Category / Public Humanities

by abritt

Welcoming New Faculty: Q & A with Malinda Maynor Lowery

In July 2021 the Emory History Department welcomed Dr. Malinda Maynor Lowery, a historian and documentary film producer and member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. Dr. Lowery joins Emory as Cahoon Family Professor of American History. In the latest installment of our “Welcoming New Faculty” series, Dr. Lowery offers a glimpse into her research and teaching along with the factors that drew her to Emory.

Tell us about the focus of your research and principal current project.

I have a longstanding interest in collaborations using methods like oral history and documentary film; working with people to elevate narratives and events that are underappreciated but explain a great deal about our contemporary society has guided me through many projects. Right now I’m working on two projects. One is a media experience for a museum that focuses on the foundational role racial stereotypes have played in American entertainment. Combined with displaying objects from the museum’s collection, we are juxtaposing found footage from stand up comedy, television, film, and historical images and audio to reveal the ways that comedy both reinforces and refutes stereotypes. My other major project involves a book of essays on the shared history of Black and Indigenous Americans. Its premise is that violence and erasure are ongoing features of the United States, but Black and Indigenous Americans have been challenging and repairing that harm since the harm began. The essays are written with particular attention paid to the ways in which these communities constructed narratives of origin, wealth, and law to effectively combat assaults on sovereignty and independence. I’m writing with a sense of urgency—the US has enormous capacity to address the crises of our time, in particular climate change. As we face the prospect of human extinction, American stories that offer paradigms for belonging and possibility are more necessary than ever. Such history is a matter of life and death.

Was there a particularly memorable moment from archival or field research that has had a lasting impact on your work or career?

They come from unexpected places, for sure. My research room is the world, in a way I’m a little bit like an untrained ethnographer and I take my inspiration from everywhere. The book I’m working on now came together the day I learned that George Floyd was born in my home region of southeastern North Carolina. I had been reading, writing, and doing research in questions of race and Indigeneity for years, but that day it dawned on me in a different way. It was no longer just an abstract problem of the discipline that we were telling these stories separately, it was actually nonsensical, it was bad history. It was what an Australian aboriginal scholar, Susan Page, described to me once as a breakthrough concept—once you see it, you can’t unsee it. George Floyd was born in Fayetteville, NC, his family members still live there, only 30 minutes from where my father, uncles, aunts, grandparents, and hundreds of ancestors are buried in the Lumbee homeland. Floyd’s roots are entangled with my own, and in a Lumbee way of thinking, roots are not past, or dead. They are essential for the garden’s continued survival. Like our roots, our history should not a burden. It should be a source of nourishment from which we can continue to hold ourselves accountable to one another.

What sort of courses – undergraduate or graduate – are you most excited to offer at Emory?

I’m teaching a version of the Native American history survey that we are calling “Legal Histories of Native People”—using the law (both Indigenous law and U.S. law) as a throughline to understand a complex and sometimes contradictory history. There are over five hundred federally-recognized Indigenous nations in the United States, each with their own history and culture. Wrapping your mind around it takes a strong organizing principle, and the law helps us achieve that. On the way we read lots of primary sources, a novel, and we focus on gaining skills in research, analysis and argument, including partnerships with terrific people from the Carlos Museum, University Libraries, and the Barkley Debate Program.

What drew you to Emory?

This campus has a demonstrated commitment to reckoning with its history and there is a tremendous opportunity to do that work in partnership with the Muscogee Nation. They are the original owners of this land who produced knowledge in medicine, law, art, and so many other fields, created a language and built a nation here, where our campuses are located. Being a relevant research institution in the 21st century is more than just understanding this as a matter of history. They precede Emory’s contributions in those areas, yes, but they continue to nourish us, as roots nourish a garden.

by abritt

Anderson to Present at the Decatur Book Festival on October 2

Dr. Carol Anderson will present at the upcoming Decatur Book Festival on October 2, 2021. Anderson will discuss her most recent work, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America (Bloomsbury, 2021). The festival this year has been scaled back to a one-day, virtual event. Find out more information about the festival itself here along with more about participating Emory faculty via this Emory News Center piece: “Decatur Book Festival becomes one-day October event, features Emory authors.”

by abritt

Biden Nominates Lipstadt as Special Envoy on Antisemitism

President Joe Biden has nominated Emory historian Deborah E. Lipstadt as special envoy to combat and monitor antisemitism in the U.S. and abroad. Lipstadt will hold the rank of ambassador if confirmed to the position by the U.S. Senate. She has previously served on the State Department’s Advisory Committee on Religious Persecution Abroad. Lipstadt is Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies and associated faculty in the History Department.

