Category / Public Scholarship

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Upcoming Event Brings National Public Humanities Leaders into Conversation


On Friday, March 24, Emory will host an event titled “New Directions and New Opportunities in Public Humanities” in the Jones Room. The event will feature presentations from Atlanta organizations hosting Emory graduate student interns (including History doctoral student Ayssa Yamaguti Norek), in the morning, and three national humanities leaders in the afternoon. Dr. Thomas D. Rogers, Associate Professor of Modern Latin American History, has helped to convene this gathering and spearhead public humanities initiatives at Emory more broadly. He will participate in the afternoon roundtable discussion.

The morning session includes representatives from the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, West Atlanta Watershed Alliance, Alliance Theatre, and Charis Books, along with the interns working at those organizations (from Anthropology, Comparative Literature, Hispanic Studies, and History). For the afternoon sessions, the guests include Antoinette Burton of the University of Illinois and Humanities Without Walls; Michelle May-Curry of the National Humanities Alliance and Georgetown University; and Teresa Mangum of the University of Iowa and Humanities for the Public Good. They will present about their work and then participate in a roundtable conversation. The event organizers hope to generate ideas about public humanities approaches and practices, rooted in work happening here and in projects around the country.

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Mellon Foundation to Fund ‘Imagining Democracy Lab’ with Anderson at Helm

Directors of the Imagining Democracy Lab: Carol Anderson (left) and Bernard Fraga (right)

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded Emory College a $526,000 grant for the creation of the Imagining Democracy Lab, an interdisciplinary center dedicated to civic engagement and democratic participation. Dr. Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor of African-American Studies and Associated Faculty the History Department, will serve as the co-director of the lab alongside Dr. Bernard L. Fraga, associate professor of political science and a specialist in race, elections, and voter behavior. The lab will partner with Georgia-based organizations in and around Atlanta, along with units on Emory’s campus like the James Weldon Johnson Institute for the Study of Race and Difference and the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship (directed by Dr. Allen E. Tullos, Professor of History). Read more about this initiative via April Hunt’s article from the Emory News Center: “Civic engagement focus of new Mellon Foundation grant awarded to Emory College.”

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Upcoming Event: LaChance is Keynote at Interdisciplinary Conversation on Incarceration and the Death Penalty

Dr. Daniel LaChance, Winship Distinguished Research Professor in History, 2020-23 and Associate Professor of History, will participate in an upcoming interdisciplinary discussion on incarceration and the death penalty. The event will take place in Callaway S420 on Tuesday, February 21, from 6-7pm. The discussion will also feature Dr. Joel Zivot, Associate Professor in Emory’s Department of Anesthesiology. LaChance is a legal scholar working at the intersection of American legal and cultural history, criminology, and literary studies. His most recent book, co-authored with Paul Kaplan, is Crimesploitation: Crime, Punishment, and Pleasure on Reality Television (Stanford University Press, 2022).

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Lipstadt Addresses Antisemitism as Part of ‘Thought Leader Series’

Dr. Deborah E. Lipstadt, Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and Holocaust Studies and the U.S. State Department’s special envoy to fight antisemitism, recently discussed her work and global antisemitism as part of Emory’s Office of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion’s Thought Leader Series. Ambassador Lipstadt was interviewed by Dr. Carol E. Henderson, Vice Provost for Diversity and Inclusion. The Thought Leader Series identifies opportunities to engage in conversation with some of the foremost thinkers at Emory and more broadly across the world who can provide educational awareness around topics and issues that create barriers to experiencing a more inclusive Emory, and a more humane and just society. Lipstadt is Associated Faculty in the History Department. Watch the full conversation above or on YouTube at: “Thought Leader Series | Antisemitism: A Conversation w Dr. Deborah Lipstadt & Dr. Carol E. Henderson.”

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LaChance Cited in Article on Last Meal Rite

Dr. Daniel LaChance

Dr. Daniel LaChance, Winship Distinguished Research Professor in History, 2020-23, and Associate Professor of History, was recently quoted in a Fox News article about the common practice of allowing people sentenced to death a customized meal before their execution. LaChance argues that this tradition serves to differentiate the violence that the state carries out in the context of an execution from the violence for which the person was sentenced to death. LaChance is the author of Executing Freedom: The Cultural Life of Capital Punishment in the United States (University of Chicago Press, 2016) and Crimesploitation: Crime, Punishment, and Pleasure on Reality Television (Stanford UP, 2022), co-authored with Paul Kaplan. Read an excerpt from the Fox News piece below along with the full article: “Lore of the last meal: Inside the captivating culinary ritual before vicious killers face death.”

