Dr. Joseph Crespino, Jimmy Carter Professor of History, was featured in an Emory News Center piece centered on the question “Who was Atticus Finch?” In 2018, coinciding with the publication of Crespino’s most recent book, Atticus Finch: A Biography (Basic Books), Emory University’s Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library acquired a collection of correspondence and memorabilia from author Harper Lee. The correspondence within that collection shed light on the perceived discrepancies between Atticus Finch as represented in Lee’s famous novel To Kill and Mockingbird and the more recently-published Go Set a Watchman. Learn more about how Crespino’s research contributes to our understanding of this seminal character in U.S. literary history through the Emory News Center article as well as the video below.
Category / Research
Chira Wins Agricultural History Society Prize for ‘AHR’ Article
Dr. Adriana Chira, Assistant Professor of Atlantic World History, has won the Agricultural History Society’s Wayne D. Rasmussen Award for the best article on agricultural history not published in the journal Agricultural History. Chira’s article, “Freedom with Local Bonds: Custom and Manumission in the Age of Emancipation,” was published in the American Historical Review in September of 2021. Read the abstract of Chira’s piece below and learn more about the awards offered by the Agricultural History Society here.
“Throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, across Latin America, expansive rural communities of African descent forged freedom from below in the shadows of highly exploitative extractive economies. Their efforts push us to reconsider established genealogies of the age of emancipation. Freedom through conditional manumission and enslaved people’s reliance on social networks to obtain it opened the door to custom inside first-instance district courts in such areas. Judges turned to vernacular understandings of rights and obligations as they clarified the ambiguous statuses of the conditionally freed for which written law offered few provisions. Through manumission and legal actions to defend freedom, peasants of African descent on the margins of the global economic system grounded their rights in state structures as local custom. Black freedom within such territories represents a mode of community governance that remains invisible if studied by focusing on mobility or nation building. Seen from a place such as Santiago de Cuba, the nineteenth century was not just a time when Africans and Afro-descendants pursued social inclusion through ideologies of national citizenship and diasporic connections. It was also a time of freedom through membership in local communities, which women and families were especially instrumental in forging.“
Welcoming New Faculty: Q&A with Yami Rodriguez
In the fall of 2022 the Emory History Department welcomes Dr. Iliana Yamileth (“Yami”) Rodriguez, a historian of Latinx communities in the United States, as Assistant Professor. In the latest installment of our Welcoming New Faculty series, Dr. Rodriguez offers a glimpse into her research and teaching along with what drew her to Emory.
Tell us about the focus of your research and principal current project.
My research focuses on Latinx 20th – 21st century history, with a regional focus on Latinx communities in the southern United States. I’m especially interested in questions of culture, race, ethnicity, labor, and migration as they relate to Latinx histories and experiences. My current book project, “Mexican Atlanta: Migrant Place-Making in the Latinx South,” traces the history of Metro Atlanta’s ethnic Mexican community formation and the region’s broader Latinx histories beginning in the mid-twentieth century. The book draws on diverse archival and personal collections, as well as original English- and Spanish-language oral histories with community members.
Was there a particularly memorable moment from archival or field research that has had a lasting impact on your work or career?
When I started research for the dissertation-turned-book-project, it quickly became apparent how limited the Latinx historical presence was in Georgia archives. While there were some scattered collections that held primary sources related to Georgia’s Latinx communities, I primarily had to curate my own archive as I attempted to narrate this community history from a “bottom-up” perspective. Thankfully, I had the privilege of meeting and working with community members and archivists who were interested in developing archival collections on Latinx Georgia history. These kinds of collaborations have resulted in the donation of materials to UGA related to Mundo Hispánico and the Latinx (primarily Mexican) music scene in the Southeast, as well as the ongoing Latinx Georgia Oral History Project for which I conduct oral history interviews. It has been fulfilling to assist in preserving Latinx Georgia histories, and I look forward to continuing the work of archive-building at Emory.
What sort of courses – undergraduate or graduate – are you most excited to offer at Emory?
I’m looking forward to teaching courses that center issues of ethnicity, race, and migration in US history. Furthermore, I’m looking forward to teaching courses that focus on southern and local histories. For Fall 2022 I’m teaching “Race and Labor in the US,” which is an advanced seminar for students writing original research papers. In Spring 2023 I’ll be teaching courses on Latinx and southern history.
What drew you to Emory?
