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.
Emory University’s Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library has acquired a collection of correspondence and memorabilia of author Harper Lee. The previous owner of the collection, Paul R. Kennerson, sought to facilitate the acquisition after meeting with Joseph Crespino, Jimmy Carter Professor of History. Crespino worked with Kennerson in the course of research for his newest book, Atticus Finch: The Biography, to be released in early April. Kennerson explained the logic of the decision: “These letters complement the research being done by Joe Crespino so perfectly that I was taken with the fit of it and was highly impressed with other work being done at Emory.” Read more about the acquisition in the article by Emory News Center’s Elaine Justice, “Emory acquires letters by author Harper Lee.”
Emory Magazine featured Dr. Joseph Crespino, Jimmy Carter Professor of History, in their winter edition as one of Emory’s “Fab Five” professors. The specializations of the profiled scholars span from history and English to biology and psychology. The article highlights Crespino’s scholarly trajectory with a particular focus on his interest in To Kill a Mockingbird protagonist Atticus Finch. Check out the excerpt below and also read the full profile, “Fab 5: Meet a few of the Emory scholars who are blurring lines, bridging disciplines, and pushing boundaries.”
Long before Joe Crespino became a professor in Emory College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of History, he read To Kill a Mockingbird as a middle schooler in Macon, Mississippi. Growing up in the 1970s in a town much like Harper Lee’s fictional Maycomb, Alabama—where racial tensions were “very real and very palpable”—Crespino formed a singular attachment to the figure of Atticus Finch.
“You read this and you want to grow up and help your community and help your state—to grow up and be like Atticus Finch,” Crespino says. “Most people who read the book realize at some point that Atticus Finch is not a real person and they move on with their lives, but I just kind of got hung up on that, I guess.”
On March 26th Emory University will host a campus-wide event on the roles of the interdisciplinary humanities and liberal arts at Emory and the future of the interdisciplinary humanities in higher education and society more broadly. Featured participants include President Claire E. Sterk, Provost Dwight A. McBride, Earl Lewis, the outgoing President of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Mariët Westermann, the Executive Vice President of the Mellon Foundation. History faculty Daniel LaChance and Pablo Palomino (a historian at Emory Oxford), both Mellon Faculty Fellows, are featured participants at the conference. Read more about the conference and other participants here.
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded Emory’s Center for Digital Scholarship a $300,000 grant to support the updating and expansion of Voyages: The Transatlantic Slave Trade Database. Robert W. Woodruff Emeritus Professor of History David Elits and Professor of History Allen E. Tullos are co-directors of the project. The funding will specifically fund the development of “People of the Atlantic Slave Trade” (PAST), a new feature of the database and website focused on the biographies of historical figures linked to the slave trade. Read more about the grant at the Emory News Center.
History News Network Features Editor Yoni Anijar recently profiled Patrick N. Allitt, Cahoon Family Professor of American History, in an article titled “The Historian Who Denies Climate Change? Not so Fast.” The piece discusses (and refutes) accusations that Allitt is a denier of climate change, a misreading of his recent work A Climate of Crisis: America in the Age of Environmentalism (Penguin, 2014). Read the full piece here.
Congratulations to Liza Gellerman, history honors student, who has been awarded a 2018 Bradley Currey, Jr. Seminar travel grant. This travel grant, which supports Emory University undergraduate students who are planning to conduct original research in archival repositories, will enable Ms. Gellerman to continue research on her honors thesis “Framing the Nuremberg Einsatzgruppen Trial: An American Narratives” (Honors Director: Astrid M. Eckert).
Congratulations to Yanna Yannakakis and Dawn Peterson for winning Emory Women of Excellence Awards. Yannakakis is Associate Professor of History, Director of Graduate Studies, and 2018-2021 Winship Distinguished Research Professorship in History. She was recognized with the Berky Dolores Abreu Spirit Award. Peterson, Assistant Professor of History, won the Award for Excellence in Pedagogy. Read more about these distinguished honors below.
Berky Dolores Abreu Spirit Award
This award recognizes a woman in the greater Emory community whose presence has fostered the personal and academic growth of students, faculty, staff people, and/or departments. During her 13 years at Emory, Berky Abreu touched the lives of countless individuals. Highly involved in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and College Staff communities, Berky served as the Academic Department Administrator for Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. She also served on the President’s Commission on the Status of Women, the Center for Women at Emory Advisory Board, and the College Staff Consortium, including a term as Chair of the College Staff Consortium. Berky’s extensive contributions to the Emory community were recognized by awards including Emory University’s Award of Distinction and the Unsung Heroine award, and she was recognized as the Emory College Staff Consortium Employee of the Year. What was truly remarkable about Berky, however, was not only the extent and depth of her commitment and service to the Emory community, but the warmth she brought to the lives of everyone with whom she came into contact, her unparalleled joie de vivre, and her unique ability to lift up each and every person who came into her office. She made everyone she met feel special, and lit up every room she entered with her contagious humor and zest for life. Berky’s boundless kindness and concern for others and her ability to show us the goodness of people and life even in the most challenging of situations continue to be an inspiration for all of us.
Award for Excellence in Pedagogy
The Award for Excellence in Teaching and Pedagogy recognizes any teacher (lecturer, professor, graduate student, or teaching assistant) at Emory whose teaching methods, syllabi, and/or course design addresses women’s issues or matters of feminist importance with innovation and success. The award honors a teacher whose record demonstrates a willingness to bring gender issues into the classroom in creative and inspiring ways.
Congratulations to Thomas D. Rogers, Associate Professor of Modern Latin American History and NEH/Arthur Blank Distinguished Teaching Professor. Rogers and Jeffrey Manuel (Southern Illinois University Edwardsville) won an ACLS Collaborative Research Fellowship for a project titled “Agriculture’s Energy: Learning from the History of Biofuels in Brazil and the United States.” Rogers and Manuel will use the two-year fellowship to write a book on the comparative and transnational history of biofuel production in the two largest producing countries in the world. This co-authored book will unearth a century of biofuels history in Brazil and the United States. Understanding how and why certain patterns and problems arose out of these biofuels programs will shed light on issues arising in the emerging renewable energy regime.
The Jewish Book Council awarded Dr. Ellie R. Schainker with the National Jewish Book Award in the category of “Writing Based on Archival Material.” Schainker is Arthur Blank Family Foundation Assistant Professor of Modern European Jewish History. The award was for Schainker’s first book, Confessions of the Shtetl: Converts from Judaism in Imperial Russia, 1817-1906, which Stanford University Press published in 2016.