Alumni Update: Bronwen Boyd (C22), from Atlanta to Tunisia, the US Senate, and Sciences Po


Bronwen Boyd, a History Honors student and French Studies major, graduated from Emory College in May 2022. Boyd took a gap year following graduation, during which she worked for the Carter Center as a nonpartisan elections observer on the 2022 Tunisian Parliamentary Elections and for US Senator Jon Ossoff and the Congressional Commission on Emerging Biotechnology. She is currently pursuing a Master’s in Political Science as a Shepard Scholar from Emory at Sciences Po’s Paris School of Research. Her thematic interests include violence against women, LGBTQIA+ rights, human rights, law, and global history and politics. In 2022 Boyd was named a Graduating Woman of Excellence by the Center for Women at Emory. Boyd writes that she is a “Proud Emory History alumna— now and always!”

Are you an Emory History alumnus? Please send us updates on your life and work!

First-Year Graduate Students Present Research at Hi-Five Presentations

The first-year cohort of doctoral students recently presented their research at the History Department’s annual Hi-Five gathering. Adapted from the University of Queensland’s Three Minute Thesis model, the Hi-Five charges students to put forth a sound, compelling, and accessible distillation of their research. Five first-year History Department students presented their work:

See images of the event below and learn more about these students’ research on their graduate student webpages.

Hannah Abrahamson Hired at College of the Holy Cross

Hannah Abrahamson, a doctoral candidate graduating in the summer of 2022, has been hired as Assistant Professor of Early Modern Latin American History at the College of the Holy Cross. Abrahamson completed her dissertation, titled “Women of the Encomienda: Households and Dependents in Sixteenth-Century Yucatan, Mexico,” under the advisement of Drs. Yanna Yannakakis, Javier Villa-Flores, and Tonio Andrade. She looks forward to teaching courses on gender and sexuality and Indigenous history at the Worcester, MA, liberal arts college in the upcoming academic year.

First Year PhD Cohort Delivers Hi-Five Research Talks

The first-year cohort of the History doctoral program recently presented their research in the annual Hi-Five end-of-year gathering. The format was adapted from the Three Minute Thesis model, developed by the University of Queensland (UQ) in Australia. See the flier above for the names of the graduate students who presented and their research, and check out the images from the event below.

Alumni Update: Jeffrey S. Reznick (PhD, 1999)

Jeffrey S. Reznick (PhD 1999), chief of the History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine (NLM), National Institutes of Health (NIH), has written the first study of Rudolf H. Sauter (1895–1977), the German-born artist, poet, cultural observer and nephew of the famed novelist John Galsworthy. To be published by Anthem Press in January 2022, War and Peace in the Worlds of Rudolf H. Sauter: A Cultural History of a Creative Life reveals its subject as a creative figure in his own right who produced an intriguing body of artistic and literary work spanning from World War I through the Cold War. Additionally, connected to his leadership of the NLM History of Medicine Division, Reznick recently co-authored “History matters: in the past, present & future of the NLM” in the Journal of the Medical Library Association. The article explains how—since the release of the 2015 report of the NIH’s Director’s advisory committee on the future of the National Library of Medicine—history continues to matter at NLM with its History of Medicine Division achieving many collaborative contributions toward the advancement of the library in the 21st century and for the benefit of historical research today and tomorrow.

Doctoral Candidate Anastasiia Strakhova Creates Workshops Amidst Pandemic

Emory’s Tam Institute for Jewish Studies recently published a feature of the pandemic-era work of History doctoral candidate Anastasiia Strakhova, who was the Anne and Bill Newton Graduate Fellow at the Rose Library for 2020-21. After COVID-19 thoroughly derailed her original plans for the fellowship year, Strakhova responded by organizing two virtual workshops on grant writing and the process of conducting research during the pandemic, respectively. Strakhova won a highly competitive Summer Dissertation Writing Grant from the Association for Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies (ASEEES), which is currently supporting her work completing the dissertation, titled “Selective Emigration: Border Control and the Jewish Escape in Late Imperial Russia, 1881-1914.” Drs. Eric Goldstein and Ellie R. Schainker are advisors to Strakhova. Read the full article from the Tam Institute here: “Doctoral Candidate Creates Workshops Amidst Pandemic.”

https://www.facebook.com/HistoryAtEmory/posts/1969794469861761

Emory News Center Highlights Work of Graduate Fellows Lemos and Strakhova

The Emory News Center recently published a profile of two 2020-’21 graduate fellows from the History Department. Sponsored by the Emory Libraries and Laney Graduate School, graduate fellowships provide graduate students with immersive and meaningful experiences in the following areas: digital humanities, instruction and engagement, research and engagement, data services and the Rose Library. Xanda Lemos, a doctoral candidate in Latin American History, was the fellow in digital humanities at the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship. Anastasiia Strakhova, a doctoral candidate in Modern European History, was the Anne and Bill Newton Graduate Fellow at the Rose Library. Read more about the work that they and the other three fellows contributed across campus over the last year here: “Graduate fellows provide thesis, data and publishing support for students and staff.”

Alumni Update: Hyeok Hweon “H.H.” Kang (13C)

Following his graduation from Emory in 2013, former History major Hyeok Hweon “H.H.” Kang went to Harvard for graduate school in Korean and East Asian History. Kang is currently putting the finishing touches on his dissertation, “Crafting Knowledge: Artisan, Officer, and the Culture of Making in Late Chosŏn Korea, 1592–1910.” Starting in the fall, he will be a D. Kim Foundation for History of Science and Technology Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of the History of Science and Technology at Johns Hopkins University. After his postdoc, Kang will join the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures at Washington University in St. Louis as an assistant professor. Congratulations, H.H.!

Dr. Judith A. Miller Leads “Getting the Most Out of Your History Major” Workshop

On Monday, February 26, History Department students gathered to hear about opportunities for research, travel funding to go to archives in the United States and abroad, training in digital humanities, and other ways to enrich their experiences as students in the department. Dr. Judith A. Miller, Associate Professor of History, led the event.