“‘The meals serve as a reminder that this is a different violence,’ LaChance told Fox News Digital of the views that some may hold. ‘That this is a righteous violence rather than a lawless or criminal violence.‘”

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Anderson Analyzes Midterm Elections on ‘Democracy Now!’

Carol Anderson on Democracy Now!

Dr. Carol Anderson appeared on the television program Democracy Now! in the run-up to the 2022 midterm elections. Anderson analyzed the significance of the elections for the future of American democracy and discussed the outsized role that the outcome of the Georgia senate race would play in determining the course of that future. Anderson is the author of many books, including, most recently, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America (Bloomsbury, 2021). She is Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies and Associated Faculty in the History Department. Watch the segment on Democracy Now! above or at the following link: “‘American Democracy Hangs in the Balance’: Carol Anderson on Midterms, Georgia Races & Voting Rights.”

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Rodriguez’s Class Inspires Pioneering, Undergraduate-Curated Exhibit on Latinx History

“Consciousness is Power: A Record of Emory Latinx History”

Emory Libraries has showcased a pioneering exhibit on Latinx histories in recognition of Hispanic Heritage Month. Titled “Consciousness is Power: A Record of Emory Latinx History,” the exhibit was curated by Arturo Contreras, a fourth-year student majoring in Latin American and Caribbean Studies. In the Emory News Center piece about the exhibit, Contreras describes how History Department Assistant Professor Yami Rodriguez helped to inspire the project through her class “Migrants, borders and transnational communities in the U.S.” Read an excerpt from the Emory News Center Article below along with the full piece here: “Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month with an Emory Libraries pop-up exhibit.”

As a student, Contreras wanted to integrate his community work into his academic life. In spring of 2022, he enrolled in Yamileth “Yami” Rodriguez’s special topics history class to expand as a scholar in the field of Latinx studies. Rodriguez, an assistant professor of history at Emory, inspired and supported Contreras in proposing his exhibit project to the Emory Libraries Events and Exhibits team. 

“Yami’s presence is what Emory needed, especially for students wanting to be involved with their respective communities,” Contreras says. “Her field of study and method of facilitating makes the classroom an environment of belonging and safety to explore intellectual curiosity.” 

“Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month with an Emory Libraries pop-up exhibit,” September 14, 2022.

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Anderson on PBS: ‘The Significance of Juneteenth’

Dr. Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor and Chair of African-American Studies, appeared on the PBS show Amanpour & Co. last month to discuss the significance of the Juneteenth emancipation holiday. The U.S. government recognized Juneteenth, which marks the day in 1865 that the last slaves in Galveston, Texas learned that they were free, as a federal holiday in 2021. Anderson is the author, most recently, of The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America (Bloomsbury, 2021). Watch the interview with Anderson here: “The Significance of Juneteenth.”

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Graduate Student Jessica Markey Locklear Participates in UMBC Roundtable

Doctoral student Jessica Markey Locklear recently participated in a conversation hosted by the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Albin O. Kuhn Library. Titled “Indigenous Community Archiving and Collective Memory,” the virtual roundtable centered on community archiving projects within American Indian communities of Baltimore and Philadelphia. Locklear was joined in the conversation by Siobhan Hagan (founding director, Mid-Atlantic Regional Moving Image Archive), Tiffany Chavis (Consulting Archivist, UMBC), and Ashley Minner (Assistant Curator for History and Culture, Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian). Locklear’s dissertation, advised by Dr. Malinda Maynor Lowery, is titled “The Other Lands We Know: Lumbee Migrations and the Maintenance of Indian Identity, 1880-1980.”

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Anderson Contributes to ‘NYT’ Panel “Where Does American Democracy Go From Here?”

Dr. Carol Anderson recently contributed to a New York Times panel focused on the theme “Where Does American Democracy Go From Here?” The six panelists offer historical and contemporary perspectives on the state of democracy in the U.S., which has fallen in recent rankings that measure the vitality of democracies across the globe. Anderson is Charles Howard Candler Professor of African American Studies and Associated Faculty in the History Department. She is the author, most recently, of The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America (Bloomsbury Press, 2021). Read one of Anderson’s contributions to the panel below and find the full piece here.

“Anderson: What we’re seeing, I liken it to a land, sea and air attack. The land attack is on voting rights. That is one of the ways that you begin to undermine democracy. The sea attack are these attacks against teaching critical race theory and “divisive” topics, so you can erase people from American history and erase the role of various people in American history. And the air attack is the loosening of Texas and Tennessee both passed laws allowing for permitless carrying of firearms in 2021; the Georgia State Legislature passed a similar bill this year. This is a full-blown assault on American democracy that’s going after voting rights, that’s going after education and that is reinforcing political violence as an acceptable method of bringing about your political aims. That’s where we are, and that’s why this moment is so dangerous.“