Read an excerpt from The Hill’s coverage of Lipstadt’s nomination below, along with the full article: “Biden nominates Holocaust historian as special envoy to combat antisemitism.” Also read other coverage of her nomination in the following stories:

Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. and United Nations Gilad Erdan welcomed Lipstadt’s nomination on Friday.

“As an accomplished author and historian, Dr. Lipstadt has dedicated her life to fighting antisemitism and preserving the memory of the Holocaust,” Erdan said in a statement. “Antisemitism is the oldest and most widespread form of hatred and the recent wave of antisemitic attacks against Jews around the world and in the U.S. serves as a reminder that no place is safe from antisemitic hatred.”

by abritt

Biden Nominates Klibanoff and Dudley to Civil Rights Cold Case Review Board

President Joe Biden has nominated two Emory experts, Hank Klibanoff and Gabrielle Dudley, to serve on the federal Civil Rights Cold Case Review Board. Klibanoff directs the Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project and is the creator and host of Buried Truths, an award-winning podcast that recently finished its third season. Klibanoff is also Associated Faculty in the History Department. Dudley is an instruction archivist with Emory’s Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library, where she works with faculty on course design and integrating resources from the Rose library into their classes. Dudley and Klibanoff have taught together twice. The five-person federal review board will, as the Emory News Center explains, “examine government records of unpunished, racially motivated murders of Black Americans during the modern civil rights era.” The Atlanta-Journal Constitution also covered the nomination in a piece titled, “Civil rights cold case board to have unique Atlanta flavor.” Read more about the nomination of Dudley and Klibanoff at the AJC and via the Emory News Center’s articles, “Two Emory experts nominated to serve on Civil Rights Cold Case Review Board” and “Acclaim: Recent honors for Emory faculty and staff.”

by abritt

‘Buried Truths’ Wins the American Bar Association’s Silver Gavel Award

The latest season of the Emory course-related podcast “Buried Truths” has won the distinguished Silver Gavel Award for Media and the Arts from the American Bar Association. The podcast draws from an undergraduate course on Civil Rights Era Cold Cases taught by Hank Klibanoff, James M. Cox Jr. Professor of Journalism and Associated Faculty in the History Department. The most recent season of “Buried Truths” centers on the shooting death of Ahmaud Arbery, an unarmed Black man killed near Brunswick, Georgia, in February of 2020. The Emory News Center recently published a feature story on the podcast and the prize. Read an excerpt below along with the full article.

“What matters most to me is that we got it right and were able to say it clearly,” Klibanoff says. “It’s thrilling to be honored for having accomplished that in telling a story that is surrounded by complicated legal matters.”

Working with five Emory undergraduates, writer Richard Halicks and the production team at public radio station WABE, Klibanoff unearthed the centuries-long roots of Arbery’s killing in a story told across seven episodes.

by abritt

Crespino Quoted in ‘AJC’ Article on the Future of Stone Mountain

Dr. Joseph Crespino, Jimmy Carter Professor and Department Chair, was recently quoted in an Atlanta Journal-Constitution article about the fate of Georgia’s Stone Mountain, the three-acre carving that memorializes Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson, and Robert E. Lee. The article discusses recent proposals to provide greater historical context for the memorial, whose construction was motivated by white supremacist ideologies. Read a snippet that quotes Crespino below, along with the full piece: “What ‘telling the truth’ about Stone Mountain might look like.”

“Nostalgia for a white supremacist past,” said Emory University professor Joe Crespino, “was driving the revival of the Klan at the same time it was driving the memorialization efforts of the United Daughters of the Confederacy.”

by abritt

Lipstadt Discusses Anti-Semitism on ABC National Radio

Dr. Deborah E. Lipstadt, Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies and associated faculty in the History Department, was a recent guest on Australian Broadcasting Corporation Radio National program. Lipstadt discusses anti-Semitism and the far right in the interview with host Phillip Adams. Read a brief summary of the interview below and listen to the full segment here.

