Category / Graduate Students

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Honoring Kristin Mann: Contribute to Establishing the Mann Prize in African Studies

This year Dr. Kristin Mann retired from the Emory History Department after a long and accomplished career. The Laney Graduate School has launched a special initiative to honor Mann’s legacy. The Mann Prize in African Studies will be awarded to an outstanding graduate student whose work and commitment to African Studies embodies the career of Kristin Mann.
To name this award in honor of Dr. Mann, we must raise $12,500. If we are unable to reach this goal by December 31st, 2019, the funds will be allocated for general unnamed awards in African Studies. Please consider making a gift to honor the legacy of Dr. Kristin Mann and support African Studies graduate education in the Laney Graduate School at Emory.
Contribute to the establishment of the Mann Prize on the Emory Online Giving website. In addition, read more about Dr. Mann’s career on her Emeritus Faculty profile and in the text below, written by Clifton Crais, Professor of History and Director of the Institute of African Studies.

“After coming to Emory University in 1979, Professor Mann helped create the Institute of African Studies, which she directed from 1993 to 1996. The Institute is one of the country’s oldest and most dynamic centers of Africanist scholarship. Professor Mann was very active in creating the Women’s Studies Program, now the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies. Professor Mann was also instrumental in bringing to Emory University the African Studies Association (ASA), the world’s largest organization devoted to the study of Africa, and in creating the nationally-ranked Ph.D. program in African History. Between 2008 and 2011, Kristin chaired the Department of History. A model citizen, Professor Mann has been active throughout Emory University, including the President’s Committee on Undergraduate Education, the Faculty Council, and the University Senate. A dedicated mentor and a meticulous reader, Professor Mann has advised generations of students, at Emory and around the world. The Mann Prize honors her commitment to students, her collegial spirit, and her enduring contributions to African Studies.“

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Graduate Student Stephanie Bryan Presents Paper and Wins Commendation at Oxford Symposium

Graduate student Stephanie N. Bryan presented her paper “Under the Cover of Savory Vapors: Opossums, Power, and Jim Crow Politics” at the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. The paper addresses the custom of hunting and cooking opossums in the southern USA and its manipulation by early 20th century politicians. The paper subsequently won a commendation by the Sophie Coe Prize committee. The judges praised the paper as “a surprising piece of culinary history” and considered it “well researched and well told.” Read the full judge’s report here. Bryan’s advisers in the History Department are Allen Tullos and Patrick Allitt.

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Turkish Translation of Hanne Blank’s ‘Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality’ Released

PhD Candidate Hanne Blank recently published a Turkish translation of her 2012 book Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality (Beacon Press). Merve Özturk translated the work, whose Turkish title is Düzcinsel: Heteroseksüelliğin Şaşırtıcı Derecede Kısa Tarihi, for Istambul-based publisher İletişim Yayınları. A graduate fellow in the Emory History Department, Blank is also a visiting professor in Women’s and Gender Studies at Denison University.

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Graduate Fellow Alexander Cors in ‘HASTAC’: “Doing History from the ‘Skies'”

Graduate fellow Alexander Cors recently published a blog post on the promises and practices of digital humanities for the interdisciplinary online community HASTAC. Cors’ principal research concerns the Mississippi Valley and Atlantic World, however his work with digital humanities has ranged from 3D visualizations of 1930s Atlanta to mapping legal networks of indigenous communities in New Spain (Mexico). Cors is currently one of the HASTAC Fellows at Emory’s Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry Read the full post here: Doing History from the “Skies.”

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Doctoral Fellow Shari Wejsa on Grant Writing and Digital Projects in ‘HASTAC’

Graduate student Shari Wejsa recently authored a post on grant writing and digital projects for the interdisciplinary online community HASTAC. Wejsa is currently one of the HASTAC Fellows at Emory’s Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry. Her research centers of modern Brazil and the Lusophone world, and her dissertation is titled, “Migrant Agency and Racial Identity: Angolan Refugees and Immigration Policy in Brazil, 1974-1988.” Read an excerpt of her post below, along with the full article here: “Grant Writing and Digital Projects.”

