Category / Graduate Students

by abritt

Emory Launches First Annual Brazil Week, September 19-23

image of mosquito silhouette

On September 19, 2016, Emory will inaugurate the first annual Brazil Week, a celebration of the university’s engagement with Brazil. The multidisciplinary series of activities, organized by Emory’s Brazil Initiative through the Claus M. Halle Institute for Global Learning, will involve History faculty and students from Emory and elsewhere. History Department faculty within the Brazil Initiative include Dr. Jeffrey Lesser (Chair and Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History) and Dr. Thomas D. Rogers (Associate Professor of Modern Latin American History). Check out a schedule of events below, read more about the Brazil initiative, and visit this page to register for the week’s events.

brazil-week-placing-time-flier-copy-1

Placing Time: The Power of Mapping Technology for Historical Analysis
Tuesday, September 20
4:00-5:00pm
Oxford Road Building Auditorium

Emory professor Michael Page will present Atlanta Explorer, a project dedicated to building and disseminating geographical datasets and tools for exploring Atlanta’s history. Professor Luís Ferla of Federal University of São Paulo will describe the work of Hímaco: History, Maps, Computers, a collaborative laboratory of historians, geographers, and computer scientists exploring the spatial history of São Paulo. This panel, moderated by Professor Michael Elliott, Interim Dean of Emory College of Arts and Sciences, features the current work of these partners in a new collaboration on Brazilian urban studies.

Zika: A Brazilian Perspective on A Global Challenge
Wednesday, September 21
4:00-5:30pm, followed by a casual reception
Atwood Hall 360
(New Chemistry Building)

Zika virus’ arrival in Brazil and the rest of the world unleashed a storm of public health challenges and media attention. Brazil has been at the forefront of the epidemic and the efforts to address it, and transmission is now ongoing in many areas in the Americas, including Florida and Puerto Rico in the U.S. Dr. Mariana Kikuti, DVM, PhD Candidate, Federal University of Bahia; Dr. Uriel Kitron, Goodrich C. White Professor of Environmental Sciences, Emory University; Dr. Igor Paploski, DVM, PhD Candidate, Federal University of Bahia; and Dr. Lincoln Suesdek, Researcher at Scientific Council of Butantan Institute, Brazil, will provide a brief overview of Zika and its mosquito vector – Aedes aegypti, present findings from their studies in the Brazilian cities of São Paulo and Salvador, and answer questions from the audience.

Bate-Papo: Portuguese Conversational Hour
Friday, September 23
1:00-2:30pm
Great Room, Longstreet-Means Hall

Come join us for pizza and conversations in Portuguese with students, faculty, and staff from across the university and broader community.

Additional cultural events will be organized throughout the week by the Brazilian Student Association (BRASA), including Capoeira Performance/Workshop on Monday, September 19 at 7:30 pm in the Woodruff P.E. Center and a Samba performance. Visit here for updates and details.

 

by abritt

Incoming PhD Student Virgo Morrison Featured by Emory News Center

morrison-screenshot.png
This fall the Emory History Department welcomes a stellar new cohort of ten first-year graduate students. One of those students, Virgo Morrison, was recently profiled by the Emory News Center. An advisee of Joseph Crespino, Morrison’s research focuses on the impacts of drug abuse and drug policy in the South. Copied below is Morrison’s profile. Check out a few of the other incoming students to the Laney Graduate School here.

Virgo Morrison

Hometown: Woodstock, Georgia

Emory degree program: PhD in history

Completed degrees: BA in history, MA in history, Virginia State University

Focus of scholarship: Traditionally, drug abuse has been perceived as primarily a Northern metropolitan phenomenon and much of narcotics history has been similarly one-dimensional. Through my research I intend to broaden the field by exploring the impact drug abuse and drug policy had across the rural-urban spectrum in the 20th century American South. I am specifically interested in how regional manifestations of segregation, conservativism, and drug rehabilitation influenced the formation of drug policy and popular sentiments about drug abuse.