I first stepped foot on Emory’s campus as an undergraduate attending the annual Latino Youth Leadership Conference hosted by the Latin American Association. As a first-generation Latina raised in Metro Atlanta, the prospect of teaching Latinx history at Emory was academically and personally exciting. Today I’m glad to join an incredibly supportive history department that is home to wonderful students, staff, and faculty. En pocas palabras, estoy feliz que de nuevo radicó en Atlanta.
Welcoming New Faculty: Q&A with Laura Nenzi
In the fall of 2022 the Emory History Department welcomes Dr. Laura Nenzi, a social historian of early modern Japan, as Acting Full Professor. In the latest installment of our Welcoming New Faculty series, Dr. Nenzi offers a glimpse into her research and teaching along with what drew her to Emory.
Tell us about the focus of your research and principal current project.
I am a social historian of early modern Japan. I enjoy writing history in different scales, from the very small (the life of an ordinary person) to the large (trends spanning two and a half centuries). I have written about travel culture, commercial publishers, space, identity, and about political activism in the nineteenth century. I have published two books, both of which put women at the center of historical investigation.
My current project is a history of the night in early modern Japan (1600-1868). It started out as an antiquarian curiosity: what happened in Edo (Tokyo) after dark? Through the mid-nineteenth century Edo, the largest city in the world, home to one million people, lacked one of the key features of the modern night: public illumination. At the same time, other elements associated with the modern night—regulation, consumption, imagination, and sociability—were firmly in place. This is where my antiquarian curiosity led to a legitimate historical inquiry, for Japan’s early modern night muddles the conventional divide between the pre-industrial and the modern eras and compels us to revisit assumptions about Japan’s modernization, technology-driven histories, and ultimately about narratives of the global nighttime.
Was there a particularly memorable moment from archival or field research that has had a lasting impact on your work or career?
Any historian will tell you that the serendipitous discoveries in the archives and the small things that escalate into something big are among the best parts of our job. For me, this happened as I was thinking about the subject of my second book, Kurosawa Tokiko, a fortuneteller, poet, and rural teacher who became a political activist in the 1850s. Her actions were ultimately inconsequential, and so she is not (or was not, I should say) a well-known figure in the history of late Tokugawa Japan. My first attempt to retrieve one of her manuscript diaries ended in failure, because, I found out, it had been destroyed during the Tokyo air raids of 1945. A librarian suggested I reach out to her descendants and found a street address where they could be reached. No email. So, I wrote and mailed a letter. This led to an invitation to visit her native home, which local activists were trying to preserve, and the local archives. I showed up expecting three or four documents, and would have been happy with that. They started bringing out the envelopes. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven… at fourteen I stopped counting, they kept going. I knew right there and then that I had a book to write. To this day I remain friends with the people who helped me rescue her from oblivion. After the book came out, they used it as evidence that there is interest in her story outside the confines of her town and that her home should indeed be preserved. A win-win for everyone.
What sort of courses – undergraduate or graduate – are you most excited to offer at Emory?
There are Japanese History undergraduate courses in the catalog that I am inheriting and that I am very happy to teach, but I am most excited to introduce two new ones that have been among my most popular undergraduate classes at my previous institution: The History of Tokyo and The Samurai: Fact, Fiction, Fantasy. The department has a commitment to transnational, comparative, and global themes, so I will also be offering graduate and undergraduate classes that look at various interactions between Japan and the outside world between the sixteenth and the nineteenth centuries. Some of these I have done before, and some are new and based on very recent, very exciting scholarship that I cannot wait to share with my students.
What drew you to Emory?
The departmental and institutional commitment to and support for academic excellence. The freedom to discuss issues that, more and more, are being censored elsewhere as “divisive.” My colleagues in the department, some of whom have written books and articles I have been using for years in my classes, and my colleagues in the department of Russian and East Asian Languages and Cultures. The possibility to train my own graduate students. Also, as someone who taught professionalization seminars for many years, I am in awe of Emory’s TATTO program and excited to be part of it. Emory’s overall commitment to diversity and inclusion. The diverse student body. Atlanta. So, pretty much everything.
Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation Supports Billups’ Research on Anti-Busing Violence
The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation has awarded doctoral candidate Robert Billups a travel research grant to support two weeks of research in their collections. Centered on anti-busing violence in the 1970s, the research will inform the final chapter of Billups’ dissertation, titled “‘Reign of Terror’: Anti–Civil Rights Terrorism in the United States, 1955–1976.” Drs. Joseph Crespino and Allen Tullos advise Billups’ dissertation.