“Ode to the beloved grant application–being forced to engage in that awkward dance of showcasing your brilliant project proposal while featuring why you, with all of your skills and experience are the ideal candidate to execute your project without gloating too much or simply regurgitating your CV in narrative form. Though most seem to sigh and groan when thinking about grant applications and find excuses to work on any other looming deadline, some have to enjoy developing and fine-tuning them, right? Maybe? Any takers?”

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Laney Graduate School Profiles PhD Candidate Stefanie M. Krull

steffi-krull

The Laney Graduate School recently published a profile of PhD candidate Stefanie M. Krull on their homepage. Krull’s core research interests are Central Europe, Modern Germany & Poland, nationalism & ethnicity, and migration/diaspora. Her dissertation, titled “’The Latecomers’: Resettlers from Poland & their Integration into West Germany, 1970-1990,” is advised by Astrid M. Eckert. View the video profile of Krull and read more about her research.

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Graduate Students Alexander Cors and Shari Wejsa Publish Blog Entries for HASTAC

Second-year graduate students Alexander Cors and Shari Wejsa are the two 2017-18 HASTAC Scholars at Emory’s Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry. Cors and Wejsa recently published entries on the blog of HASTAC, which stands for the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory. Check out links to their recent posts and read their HASTAC biographies below.

Alexander Cors

My research interests broadly encompass transatlantic history in the early modern period, from 1450 to 1850. Geographically, my focus is on Latin America and Europe. I am particularly interested in colonial Louisiana, the circum-Caribbean, and Bourbon Spain.

My current project investigates migration and settlement patterns, immigration policies, and discourses on foreigners in eighteenth-century Louisiana. I am particularly concerned with questions of ethnicity, integration, and identity in the early modern transatlantic empires of France and Spain. I am also interested in Digital Humanities, especially the use of GIS technology to create ethnolinguistic maps of the eighteenth-century Mississippi Valley.

Shari Wejsa 

As a PhD student in Latin American history, I study the experiences of Angolan and Mozambican immigrants and refugees in Brazil in the postcolonial period. I examine how their migratory experiences have shaped their identities as they adapted to Brazil while remaining connected to their countries of origin. I also explore how international human rights law and evolving immigration policies have affected the lives of these migrants. My research interests are an extension of my Fulbright Commission-sponsored work on Brazil’s National Truth Commission, which investigated the human rights violations committed during Brazil’s military dictatorship (1964-1985), and the inequities of educational access for Afro-Brazilian girls and women in Bahia. As an educator, I seek to cultivate critical thinking on issues of human rights and social justice while advocating for active engagement as transformative power.

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Graduate Student Kyungtaek Kwon Wins Award From Southern Conference on Slavic Studies

Congratulations to graduate student Kyungtaek Kwon for winning the best graduate paper award from the Southern Conference on Slavic Studies. Kwon’s paper is titled, “The Boundary of Komsomol’tsy between Heroes and Vydvizhentsy in the Soviet Far Eastern City Komsomol’sk-na-Amure in the 1930s.” Associate Professor of History Matthew J. Payne is Kwon’s advisor.

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History Graduate Program to Host Panel on Career Diversity

The Graduate Program of the Emory History Department will host a panel discussion titled “Beyond the Professoriate: Diverse Careers in History” on March 19. Panelists will include three former graduate students: Sarita Alami, a Brand Marketing Manager at MailChimp; Ed Hatfield, Editor of the New Georgia Encyclopedia; and Chris Sawula, Visual Resources Librarian in the Department of Art History at Emory.

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Innovative Teaching and Learning in Crespino’s “History 385: Right-Wing America” Culminates in “Documenting the Right” Student Film Festival

Students in Dr. Joseph Crespino‘s fall 2017 class, “History 385: Right-Wing America,” produced short documentary films that were screened on November 29 at the “Documenting the Right” Student Film Festival. Students took advantage of Emory’s rich library holdings in crafting videos whose themes ranged from racism in the career of George Wallace to Atlanta’s motto as the “city too busy to hate.” Read more about the project on the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship Blog: “Emory history class uses digital storytelling to study political movements.”