Category / Research

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History Department Chair, Dr. Jeffrey Lesser, Named Director of Claus M. Halle Institute for Global Learning

Jeffrey Lesser

Dr. Jeffrey Lesser, Department Chair and Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History, was named director of the Claus M. Halle Institute for Global Learning last week by Philip Wainwright, Emory’s Vice Provost for Global Strategy and Initiatives. The three-year appointment commences September 1, 2017. Lesser will continue as History Department Chair through 2018 while working to expand existing and build new strategies for the Halle Institute on Emory’s Campus and beyond. A historian of modern Brazil, Lesser brings a deep background of academic and administrative experience in global studies to the position. A press release from the Office of Global Strategy and Initiatives further outlines Lesser’s role and the direction of the organization:

“As director, Lesser will promote Emory’s global identity by maximizing the Halle Institute’s impact as a global center for research, scholarship, and education. A great deal of Emory University’s research and teaching takes place outside of the United States. The Halle Institute supports Emory’s strategic global priorities by facilitating the exchange of people and ideas between Emory and institutions around the world. It partners with schools and centers at Emory to cultivate global perspectives and international understanding on campus and beyond.”

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Alumni Update: Dr. Glen Goodman (PhD, 2015) Wins Fulbright and German Academic Exchange Service Grants

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The History Department sends its congratulations to Emory alumnus Glen Goodman, Assistant Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Dr. Goodman won a Fulbright grant to teach in the graduate program in History at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, located in Porto Alegre, during the spring semester 2018. In addition, the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) awarded Goodman a research grant to conduct archival work in Berlin during the summer of 2017. Goodman was an advisee of Dr. Jeffrey Lesser, Department Chair and Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History.

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Emory News Center Features Prof. Daniel LaChance’s Book ‘Executing Freedom’

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Assistant Professor of History Daniel LaChance published Executing Freedom: The Cultural Life of Capital Punishment in the United States with the University of Chicago Press last year. LaChance’s book examines the role of the death penalty in American culture over a span of fifty years. The Emory News Center’s April Hunt recently published a feature about LaChance’s work, “‘Executing Freedom’ examines the evolving role of the death penalty.” Read an excerpt from the article below and check out the full piece here.

“I’ve long been interested in the place of punishment in our society,” says LaChance, who got his first glimpse of the criminal justice system by watching his father defend accused murderers in courtrooms in a state without the death penalty.

“Criminal trials, sentencing hearings and execution ceremonies are spectacles,” LaChance adds. “They are more than an outraged community’s response to crime. They are occasions where we reveal our deeply held beliefs about the relationship between the individual and the state.”

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Senior Hugh McGlade Wins Fulbright Research Grant

Congratulations to senior History major Hugh McGlade, who received a grant from the U.S. State Department’s Fulbright program for research in Brazil. The grant provides funding for one year of academic study and research. McGlade will live in Rio de Janeiro for nine months and enroll as a graduate student at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas. In parallel, he will expand his research on U.S.-Brazilian hunger alleviation programs in the 1940s, a subject he previously studied in his honors thesis. Read an excerpt of McGlade’s project description below:

“My research project would examine a hunger alleviation program that the U.S. government operated in Brazil from 1942-1945. Through an in-depth study of agricultural education and hunger alleviation, I hope to participate in discussions about foreign aid and the geopolitical relationship between South and North America. While conducting research, I would enroll as a graduate student in history at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas (FGV) in Rio de Janeiro. Paulo Fontes, a historian and professor at FGV, has offered to serve as my academic and research mentor. Over the course of nine months, I would complete two graduate courses and produce a manuscript of a journal article on my research. As a Fulbright scholar, I could develop an intellectual community and contribute valuable research to the field of history.”

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Alumnus Adam Goldstein (’16) Publishes Article in ‘Atlanta Studies’

Former undergraduate and history major Adam Goldstein (’16) recently published a piece in Atlanta Studies. Based on his undergraduate honors thesis (completed under the direction of Joe Crespino), the piece focuses on the East Lake neighborhood in Atlanta and is titled “A Purposely Built Community: Public Housing Redevelopment and Resident Replacement at East Lake Meadows.” Goldstein is now a Bobby Jones Scholar at the University of St. Andrews, where he is studying affordable housing policy. Atlanta Studies is an open access, digital publication based at Emory’s Center for Digital Scholarship. Each piece undergoes review by a multi-institutional and -disciplinary editorial board. Read Goldstein’s full article.

