History majors and minors from the Emory class of 2020 will celebrate commencement next week. As a part of our celebration of the extraordinary class of 2020, we have compiled a series of profiles of graduating students and their plans after graduation. Explore their exciting pursuits on the Emory History Facebook page.
Category / Undergraduate Students
‘Classes that Click’: Emory News Center Features Crais’s Virtual ‘The Making of Modern South Africa’
The Emory News Center’s Leigh DeLozier recently featured Dr. Clifton Crais, graduate assistant Georgia Brunner, and several students from his “Making of Modern South Africa” class. Crais, Brunner, and the students share their perspectives on finding success in the online transition. Read an excerpt from the article below, along with the full piece: “Classes that click: The making of modern South Africa.”
What’s one lesson you’ve learned during this transition, and how will you use it later?
Crais: The importance of human contact and our common humanity, beginning with the simple act of looking into another person’s eyes. I will renew my effort to develop a unique relationship with each and every student, no matter how large the class. Paradoxically, online teaching has taught me the importance of a residential college experience. We are learning new things about the world and about each other. We are going to come out of this crisis better teachers and better students – and citizens.
Eckert Wins Emory Williams Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award
Congratulations to Dr. Astrid M. Eckert, Associate Professor of History, on being awarded the Emory Williams Distinguished Undergraduate Teaching Award. The award is presented annually to faculty members in each of the four undergraduate schools in recognition of a record of excellence in undergraduate teaching. The award was established by Emory Williams, a 1932 Emory College alumnus and long-time trustee. Eckert is one of only six faculty on campus to receive the award this year. Read more about the Undergraduate Teaching Award, including past recipients.
Celebrating the Class of 2020: April 29, 2-3:30pm
The History Department will host the 2019-20 senior celebration on Wednesday, April 29, from 2-3:30pm via Zoom. Below are a few of the history majors that will be individually recognized at the event. ‘
Phi Alpha Theta, Tau Chapter: 2019-2020 Graduates
Hannah Fuller
Parth Goyal
Junyi Han
Yazmina Sarieh
Emily Sharp
Isaiah Sirois
Abigail Stern
Jonathan Tao
Daniel Thomas
Minnie Yang
2019-2020 Honors Graduates
Drew Bryant
Director: Adriana Chira
“International Activism and the Women’s Human Rights Movement: 1990-2000”
Hannah Fuller
Director: Matthew Payne
“A Tale of Two Trials”
Junyi Han
Director: Tonio Andrade
“Guoshang Cemetery and the Collective Memory of World War II”
Christina Ocean
Director: Valerie Babb, English Dept.
“Martin Luther King, Jr., the Dreamer: The Power Invoked by Dreaming in Black Literature and Culture”
Martin Pimentel
Director: Jason Ward
“Detrioters: The Rise and Fall of the Detroit Rumor Control Center, 1967-1969”
Diego Romero
Director: Yanna Yannakakis
“Feathered Empire: Change in Central Mexico in the 16th Century”
Noah Roos
Director: Matthew Payne
“The Tundra and the Desert: Soviet-Iraq Relations, 1968-1972”
Kate Sandlin
Director: Clifton Crais
“What Are You Afraid Of: Witchcraft Suppression in the Northern Province, South
Africa in the Twentieth Century”
Emily Sharp
Director: Benjamin Reiss, English Dept.
“Roy Cohn’s America: Conservatism, Sexual Politics, and Memory in the Twenty-
First Century”
Isaiah Sirois
Director: Daniel LaChance
“A Little Encouragement in Pulling Themselves Up by Their Own Bootstraps:
American Individualism and Georgia’s HOPE Scholarship”
Jonathan Tao
Director: Tonio Andrade & Cynthia Patterson
“Bactria and the Cultural Legacy of Alexander the Great in the East”
2019-2020 Senior Awards
George P. Cuttino Prize (best record in European history):
Hannah Fuller
James Z. Rabun Prize (best record in American history):
Isaiah Sirois
Latin America & Non-Western World Prize (best record in Latin America & Non-Western World History):
Kate Sandlin
Matthew A. Carter Citizen-Scholar Award (high academic achievement & good works in the community):
Yazmina Sarieh
Fox Center Fellow Junyi Han (20C) Researches Post-WWII Collective Memory in China
Senior Junyi Han, a History and Media Studies double major, recently contributed a post to the Fox Center Fellows’ blog about her research. Han is completing her honors thesis on collective memory of World War II in China with a micro-historical study of the Tengchong Guoshang Cemetery, the earliest and largest burial ground in mainland China for Guomindang soldiers killed in World War II. Read the Fox Center’s biography of Han below along with the full article, “Guoshang Cemetery and Chinese Collective Memory, 1945 and Beyond.”
Junyi Han is a senior double majoring History and Media Studies. She is currently working on an honors thesis that examines war memories through the case of the Chinese Expeditionary Forces, a military unit dispatched to Burma and India by the Nationalist government in 1942 in support of the Allied efforts against Japanese invasion in Asia. The thesis will answer how and why the war efforts of the Chinese Expeditionary Force started to be recognized in mainland China in the late twentieth century. It will explore how war memories and post-war politics have mutually shaped each other, and thus provide new insights into contemporary Chinese history.
