Category / Publications

by abritt

Andrade Gives Wallace T. MacCaffrey Distinguished Lecture in History at Reed College

In late March Dr. Tonio Andrade, Professor of History, delivered the Wallace T. MacCaffrey Distinguished Lecture in History at Reed College. Andrade’s talk, “The Last Embassy: The 1795 Dutch Mission to the Qianlong Court,” focused on a little-studied embassy to the Qing court: the Dutch mission of 1794–95. The talk draws from research Andrade conducted for his forthcoming book, The Last Embassy: The Dutch Mission of 1795 and the Forgotten History of Western Encounters with China (Princeton UP, June 2021). Find out more about the event here.

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Abigail Meert (PhD, ’19) Publishes Article in the ‘International Journal of African Historical Studies’

Dr. Abilgail Meert (PhD, ’19) recently published an article in the International Journal of African Historical Studies. Titled “Suffering, Consent, and Coercion in Uganda: The Luwero War, 1981-1986,” the piece offers a fresh interpretation of popular support for a much-celebrated guerilla movement led by the The Ugandan National Resistance Army (NRA) and National Resistance Movement (NRM). Meert is Assistant Professor of History at Texas A&M International University. She completed her doctoral work under the advisement of Clifton Crais and with a dissertation titled “Suffering, Struggle, and the Politics of Legitimacy in Uganda, 1962-1996.” Read the abstract of Meert’s article below.

The Ugandan National Resistance Army (NRA) and its political wing, the National Resistance Movement (NRM), are lauded in Africanist scholarship for being one the first guerrilla movements to overthrow an independent state in post-colonial African history. Scholars have largely attributed the NRA/M’s unprecedented success to its innovative strategies of governance and political education during the war, crediting these initiatives with legitimizing the NRA/M and encouraging civilians’ voluntary support within the war effort. This article contends that the NRA/M’s wartime reforms had only minimal impact on civilian decisions to participate in the 1981-1986 Luwero War. Instead, it argues that popular fear of the incumbent state motivated civilians to join the rebel movement. In recognizing the constraints within which civilians consented to NRA/M leadership, this article offers insight into broader questions of authority, legitimacy, and mobilization in African politics. Such reflection may also help contextualize the claims that African political leaders make toward power and explain variations in the resonance of those claims for African audiences over time.

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‘WSJ’ Reviews PhD Alumnus Robert Elder’s ‘Calhoun: American Heretic’ (Basic Books, 2021)

Basic Books will publish the second monograph from Dr. Robert Elder, a 2011 graduate of the Emory History doctoral program, this month. Titled Calhoun: American Heretic, the book is a cultural and intellectual biography of the father of Southern secession. In a recent review The Wall Street Journal’s Jonathan Horn described the book as a “serious analysis” that “traces how Calhoun’s thinking continues to influence American society today and shows how academic scholarship has moved ever closer to accepting Calhoun’s once shocking ideas about the role of slavery in American history.” Now Assistant Professor at Baylor University, Elder completed his graduate work at Emory under the advisement of S C Dobbs Professor Emeritus Professor James L. Roark. Read more about Calhoun: American Heretic at Basic Books and in the WSJ review: “‘Calhoun’ Review: The Nullifier and His Legacy.”

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Michael Camp (PhD, ’17) Excavates John Lewis’s Forgotten Fight for the Mariel Cubans in Atlanta

Michael Camp (PhD, ’17), assistant professor and political papers archivist at the University of West Georgia, recently published a blog post for Atlanta Studies. Camp’s piece, “John Lewis’s Forgotten Fight: The Mariel Cubans in Atlanta,” discusses Lewis’s support for Cuban migrants in legal limbo while imprisoned in the Atlanta Federal Penitentiary in the late 1980s. Read an excerpt below along with the full piece.

However, one of the less remembered episodes of his career, the 1987 Mariel Cuban uprising in Atlanta’s federal penitentiary, deserves further consideration in our current moment, especially given Atlanta’s burgeoning status as a destination for immigrants desiring opportunity and a new home. It also deserves to be told as an important story in Lewis’s own career. After the height of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, many its leaders continued to advocate not only for the rights of African Americans but also those of other traditionally marginalized groups, such as immigrants. For his part, Lewis urged compassion for the Cubans imprisoned in Atlanta, extending the broad legacies of the civil rights movement into a new era.