Billups Receives Wardlaw Fellowship for Texas Studies from Baylor University
Graduate student Robert Billups has received the Wardlaw Fellowship for Texas Studies from Baylor University Libraries. The fellowship provides up to $1,500 to a visiting scholar or researcher who wishes to use the holdings of Baylor’s Texas Collection. Billups will conduct three weeks of research that will inform his dissertation, “‘Reign of Terror’: Anti–Civil Rights Terrorism in the United States, 1955–1976,” as well as a future article about international patterns of antisemitism.
Billups Awarded Grant for Research at the Southern Baptist History Library and Archives
Graduate student Robert Billups has received a Lynn E. May Study Grant to support research at the Southern Baptist History Library and Archives in Nashville, TN. Billups received the same grant in 2020 to support work on an article project. The upcoming research will directly inform Billups’s dissertation, “‘Reign of Terror’: Anti–Civil Rights Terrorism in the United States, 1955–1976,” which investigates violence against participants in the mid-20th-century Civil Rights Movement in the U.S. Congratulations, Robert!
History Major Edina Hartstein Wins Cuttino Scholarship for Independent Research Abroad
Congratulations to junior History Major Edina Hartstein on winning a George P. Cuttino Scholarship for Independent Research Abroad for Summer 2022 travel to London for her Honors thesis. She will also be a Halle Institute Undergraduate Global Research Fellow. Her working title is “The League of Nations’ Advisory Committee on Trafficking in Women & Children: The British Empire’s Role & Impact.”
Hartstein writes that “The first history class I took, ‘Hist 190: Fake News,’ introduced me to the History Department. Not only did I learn a lot, but I built relationships that are still important to me. I met Dr. Judith A. Miller, who later became my major advisor, and pushed me to explore different areas within the field.” Hartstein will work with her thesis advisor, Dr. Tehila Sasson, who taught her “Race and the End of Empire.” That thought provoking class caused Edina to reconsider her understandings of empire, which has been critical for the development of her thesis.
First Year PhD Cohort Delivers Hi-Five Research Talks
The first-year cohort of the History doctoral program recently presented their research in the annual Hi-Five end-of-year gathering. The format was adapted from the Three Minute Thesis model, developed by the University of Queensland (UQ) in Australia. See the flier above for the names of the graduate students who presented and their research, and check out the images from the event below.
LaChance Publishes ‘Crimesploitation: Crime, Punishment, and Pleasure on Reality Television’ with Stanford UP
Dr. Daniel LaChance, Associate Professor of History and Winship Distinguished Research Professor in History, recently published a new book with co-author Dr. Paul Kaplan, Professor of Criminal Justice in the School of Public Affairs at San Diego State University. Titled Crimesploitation: Crime, Punishment, and Pleasure on Reality Television and published by Stanford University Press, the monograph investigates the enduring appeal of ‘true crime’ media in American popular culture. Dr. Michelle Brown, Professor at the University of Tennessee, offered the following appraisal of Crimesploitation: “Kaplan and LaChance move us toward a critical reckoning with the exploitative forms of (un)freedom that media’s spectacle of crime and punishment have conjured. A powerful dose of thoughtful accountability, this volume points the way to getting truly ‘real’ about—and intervening in—the suffering that a culture of punishment has produced.” Read more about the monograph below as well as on the Stanford UP website.
“‘Due to the graphic nature of this program, viewer discretion is advised.’ Most of us have encountered this warning while watching television at some point. It is typically attached to a brand of reality crime TV that Paul Kaplan and Daniel LaChance call “crimesploitation”: spectacles designed to entertain mass audiences by exhibiting “real” criminal behavior and its consequences. This book examines their enduring popularity in American culture. Analyzing the structure and content of several popular crimesploitation shows, including Cops, Dog: The Bounty Hunter, and To Catch a Predator, as well as newer examples like Making a Murderer and Don’t F**K with Cats, Kaplan and LaChance highlight the troubling nature of the genre: though it presents itself as ethical and righteous, its entertainment value hinges upon suffering. Viewers can imagine themselves as deviant and ungovernable like the criminals in the show, thereby escaping a law-abiding lifestyle. Alternatively, they can identify with law enforcement officials, exercising violence, control, and “justice” on criminal others. Crimesploitation offers a sobering look at the depictions of criminals, policing, and punishment in modern America.”