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History Department Welcomes New Faculty in Academic Year 2016-17

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The History Department is excited to welcome two new faculty members in the academic year 2016-17: Adriana Chira and Tehila Sasson. Dr. Chira, a recent graduate of the University of Michigan, is the Assistant Professor of Atlantic World History with specializations in the following geographic and thematic areas: Atlantic history; Cuba in world history; race; slavery and the law; the African diaspora; and public history.Dr. Sasson comes to Emory from the University of California, Berkeley. She is a historian of modern Europe and international history, with particular interests in the history of ethics, sovereignty and the economy. Read more about the research interests, publications, and ongoing projects of Profs. Chira and Sasson on the Faculty section of the Department website.

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Dr. Erica Bruchko (PhD Alumna) Featured by Emory News Center

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The Emory News Center recently profiled Erica Bruchko, a graduate of Emory’s History Graduate program and now the African American Studies and U.S. history librarian at Emory. The article, titled “Erica Bruchko: Helping researchers in Emory Libraries’ African American, history collections,” charts Bruchko’s trajectory from her time as an undergraduate in South Carolina through her recent work expanding Emory’s impressive library collections. Read the full article here.

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History Honors Students McGlade and Perlman Receive FCHI Fellowships

Congratulations to History Honors students Hugh McGlade and Samantha Perlman, who have received Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry (FCHI) Undergraduate Humanities Honors Fellowships for Spring 2017. The fellowship receives support from the Emory College of Arts and Sciences Honors Program and aids students completing honors projects for one semester. Along with office space at the FCHI and fellowship resources, recipients participate in a dynamic community of cross-generational scholars. Learn more about the FCHI fellowships and check out the brief profiles of McGlade and Perlman below.

Hugh

Hugh McGlade is majoring in History and International Studies. He focuses on Latin America, especially Brazil, and is a student of Portuguese. His thesis investigates a hunger alleviation program in Brazil during the early 1940s, exploring questions of capitalism, politics, and cultural exchange.
 
Samantha
Samantha Perlman is double majoring in History and African American Studies. Her honors thesis stems from her experience witnessing student protest movements while abroad in South Africa, as well as her interest in American educational reform. Her thesis examines the history of affirmative action at Emory College from 1969 to 1989.  By uncovering the story of affirmative action at Emory, her project provides historical context for how Emory can address systemic problems of underrepresentation and promote a more inclusive campus climate.
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Alumni Update: William S. Cossen (BA ’08)

William S. Cossen graduated from Emory University in 2008 with majors in political science and history. In December of 2016 he finished a PhD in history from Penn State University. His family, now including two children, is now back in the Atlanta area. Cossen is a faculty member of The Gwinnett School of Mathematics, Science, and Technology, and his spouse is a pediatric endocrinological fellow at Egleston Children’s Hospital at Emory. Gossen recently published the following article: “Catholic Gatekeepers: The Church and Immigration Reform in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era,” U.S. Catholic Historian 34, no. 3 (Summer 2016): 1-23. He is currently revising his first book manuscript, The Protestant Image in the Catholic Mind: Hegemony, Identity, and Catholic Nation Building in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era.

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Dr. Mark Ravina Awarded Japan Foundation Grant for Summer 2017 Workshop

Dr. Mark Ravina, Professor of History, has been awarded a Japan Foundation Grant to host a summer 2017 (May 30 to June 2) workshop, “Japanese Language Text Mining: Digital Methods for Japanese Studies.” The workshop will bring together researchers working across the fields of computational text analysis and Japanese Studies, and will focus on the unique challenges of the digital analysis of Japanese texts. The workshop is part of a collaboration with Hoyt Long (The University of Chicago) and Molly Des Jardin (The University of Pennsylvania) on Japanese text mining. Check out the call for proposals.