Why it matters: If the current opioid epidemic has shown us anything, it is that we still do not understand how to craft effective drug policies. It is perhaps too ambitious to hope there is an answer to this problem within our history but I do believe that an accurate account of our past successes and failures could provide us with, at the very least, a solid foundation.

Proudest academic achievement to date: While completing my master’s degree I picked up a day job as a masonry restoration specialist for a historic preservation company. My days were spent tuckpointing marble balustrades or laying brick six stories high whereas my nights were spent formatting footnotes and reading for classes. Looking back now I view this experience as an accomplishment rather than an obstacle. I never missed a class, I graduated, and I even became a decent bricklayer to boot.

by abritt

Claudia Kreklau, History PhD student, is featured in a German Newspaper (HAZ) for her research

The German newspaper Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung (HAZ) reported on third year PhD student Claudia Kreklau’s work on nineteenth-century food. The regional paper featured Claudia’s research at the World of Kitchen (WOK) Museum in Hannover.

The archive welcomed the Emory student to gather data among their 7000-volume collection of cookbooks and ephemera, including various copies of the Practical Cookbook by nineteenth-century best-selling author Henriette Davidis, a vegetarian guide from the fin-de-siècle, and advertisements connected to the industrialization of foodstuffs. The wider collection houses objects of material culture which, along with Claudia’s findings of handwritten recipes, household diaries, and correspondence in the WOK’s manuscript collection, will contribute to her research on the development of German cooking traditions and questions of identity in the nineteenth century.

Claudia Kreklau is advised by Dr. Brian Vick.

The print version circulated July 7, 2016. E-version published July 10, 2016.

Read the original article here.

by abritt

First-Year Graduate Students End Semester with Hi-Five Research Presentations

The first-year cohort from the PhD program recently capped off the semester by presenting their research at the department’s annual Hi-Five event. The Hi-Five helps students develop their academic, presentation, and research communication skills and is based on the Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) competition that originated at The University of Queensland (UQ), Australia. The format is also used by the Laney Graduate School for those students completing their Ph.D. dissertations. In presentations to the department, each student must adhere to the following rules:

  • Presentations must be five minutes or less. Presentations will be cut off after five minutes.
  • A single static PowerPoint slide is permitted (no slide transitions, animations or ‘movement’ in the slide, and the slide is to be presented from the beginning of the oration).
  • No additional electronic media (e.g. sound and video files) are permitted.
  • No additional props (e.g. costumes, musical instruments, laboratory equipment) are permitted.
  • Presentations are to be spoken word (e.g. no poems, raps or songs).
  • Presentations are to commence from the front of the room and must be done while standing.
  • Presentations are considered to have commenced when a presenter starts their presentation through movement or speech.

Participating students and the titles of their papers are as follows:

Oskar Czendze – “Old Homes Made New: The Reinvention of Landsmanshaftn in the United States”

Mary Grace Dupree – “The Golden Chalice: Vision and Prophecy in the Narrative of Perpetua of Carthage”

Cheng-Heng Lu – “Double-edged Sword: The History of the Shi Clan in the Qing Empire”

Luke Hagemann – “Imperial Clementia in Late Roman Law”

Anthony Tipping – “A Coercive Public Health Campaign in Rio de Janeiro: The benevolent elite, the ignorant masses, and the revolta da vacina of 1904″

Alexandra Lemos Zagonel – “Secret Agent Men: Spying at Brazilian Universities in the Twilight of Military Rule”

Tim Romans – “Under the Vermillion Seal: Japan’s Forgotten Tokugawa Pirates”

Anthony Sciubba – “Ancient Arbitration: Conflict Mediation in Late Antiquity”

by abritt

History Graduate Students Curate Exhibition “Changing Atlanta: 1950-1999: The Challenges of a Growing Southern Metropolis”

A new exhibition designed to explore the city of Atlanta’s rapid growth in the second half of the twentieth century is on view in the Robert W. Woodruff Library on the Emory campus through June. Titled “Changing Atlanta 1950-1999: The Challenges of a Growing Southern Metropolis,” the exhibit and corresponding events were co-curated  by Erica Bruchko, W. Michael Camp, and Louis Fagnan (along with Kristin Morgan and Laura Starratt of the Rose Library). The exhibition highlights the rich collections pertinent to Atlanta’s urban history housed at the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library.