Virtual Undergraduate Town Hall this Friday, April 24, 3:30 – 4:30pm (EST)
This Friday, April 24, the History Department will host its first undergraduate town hall via Zoom. History majors, History minors, and friends of the History Department are invited to attend. See the Zoom details and flyer below. We hope to see you there!
https://emory.zoom.us/j/99040343293?pwd=SlcrMEh0OUJuOWlZd1grbTU0K2w5QT09
Meeting ID: 990 4034 3293
Password: BowdenHall
History Major Ellie Coe Receives 2020 ECLC Excellence in Language Studies Award in Russian
Congratulations to history major Ellie Coe, the recipient of the 2020 ECLC Excellence in Language Studies Award in Russian. Last year, Coe received a Clio Prize for Best Research Paper in a Freshman Seminar for her work, “A Mythic Spaceman: The Cultural Influence of Yuri Gagarin.” Below, the Emory College Language Center offers details on Coe’s work and the award:
Coe is a second-year studying History and Russian & East European Studies. She first began learning Russian in high school under the tutelage of a private teacher, and immediately fell in love with the language and culture. Through her Russian language classes at Emory, Ellie has discovered a passion for Russian poetry of the early 20th century; her favorite Russian writer is Vladimir Mayakovsky. Specializing in Soviet history, Ellie is interested in studying the Soviet space program, which launched the first man into space in 1961. In October 2019, she was able to put her Russian skills to use when she interviewed five cosmonauts at NASA’s Johnson Space Center for an independent research project. Ellie is grateful to her professors Dr. Elena Glazov-Corrigan, Dr. Juliette Stapanian-Apkarian, and Dr. Matthew Payne for encouraging her to follow her passion!
Undergraduate Senior Prizes for 2019-20
The Emory History Department Undergraduate Committee is pleased to announce the recipients of the History Department’s Undergraduate Senior Prizes for 2019-2020:
George P. Cuttino Prize for the Best Record in European History: Hannah Mariska Fuller
James Z. Rabun Prize for the Best Record in American History: Isaiah Simon Sirois
The Latin America & Non-Western World Prize for Best Record in Latin America & Non-Western World History: Kate Elizabeth Sandlin
Matthew A. Carter Citizen-Scholar Award: Yazmina Adi Sarieh
These awards will be presented at the Senior Celebration on Wednesday, April 29, 2:00 – 3:30 pm via Zoom (details to follow). Read more about each of these prizes, including previous years’ winners, at Senior Prizes.
History Major and Fox Fellow Drew Bryant (20C) Discusses Research on International Activist Movement
Senior history major Drew Bryant is a 2019-20 Fox Center Humanities Honors Fellow. Bryant recently contributed a blog post on the Fox Center for the Humanities website about her honors project on the international activist movement in the 1990s. That movement sought to utilize the International Criminal Court (ICC) as a vehicle towards protecting women’s human rights. Read an excerpt from her post below, along with the full piece: “International Activism and the Women’s Human Rights Movement: 1990-2000.”
My project explores how activists emphasized the overarching problem of violence against women, which served as an issue which could unite women around a global women’s human rights agenda despite the varying interests of women transnationally. Moreover, activist awareness-building regarding the issue of violence against women served as a platform upon which other issues facing women could be introduced into the human rights framework, such as those related to reproductive freedom.
Strocchia’s FYS, ‘Epidemics in History,’ Brings Historical Insights to Unfolding Pandemic
Dr. Sharon T. Strocchia, Professor of History, is teaching a first-year seminar titled “Epidemics in History” this spring. The COVID-19 pandemic has made the course far more timely than she or the students anticipated. The Emory News Center featured “Epidemics in History” among Emory courses where professors and students are using the pandemic as a learning opportunity. Read about all of those courses in their article, “COVID-19 in Class.” Strocchia also offered comments on her original idea for the class and how she modified it in order to investigate this historical moment in real time. Read her comments below.
My freshman seminar this semester, “Epidemics in History,” was not designed to coincide with a global pandemic. I did plan to end the course with a study of the 1918 influenza epidemic after examining the Black Death and nineteenth-century cholera outbreaks. Our goal was to explore the historical and biological effects of urbanization, environmental change, and the human connectivity resulting from faster modes of transportation. But I also wanted to raise issues of preparedness with my students, many of who planned careers in medicine and science. It seemed oddly serendipitous that the Wuhan outbreak of coronavirus hit the headlines just as spring semester started. At our first class meeting in January, we decided that tracking its progression would make a good class project. Relying on trusted news outlets, we learned the value of social distancing, good hand hygiene, and flattening the curve. Week by week, the news grew more startling but still seemed far from home. By the time spring break arrived, though, COVID-19 already had an official name and the world was on the verge of pandemic. We’ve since modified our syllabus to make direct comparisons between the experiences of 1918 and our own day, looking at public health policies, frontline healers, issues of fear and resilience. It’s been a rewarding but sobering experience—one that shows there’s much to be learned about health and society from studying the past.
– Sharon Strocchia