Dr. Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor of African-American Studies and Associated Faculty in the History Department, was recently a guest on two MSNBC programs. Anderson discussed contemporary politics, including on issues relating to voting rights, in historical perspective on the shows ‘Ayman’ and ‘All In With Chris Hayes.’ She is author, most recently, of The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America (Bloomsbury, 2021). Watch the MSNBC segments featuring Anderson here: ‘Ayman‘ and ‘All In With Chris Hayes.’
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‘Jewish Review of Books’ Reviews ‘Jews and Booze’ by Marni Davis (PhD ’06)
The Jewish Review of Books recently reviewed the 2012 book Jews and Booze: Becoming American in the Age of Prohibition (NYU Press), written by PhD alum Marni Davis. Currently Associate Professor of History at Georgia State University, Davis received her PhD in U.S. and Jewish history in 2006. Allan Arkush, the senior contributing editor of the Jewish Review of Books and professor of Judaic studies and history at Binghamton University, reviewed Davis’s book in honor of New Year’s Eve 2021. Read Arkush’s piece here: “Lechaim!“
Dudziak Quoted in ‘AJC’ Article on GA 2022 Elections
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recently quoted Dr. Mary L. Dudziak, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Law and Associated Faculty in the History Department, in an article about Georgia state politics and the 2022 elections. The piece provides an overview of divides among republicans in Georgia, as well as the implications of those cleavages for democratic candidates, in advance of the 2022 elections. Read an excerpt from the article citing Dudziak below along with the full piece: “As 2022 dawns, Georgia Republicans focus on 2020 election.”
“‘The emergency lights are on. The threat to democracy is real and the need to safeguard the electoral system in Georgia is urgent,’ said Mary Dudziak, an Emory University law professor who has written extensively on the intersection of race, civil rights and foreign policy during the Cold War.”
Anderson Describes “Jim Crow 2.0” on ‘Democracy Now’
Dr. Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor of African-American Studies and Associated Faculty in the History Department, was a guest on Democracy Now on the one-year anniversary of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Anderson critiques Republican efforts to limit voting access, especially for Black voters, by promoting baseless claims about voter fraud. Watch Anderson discuss “Jim Crow 2.0” with host Amy Goodman here: “‘White Rage’ Author Carol Anderson: GOP Attack on ‘Election Fraud’ Really an Attack on Black Voters.”
Klibanoff Discusses DOJ’s Decision to Close Emmett Till Case
Hank Klibanoff, James M. Cox Jr. Professor of Journalism and Associated Faculty in the History Department, was recently a guest on “Closer Look,” a program produced by the Atlanta NPR affiliate WABE. Klibanoff discussed the decision by the U.S. Department of Justice to once again close its investigation into the murder of Emmett Till. The cold case was reopened in 2004 and again in 2017. Klibanoff hosts the “Buried Truths” podcast and serves as the director of the Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project at Emory. Listen to Klibanoff’s conversation with host Rose Scott here: “Local professor discusses the Department of Justice’s decision to close Emmett Till case.”
Emory Historians Celebrated in ‘Feast of Words’
Each year the Emory Center for Faculty Development and Excellence, Emory Libraries, and the Emory Barnes and Noble Bookstore host the “Feast of Words,” an event celebrating Emory faculty who have written or edited books in the prior year. This year’s edition, which took place via Zoom, featured multiple works published by History Department faculty, associated faculty, and an alumnus between September 2020 and August 2021. Find a list of those faculty below, along with their publications, and watch the full virtual celebration here.
Anderson, Carol (African American Studies). The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America. Bloomsbury.
Andrade, Antonio (History). The Last Embassy: The Dutch Mission of 1795 and the Forgotten History of Western Encounters with China. Princeton UP.
Dudziak, Mary (Law) and Mark Philip Bradley, eds. Making the Forever War: Marilyn Young on the Culture and Politics of American Militarism. U of Massachusetts P.
Guidotti-Hernandez, Nicole (English). Archiving Mexican Masculinities in Diaspora. Duke UP.
Lal, Ruby (Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies). Empress: The Astonishing Reign of Nur Jahan. Penguin Random House, India.