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Rogers and Manuel in ‘The Hill’: “Biden’s carbon farming policy must heed recent lessons”

Thomas D. Rogers and collaborator Jeffrey Manuel (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville) published an opinion piece in The Hill as a part of its “Changing America” series. The piece shares lessons from the Renewable Fuels Standard that are relevant to the new Biden administration’s plans to reduce carbon with agriculture. Rogers and Manuel are writing a transnational history of ethanol in Brazil and the United States. Rogers is Associate Professor of Modern Latin American History and Arthur Blank/NEH Chair in the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences (2018-2021). Read an excerpt from The Hill article below along with the full piece: “Biden’s carbon farming policy must heed recent lessons.”

Third, and perhaps most importantly, the history of the RFS offers a stark reminder that there are no silver bullet solutions in agriculture. When high oil prices and political instability threatened the U.S. economy in the early 2000s, many policymakers saw ethanol as a panacea. As comedian Stephen Colbert joked at the time, “we solved the energy crisis. The answer was ethanol. Corn plus magic equals gasoline.” Fifteen years later, we understand that ethanol was hardly a cure-all for energy shortages or the environment. It has solved some problems — namely what to do with all the corn grown in the United States — but it has created new ones, including more and more nitrate-laced water in the Corn Belt and depleted topsoil. So it will be for carbon farming. Changing agricultural practices to sequester more carbon is undoubtedly a good idea. But it is just one of many changes needed to make agriculture more sustainable in the 21st century. Once carbon sequestration dollars begin flowing to farmers, it will be crucial to remember that it is just one solution among many needed to tackle our climate crisis.

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History Major Scott Benigno Publishes Research in ‘The Haley Classical Journal’

Scott Benigno

History major Scott Benigno recently published a paper, “A Martyrdom that Overshadowed Heresy: Saint Lucian of Antioch,” in The Haley Classical Journal. Scott’s paper originated in the course “Byzantium: Gold, Glory, and Gore in the Eastern Roman Empire,” taught by graduate student Mary Grace Gibbs-DuPree. Scott’s assignment was to pick a saint and explain how this saint came to be included in the Byzantine religious calendar. Saint Lucian of Antioch was so appealing, Scott thought, because he gained sainthood for having died for his faith but, during his lifetime, had strayed from Church doctrine. The journey from a class assignment based on a keen observation to a published paper was still long, though: “The peer-editing and review process was tough,” Scott said, “and I have never dug deeper to find sources than I did for this paper. It was a very rewarding experience.” Find the article here: “A Martyrdom that Overshadowed Heresy: Saint Lucian of Antioch.”

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Bhattacharyya’s ‘Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta’ Available Open Access

Dr. Debjani Bhattacharyya‘s (PhD, ’14) Empire and Ecology in the Bengal Delta: The Making of Calcutta (Cambridge UP, 2018) has recently been made available open access by Cambridge University Press. The monograph, which was Bhattacharyya’s first, won the 2019 honorable mention for the best book in Urban History from the Urban History Association. Bhattacharyya is Associate Professor of History at Drexel University.

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Strocchia Named to Editorial Board of ‘The Journal of Modern History’

Dr. Sharon T. Strocchia, Professor of History, has been named to the editorial board of the Journal of Modern History. The JMH is one of the world’s leading journals for the study of all varieties of European history. Strocchia’s specializations include: the social and cultural history of Renaissance Italy; gender and sexuality in early modern Europe; and health and medicine in the premodern world. Her most recent (and prize-winning) book is Forgotten Healers: Women and the Pursuit of Health in Late Renaissance Italy (Harvard UP, 2019).

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Yannakakis Contributes to Collaborative Article in the American Society for Legal History’s ‘The Docket’

Dr. Yanna Yannakakis, 2018-2021 Winship Distinguished Research Professorship in History and Associate Professor, recently contributed to a collaborative article in the American Society for Legal History’s The Docket. Yannakakis’s piece, “Legal Performances in the Boundary Lands: Violence, Objects, and Indigenous Claims in Colonial Mexico,” is one of five contributions to a broader article titled “The Everyday Materials of Colonial Legal Spaces.” That article includes a piece by Yannakakis’s frequent collaborator, Dr. Bianca Premo (Florida International University). Read more via the links below as well as at The Docket.

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Smith’s ‘Talking Therapy’ Wins American Journal of Nursing Book Award

Dr. Kylie M. Smith has won the 2020 American Journal of Nursing Book of the Year Award in History and Public Policy for her work Talking Therapy: Knowledge and Power in American Psychiatric Nursing (Rutgers UP, 2020). Smith is Associate Professor in the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing and Associated Faculty in the History Department. Talking Therapy previously won the 2020 Lavinia L. Dock Award from the American Association for the History of Nursing. Read more about the work below and at the Rutgers UP website.