A panel discussion (free and open to the public) will take place on Tuesday, April 12 at 6:30 p.m. in the Jones Room in the Woodruff Library. The discussion will include opening remarks by Joseph Crespino, Chair and Jimmy Carter Professor, and closing remarks by Edward Hatfield, a History Department alumnus and instructor at Kennesaw State University. Read more about the event here.

Story image

by abritt

Chad R. Fulwider, Emory PhD Alumnus, Publishes ‘German Propaganda and U.S. Neutrality in World War I ‘

Chad R. Fulwider, Associate Professor of History at the Centenary College of Louisiana, recently published German Propaganda and U.S. Neutrality in World War I with the University of Missouri Press. Fulwider graduated from Emory’s PhD program in 2008 with a specialization in Modern European History. Below is a review of Fulwider’s new work.

“Until now, there has been no comprehensive study of German propagandists’ efforts to keep the United States out of the First World War. In this deeply researched book, Chad Fulwider presents a nuanced view of these propaganda operations, exposing many fascinating aspects of these activities and filling a large gap in the historiography of World War I.”—Thomas Boghardt, author of The Zimmerman Telegram: Intelligence, Diplomacy, and America’s Entry into World War I

by abritt

Spring 2016: Graduate Students Design and Teach Courses to Emory Undergraduates

Each semester students from Emory’s History graduate program enter the classroom to teach courses they have designed and developed through the TATTO program. This spring five third-year graduate students are teaching dozens of Emory undergraduates, exposing them to fascinating topics ranging across time and space.

These courses enable graduate students to gain valuable experience teaching subjects directly linked to their own research interests. More broadly, the experience forms part of the History Department and Laney Graduate School’s holistic training that prepares graduate students for careers in teaching and research.

Below are the five courses being taught this semester, along with links to the profiles of each instructor and the syllabi:

by abritt

History Faculty and Students Benefit from New Emory Connections in Brazil

In September Emory University teamed up with the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) to sign an agreement of research collaboration. FAPESP is a highly respected public foundation in the state of São Paulo, Brazil, with numerous international collaborations. Emory also signed an agreement with Fulbright Brazil that establishes a Fulbright Professorship Award for Brazilian Visiting Scholars at Emory. These initiatives will benefit the already-rich community of scholars in the History Department and elsewhere working on Brazil and Portuguese studies. Read the full story from the Office of the Provost here.

by abritt

PhD Alumnus Alex Borucki and Dr. David Eltis Co-Publish Article in the American Historical Review

Emory History Department PhD Alumnus Alex Borucki co-wrote and published “Atlantic History and the Slave Trade to Spanish America” in The American Historical Review with Dr. David Eltis of Emory and Dr. David Wheat of Michigan State. The article can be found here.

Borucki is currently an Assistant Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. Borucki’s From Shipmates to Soldiers: Emerging Black Identities in the Río de la Plata will be published by University of New Mexico Press in 2015. He is also the author of Abolicionismo y tráfico de esclavos en Montevideo tras la fundación republicana (Biblioteca Nacional, 2009) and co-author, with Karla Chagas and Natalia Stalla, of Esclavitud y trabajo: Un estudio sobre los afrodescendientes en la frontera uruguaya(Pulmón Ediciones, 2004.

David Eltis is Emeritus faculty at Emory and Research Associate at the University of British Columbia. Among many publications, he is the author of Economic Growth and the Ending of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Oxford University Press, 1987) and The Rise of African Slavery in the Americas (Cambridge University Press, 2000), and co-author, with David Richardson, of the Atlas of the Transatlantic Slave Trade (Yale University Press, 2010). Along with Paul Lachance and Martin Halbert, he is the co-creator of the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade Database, an open-access website containing an interactive database of more than 35,000 slave voyages that has led to major advancements in the understanding of this traffic.