by emoryhistorydept

Doctoral Candidate Emilie Cunning Publishes Article in ‘Modern American History’


Earlier this spring Doctoral candidate Emilie Cunning published an article titled “The Making of a Militarized War on Poverty: The Effort to Triangulate Military Service, Crime Prevention, and Social Citizenship through Project 100,000 and Project Transition” in the journal Modern American History. Cunning interprets these two programs, which focused on the military recruitment and rehabilitation of low-IQ men, as sitting at the nexus between the War on Poverty and the war in Vietnam. Cunning’s graduate work is advised by Drs. Daniel LaChance and Mary L. Dudziak.

Separately, Cunning was recently accepted to the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR) Summer Institute for ABD candidates. Held at the Ohio State University and hosted by the Mershon Center for International Security Studies, the Summer 2026 Institute is co-directed by Christopher McKnight Nichols (Ohio State) and Andrew Preston (University of Virginia).

Read the abstract from Cunning’s Modern American History article below and find the full version here.

This article explores the programs known as Project 100,000 and Project Transition developed within the Johnson administration during the Vietnam War. Viewing them as the intersection between the War on Poverty and the War in Vietnam, this article contends with how these programs were designed to serve the goals both of social uplift and crime prevention through the rehabilitation of low-IQ men via military service. The article analyzes the racialized aspects of these programs, as they were disproportionately composed of Black men, and questions the motivations behind the construction of Project 100,000 and Project Transition as a means of “transporting” America’s racial unrest abroad. At its core, the article argues that these programs were inherently at odds with the intense manpower demands of the Vietnam War and the reluctancies of military officials to properly train Project 100,000 men. The program formed another tragedy of the Vietnam era.

by emoryhistorydept

Alejandro Guardado Among Inaugural Recipients of Gustavo Gutiérrez Research Award


Alejandro Guardado, a 2026 graduate of the Latin American History doctoral program, has won the Gustavo Gutiérrez Research Award from Notre Dame’s Cushwa Center for the Study of American Catholicism. Guardado’s project is titled “Reimagining Community: Indigenous Organizing in Mexico’s Neoliberal Turn, 1968–2000.”

Inaugurated in 2025, Gustavo Gutiérrez Research Awards honor the life and legacy of Rev. Gustavo Gutiérrez, O.P., the Peruvian priest and theologian widely seen as the father of Latin American liberation theology. The award supports projects in theology, history, and the social sciences that engage or take inspiration from Gutiérrez’s work on the preferential option for the poor.

Guardado was among five recipients in the first cycle of the award. Read more about the award and the recipients’ projects: “Cushwa Center announces 2026 research funding, including five inaugural Gutiérrez Research Awards.”

Guardado completed his dissertation under the advisement of Dr. Yanna Yannakakis, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History and Department Chair.

by emoryhistorydept

Kreklau (PhD, ’18) Publishes Article in ‘German Studies Review’


Dr. Claudia Kreklau, a 2018 doctoral program alum and Honorary Lecturer at the University of St. Andrews, has published a new article in the journal German Studies Review. Titled “Masters of Food: Climate Crisis and Optimized Exploitation in an Atlantic Hinterland Before the Revolutions of 1848,” the work examines how dietary control and prescription served as a means for social control in a time of extreme climatic crisis.

Kreklau published her first book, The Making of Modern Eating: How the German Middle Class Forged the Way We Eat, 1780–1910, with Berghahn Books earlier this year. The book as well as the new article originated in a research paper that Kreklau completed during coursework at Emory. Termed the “P-Paper” and produced by every graduate student before candidacy, this milestone helps students to develop their dissertation projects and lays the foundation for academic publication early in doctoral training.

Read the abstract of the German Studies Review article below along with the full piece here.

In 1818, the manorial lord Ludwig Ellrichshausen used his agricultural estate in Maisenhälden as a laboratory for optimized economic exploitation during a period of extreme climatic crisis. He designed a minimum-feed diet for his workers that was low in protein, devoid of fruits and vegetables, and insufficient in calories to support hard physical labor with the goal of engineering their bare subsistence to maximize outputs. The Speisemeister’s or master of food’s dietary prescription functioned as a means of social control in this Atlantic Hinterland, constructed to communicate social positioning via the symbolically charged means of food.

by emoryhistorydept

Allitt Offers Analysis of Royal Visit for Newsweek, AJC, and 11Alive


Dr. Patrick Allitt, Cohoon Family Professor of American History, provided insightful analysis and historical context about the recent four-day visit of King Charles III and Queen Camilla to the United States. Allitt wrote an op-ed for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “King Charles III and America’s curious love affair with the British monarchy,” and was interviewed on the Atlanta NBC News affiliate 11Alive (“Why Americans remain fascinated by the monarchy“).

