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.
Category / Research
History Honors Student Liza Gellerman Wins Travel Grant for Original Research
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).
Yannakakis and Peterson Win Emory Women of Excellence Awards
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.
ACLS Collaborative Research Fellowship Awarded to Thomas D. Rogers and Colleague Jeffrey Manuel
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.
Schainker’s ‘Confessions of the Shtetl’ Receives National Jewish Book Award
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.
Sasson Wins NEH Fellowship
Congratulations to Dr. Tehila Sasson, Assistant Professor of History, for winning a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship. The NEH will support Sasson’s work on a book-length study on the development of humanitarianism from the 1940s to the 1980s, entitled Humanitarian Ethics, Global Markets, and Everyday Life. View all NEH grantees here.
Yannakakis and Rogers Honored with Named Chair Professorships
Congratulations to Dr. Yanna Yannakakis and Dr. Thomas D. Rogers for receiving named chair professorships. Associate Professor of History and a specialist in colonial Mexico, Yannakakis received the Winship Distinguished Research Professorship in History for the 2018-2021 term. Rogers is Associate Professor of Modern Latin American History and will serve as the NEH/Arthur Blank Distinguished Teaching Professor for the same period. Read more about these named chairs below, and view others available to Emory Faculty here.
The Winship Distinguished Research Award is given to tenured faculty who demonstrate singular accomplishments in research. Such recognition should honor achievement and further scholarly research and research-based teaching. Awarded for a three-year term.
The Arthur Blank/NEH Chair in the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences is given to tenured faculty in the humanities and/or humanistic social sciences with a record of exemplary teaching and a commitment to pedagogical rigor and innovation. Appointees are expected to organize programming designed to enhance pedagogy and curricular development in the College, and continue teaching in her/his department(s), including at least one introductory level course each year. One leadership function of the NEH professors will be to serve on a newly formed advisory committee on Pedagogy and Curriculum. Awarded for a three-year term.
Innovative Teaching and Learning in Crespino’s “History 385: Right-Wing America” Culminates in “Documenting the Right” Student Film Festival
Students in Dr. Joseph Crespino‘s fall 2017 class, “History 385: Right-Wing America,” produced short documentary films that were screened on November 29 at the “Documenting the Right” Student Film Festival. Students took advantage of Emory’s rich library holdings in crafting videos whose themes ranged from racism in the career of George Wallace to Atlanta’s motto as the “city too busy to hate.” Read more about the project on the Emory Center for Digital Scholarship Blog: “Emory history class uses digital storytelling to study political movements.”
Daniel LaChance Makes Appearance on Al Jazeera
Assistant Professor of History Daniel LaChance recently made a television appearance on Al Jazeera. He discussed President Trump’s tweets calling for the “death penalty for the NY terrorist attacker.” LaChance is a specialist in the history of capital punishment and author of Executing Freedom: The Cultural Life of Capital Punishment in the United States (University of Chicago Press, 2016).
Mark Ravina Publishes ‘To Stand with the Nations of the World: Japan’s Meiji Restoration in World History’
Mark Ravina, Professor and a specialist in Japanese history, has published a new book with Oxford University Press: To Stand with the Nations of the World: Japan’s Meiji Restoration in World History. Released in advance of the 150th anniversary of the 1868 Meji Restoration, Ravina’s new work is also the first one-volume study of the event in 45 years. Daniel Botsman of Yale University described it as “essential reading for anyone seeking a fuller understanding of Japan’s place in the modern world. Tracing the confluence of global and local forces of change, as well as the impact of lessons remembered from the deeper past, it offers an impressively broad-ranging account of this most consequential of historical moments.”