Emory’s Tam Institute for Jewish Studies has awarded a research and travel grant to History Honors student Liza Gellerman. The grant will support Gellerman’s research during the Summer of 2018. Gellerman also won an Undergraduate Humanities Honors Fellowship for the fall of 2018 from the Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry. Congratulations!
Category / Undergraduate Students
History Alumnus Preston Hogue Publishes Honors Thesis on ‘Atlanta Studies’
History alumnus Preston Hogue recently published a revised version of his undergraduate honors thesis on Atlanta Studies. The multimedia piece is entitled, “The Tie that Binds: White Church Response to Neighborhood Racial Change in Atlanta, 1960-1985.” Hogue graduated with highest honors as a joint major in Religion and History in Spring 2013.
Dr. Judith A. Miller Leads “Getting the Most Out of Your History Major” Workshop
On Monday, February 26, History Department students gathered to hear about opportunities for research, travel funding to go to archives in the United States and abroad, training in digital humanities, and other ways to enrich their experiences as students in the department. Dr. Judith A. Miller, Associate Professor of History, led the event.
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).
Rogers’ “A History of Hunger” Featured as Innovative Course for Spring 2018
The Emory News Center recently highlighted the Spring 2018 History Department course “A History of Hunger” as innovative. The course is designed and taught by History faculty member Tom Rogers. Rogers is Associate Professor of Modern Latin American History and is currently working a book project titled Agriculture’s Energy: Development and Hunger During Brazil’s Ethanol Boom. “A History of Hunger” was one of 16 “cool” courses identified by the News Center and offered at undergraduate and/or graduate levels this Spring. Read more about this course and the other compelling offerings here.
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.”
President Jimmy Carter Visits Dr. Tehila Sasson’s “Origins of Human Rights”
President Jimmy Carter recently visited Prof. Tehila Sasson’s class, “Origins of Human Rights.” The students engaged the President on foreign policy, civil rights, decolonization, the Camp David Accords, and the Cold War. President Carter answered questions ranging from the hostage crisis in Iran, women’s rights, North Korea, to human rights in the age of Trump.
Courses Taught by Crespino and Sasson Highlighted by Emory News Center
Two History Department courses made the list of 19 notable offerings for Emory’s undergraduates this fall. Professor Joseph Crespino, Jimmy Carter Professor of American History, will teach a seminar course titled “Atticus Finch and American History.” Professor Tehlia Sasson, Assistant Professor of History, is offering “Origins of Human Rights.” Read the course descriptions below, and check out other compelling fall 2017 offerings around campus here.
Atticus Finch and American History
“Since its publication in 1960, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird has been one of the most widely read books in the world. The recent publication of Lee’s apprentice novel, Go Set A Watchman has renewed interest in the figure of Atticus Finch and the historical and cultural sources that influenced Lee. This seminar examines the history of the American South in the Jim Crow era that prefigured both the idealized Atticus of Mockingbird and the reactionary Atticus of Watchman. The class will analyze the political uses to which this character has been put since Mockingbird’s publication.”
Origins of Human Rights
“This course recovers the multiple histories of human rights from their deep origins in the 1750s to their more recent formations in the 1990s. It focuses on the history of Europe and its engagement with the wider world: looking at how Europe has shaped and was shaped by Africa, South Asia and the United States over the course of the 19th and 20th centuries. The goal will be to analyze how the evolution of human rights became part of our contemporary framework of politics, law and culture.”
Eckert, Payne, and Undergraduates Explore Roots of Contemporary Conflict in “History of Now”
The Emory News Center recently published a profile on the spring 2017 course “History of Now,” taught by Drs. Astrid M. Eckert and Matthew Payne. The co-taught class is structured around the examination of contemporary events — ranging from Russian presidential politics to Brexit — in historical context. Pitched an introductory level, the course has drawn an array of students across disciplines and year from Emory’s College of Arts and Sciences. Read the full Emory News Center article (“‘History of Now’ helps students understand roots of current conflicts”) and check out the course description below.
The course covers European history from the devastation of World War II to Europe’s current predicaments, such as the Ukrainian crisis, the Brexit decision, and refugee movements. Team-taught by specialists on German and Russian history, the course takes an expansive view of what constitutes Europe and considers select topics in European postwar history such as postwar affluence, détente, war memories, environmental challenges, and others, from western, central and eastern European perspectives. It traces how experiences of the war years rippled through postwar Europe, merged with Cold War exigencies, and reverberated in new ways after the fall of Communism. The course offers students not only an overview of postwar European history but also introduces them to ways of analysing current events in regard to their deep roots in the continent’s past.
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.”