The January insurrection in Washington, aimed at the heart of American democracy, was not only a demonstration of right wing anger and power. Prominent Jewish historian, Deborah Lipstadt, argues that antisemitism is the foundation stone of ‘white power’ and the ‘white nationalist agenda’, that allows them to then take part in attacking, deriding and demeaning people of colour.

by abritt

Slave Voyages Launches Consortium

Slave Voyages, a preeminent resource for the study of slavery and a digital memorial, recently launched a cooperative consortium with six other institutions to ensure its sustainability. The consortium includes Emory, the Hutchins Center for African and African American Research at Harvard University, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, the Omohundro Institute of Early American History & Culture at William & Mary, Rice University, and three campuses at the University of California that will assume a joint membership: UC Santa Cruz, UC Irvine and UC Berkeley. Slave Voyages contains the records of tens of thousands of trans-Atlantic and inter-American slaving voyages, and users can submit new records as they are encountered.

The database grew out of the archival research of Dr. David Eltis, Robert W. Woodruff Professor Emeritus in the Emory History Department. Dr. Allen E. Tullos, Professor of History and Director of the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship, has worked on an extensive update and expansion of the project since 2018. He serves on the project’s steering committee, along with Emory History Department graduate alumni Dr. Alex Borucki (University of California, Irvine) and Dr. Daniel B. Domingues da Silva (Rice University). Read more about launch of the consortium through a quote from Eltis below along with articles in the Atlanta Journal Constitution and from the Emory News Center.

“‘The launch of the SlaveVoyages.org consortium is an innovation not just for scholars of slavery, but for all soft money digital humanities projects,’ says David Eltis, Robert W. Woodruff Professor Emeritus of History and co-director of the SlaveVoyages project. ‘At long last, this consortium opens up a route to sustainability.‘

by abritt

Lipstadt in ‘The Guardian’: “Jews fear what follows after Republicans applauded Marjorie Taylor Greene”

Dr. Deborah E. Lipstadt, Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies and associated faculty in the History Department, recently published an article in The Guardian. Titled “Jews fear what follows after Republicans applauded Marjorie Taylor Greene,” the piece analyzes responses to anti-Semitic comments made by Republican congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene. Lipstadt is a leading public intellectual and key voice on Jewish history, the Holocaust, and Holocaust Denial. Read an excerpt from The Guardian piece below along with the full article here.

“Some people were shocked by Taylor’s comments. I was not. Having spent decades studying, teaching, researching and fighting antisemitism, Greene’s claims were familiar territory. All of them – space lasers, 9/11, school shootings, Trump’s election loss and so much else – shared a common theme: conspiracy. […]

“Antisemitism is a prejudice, akin to so many others. Just like racism and an array of other hatreds, it relies on stereotypes and assumes that all members of the group share those characteristics. Antisemitism has unique characteristics that differentiate it from other hatreds. The racist “punches down” and loathes persons of colour because they are apparently “lesser than” the white person. They are, the racist proclaims, not as smart, industrious, qualified or worthy. In contrast, the antisemite “punches up”. The Jew is supposedly more powerful, ingenious and financially adept than the non-Jew. Jews use their prodigious skills to advance themselves and harm others. The Jew is not just to be loathed. The Jew is to be feared.”

by abritt

Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project Partners with National Center for Civil and Human Rights to Produce Exhibit about the Victims of 1906 Atlanta Race Massacre

Emory’s Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project will partner with the National Center for Civil and Human Rights to produce an exhibit about the more than two dozen Black Atlanta residents murdered in what has become known as the Atlanta Race Massacre of 1906. The exhibit will make up part of a three-story expansion to the National Center for Civil and Human Rights funded by a $17 million grant by the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation. Hank Klibanoff, James M. Cox Jr. Professor of Journalism and Associated Faculty in the History Department, is the director of the Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project. The Blank Family Foundation grant will support the continuation of research by Klibanoff, along with undergraduates in his course the Cold Cases Project, into the Black lives lost to the massacre. Read an excerpt from the Emory News Center feature of the project below along with the full article: “Grant to help Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project uncover Atlanta’s racial history.”

“Who were these people? What did they do, how did they live, how did they die? We know enough from our preliminary research to see the victims were people living on the right side of the law, but they became political pawns, expendable because of their race,” says Klibanoff, a professor of practice in Emory’s Creative Writing program.

“We’ll be seeking to animate their lives to give them the historical justice that was denied them by law enforcement and the judicial system in 1906,” he adds.