Pardo, Rafael (Law), Paul Barron, and Mark Wessman. Secured Transactions: Problems and Materials. West Academic.
Perry, Craig (Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies and Jewish Studies), David Eltis (History, emeritus), Stanley Engerman, and David Richardson, eds. The Cambridge World History of Slavery: Volume 2, AD 500 – AD 1420. Cambridge UP.
‘TIME’ Features Research Conducted by Klibanoff and Students for ‘Buried Truths’ Podcast
TIME recently featured historical research conducted by the Emory team behind the “Buried Truths” podcast. Season three of the podcast, which is led by James M. Cox Jr. Professor of Journalism Hank Klibanoff and comprised of Emory undergraduate students, focused on the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. The researchers identified various direct descendants of Arbery, including an enslaved local leader in agriculture and environmental engineering, Bilali Mohammed, through census research. Read an excerpt from the TIME piece below along with the full article: “What Ahmaud Arbery’s Death Has Meant for the Place Where He Lived.”
“In the 1700s, some of Watts and Arbery’s shared ancestors arrived in the region in a group of enslaved families brought to Sapelo Island to cultivate rice, cotton and indigo to enrich their white slaveholders. On his father’s side, Arbery was also the direct descendant of Bilali Mohammed, an enslaved man originally from West Africa brought to the island after first being enslaved in the Caribbean, according to the team of students behind Atlanta Public Radio’s Buried Truths podcast. The students, lead by Hank Klibanoff, director and co-teacher of the Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project at Emory University, were able to confirm that lineage by hunting through Census and other records after a detailed tip shared by Barger, something of a local-history buff. Mohammed—whose slaveholder represented Georgia in the U.S. Congress—was an important source of African agricultural and engineering techniques befitting a climate where rice will grow; that knowledge was key to making Brunswick a prosperous center of economic and cultural activity. Mohammed left behind a 13-page Arabic-language manuscript that is today in the Hargrett Rare Book and Manuscript collection at the University of Georgia.“
Anderson Critiques Long Pattern of Demonizing Black Victims like Arbery for ‘CNN’
Dr. Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor and Associated Faculty in the History Department, was recently quoted in a CNN article chronicling the murder trial of Ahmaud Arbery. Titled “Demonizing Black victims is an old racist trope that didn’t work for defense attorneys this time,” the piece discusses how attorneys in the trial sought to demonize, dehumanize, and criminalize Arbery. Anderson offers historical context about this rhetorical strategy and violent practice across centuries of U.S. history. Read an excerpt below along with the full piece here.
From assertions that Black pastors might frighten jurors to a remark about Arbery’s “long, dirty toenails,” the defense’s strategy was rife with rhetoric that sought to dehumanize and devalue Black Americans.
“What I saw was the defense preying on White fears,” said Carol Anderson, a historian and the chair of African American studies at Emory University. “The ‘long, dirty toenails’ — that is an old trope of the ‘Black Beast.’ That is the stuff coming out of Reconstruction and Jim Crow.”
“Visions of Slavery,” Co-Organized by Walter C. Rucker, Awarded Prestigious Mellon Foundation Grant
The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded Emory College a $225,000 grant for a year-long investigation of the histories of unfreedom in the Black Atlantic. The grant will support a symposium titled “Visions of Slavery,” which is co-organized by Dr. Walter C. Rucker, Professor of History, and Bayo Holsey, Associate Professor of Anthropology. The event will take place as a part of Mellon’s 2022-2023 Sawyer Seminar series and involve faculty from other university campuses across Atlanta. History Department faculty Mariana Candido and Adriana Chira are part of the working group for the seminar. Read more about the symposium via the Emory News Center as well as the Department of African American Studies.
Dr. Mariana Candido Elected Fellow of the Royal Historical Society
Congratulations to Dr. Mariana Candido, Associate Professor of History, on being elected a fellow of the Royal Historical Society. This honor recognizes Candido’s outstanding scholarship on the history of slavery, the Atlantic slave trade, African history, and women and the African diaspora. The 150-year-old Royal Historical Society is the foremost organization in the UK, representing history as a discipline and historians as a group.