nothing short of inspiring – a powerful reminder of the capacity of humanistic research to illuminate and deepen understanding of the workings of our world” said John Paul Christy, Senior Director of US Programs at ACLS. “As scholars face increasing challenges to pursuing and disseminating their research, we remain committed to advancing their vital work.”

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PhD Candidate Anjuli Webster Publishes Articles in Journals of African and World History


African history graduate student Anjuli Webster has published two new articles drawing on her doctoral research. The first, a short piece titled “Water and History in Southern Africa,” was published as an Open Access “History Matters” contribution in the Journal of African History. The second article, titled “Inter-Imperial Entanglement: The British Claim to Portuguese Delagoa Bay in the Nineteenth Century,” appeared in the Journal of World History. Webster wrote the original version of this article in the graduate student seminar (HIST 584) and under the supervision of Drs. Clifton Crais and Jason Morgan Ward. Webster thanks the Research Workshop in History at Emory for support in the process of revisions and the History PhD program for funding image reproduction fees.

Webster’s dissertation, “Fluid Empires: Histories of Environment and Sovereignty in southern Africa, 1750-1900,” explores transformations in sovereignty and ecology in southern Africa during the 18th and 19th centuries. She has won many grants for her research, including from the American Society for Environmental History, Harvard Center for History and Economics, the Luso-American Development Foundation, and Emory’s “Visions of Slavery” Mellon Sawyer Seminar.

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Julia Lopez Fuentes (PhD, ’20) Awarded Article Prize

Dr. Julia Lopez Fuentes, a 2020 graduate of the History doctoral program and upper school teacher at the National Cathedral School, was recently awarded the 2023 European Studies First Article Prize in the Social Sciences by the Council for European Studies at Columbia University. The article, “’A Forgetting for Everyone, by Everyone’? Spain’s Memory Laws and the Rise of the European Community of Memory, 1977–2007,” was published in The Journal of Modern History in 2022. Drs. Walter L. Adamson and Astrid M. Eckert advised Fuentes’s doctoral work, including a 2015 graduate paper in which she first conducted the research and analysis that would culminate in the 2022 article. Read the abstract of this impressive scholarly contribution below. Congratulations, Dr. Fuentes!

“Historians and other scholars of memory have worked extensively on European memory politics, especially around transnational issues such as the Holocaust, as well as on Spanish memory politics, most recently in light of the exhumation of former dictator Francisco Franco. Yet there has been little scholarship to date on how nationally specific incidents, such as the Spanish Civil War and Franco regime, fit into wider trans-European narratives. This article reveals the entanglements between these local and supranational developments by examining the evolution of Spain’s memory laws and discourse, from the 1977 Amnesty Law that followed the end of the Franco regime to the 2007 Law of Historical Memory, in relation to contemporaneous European memorialization patterns. It argues that the shift from a discourse of forgetting in the Amnesty Law to one of commemoration in the Law of Historical Memory is a response to the rise of a European culture of memorialization rather than reflecting an evolution in Spain’s memory regime. By analyzing the development, text, and application of these laws, along with the political and cultural debates surrounding them in Spain and throughout Europe, this article reveals how the 2007 Spanish Law of Historical Memory, despite appearing to espouse European discourses of memorialization and amends-making, perpetuates a system of disremembering that predates most contemporary European memory politics. Ultimately, the article argues that the Law of Historical Memory suppresses the voices of victims of the Franco regime in order to bolster a narrative of Spanish national unity and European belonging.”

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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.”