Allitt was also quoted in a Newsweek article that examined the visit and its significance. Read a section of the Newsweek piece below, and find the full article here: “King Charles to Address Press Dinner Shooting in Landmark Congress Speech.”

Patrick Allitt, Professor of History at Emory University, told Newsweek: “The king’s had a lifetime of experience in not talking about policy details. I think when he was younger, he periodically did make some rather gauche intrusions into policy questions, particularly about the environment but gradually, he’s learned the lesson that his job is to be head of state and not head of government

Allitt argued the monarchy was a powerful tool for warming up public opinion and said that “because the British monarchy is insanely popular in America, even Trump has got the good sense to realize, ‘I can only benefit from showing the king and his wife a good time’ and avoiding all the things which have created rancor between himself and Starmer.

“So it’s actually a very non-political event, even though people will construe it as being one with political resonances.”

“The nature of politics in both countries is that people from different parts of the spectrum disagree about the rights and wrongs of what’s happening,” he continued, “but I think that the really astonishing part of this whole story is that for nearly 250 years, or since 1815, since the end of the War of 1812, Britain and America have never gone to war against each other.

“And usually when one empire is in decline and another one is in the ascendance, they fight over it but in this case, they never did.”

by emoryhistorydept

Fox Center Honors Fellows Bell and Raykher Present Theses


Senior History majors Daniel Bell and Leo Raykher recently presented their honors theses as part of the 2025-’26 cohort of Fox Center Undergraduate Humanities Honors Fellows. A senior double-majoring in Economics, Bell’s thesis examines the life and career of Herbert Jenkins, Atlanta’s influential twentieth-century police chief. Raykher’s research explores espionage, surveillance, and political freedom in the United States through the life of his great, great-uncle, David Drucker, a strident advocate for socialist causes and political exile in Mexico.

Both projects echo the Fox Center’s 2025-’26 theme, Life/Story, which “draws its inspiration from the many ways humanities fields and disciplines often approach a single life as the entry point for examining broad political, socio-cultural, and historical phenomena.”

by emoryhistorydept

Celebrating 2026 Senior Prize Winners


The Undergraduate Committee is pleased to announce the recipients of the Emory History Department’s undergraduate senior prizes for the 2025-26 academic year. These awards were presented at our annual Senior Celebration on Tuesday, April 28, from 1:00-3:00 pm, in the Brooks Commons.

Congratulations to the following awardees for their outstanding work in history:

The African, Asian, and Latin American History Prize for best record in African, Asian, and Latin American History

🙞 Lucia Alexeyev 🙜

James Z. Rabun Prize for the best record in American History

🙞 Kennedie Black 🙜

George P. Cuttino Prize for the best record in European History

🙞 Edmund Cayley 🙜

James Z. Rabun Prize for the best record in American History

🙞 Chloe Glazer 🙜

Matthew A. Carter Citizen-Scholar Award

🙞 Lola McGuire 🙜

by emoryhistorydept

Emory Students Analyze “Sports, Power, and Society” in Course Co-Taught by Suddler


In the spring 2026 semester, Dr. Carl Suddler, Associate Professor of History, and Emory sociologist Dr. Karida Brown have offered an interdisciplinary course called “Sports, Power, and Society.” Building on the “Last Lectures” series, a curriculum developed by Civil Rights icon and sociologist Dr. Harry Edwards, the course analyzes how sport intersects with an array of topics, from race, politics, and fashion to urban planning, inequality, and global power.

Students in the spring course have benefitted from the proximity of the upcoming FIFA World Cup, which will bring the high-stakes global soccer to Atlanta and 15 other host cities in North America this summer. Atlanta and Los Angeles are the only two cities in the U.S. to host both a summer Olympic games and the World Cup. This fact, Suddler and Brown argue, have made Emory the ideal place to study the power of sport in shaping culture, cities, economies, and everyday life.

Emory History graduate students Andrew Aldridge (U.S. History, 5th year) and Tymesha-Elizabeth Kindell (U.S. History, 2nd year) serve as teaching assistants for the course.


Fox 5 Atlanta recently interviewed Suddler about the offering, the World Cup’s impact on Atlanta, and parallels between the 2026 mega event and the 1996 Olympics. Find the conversation here: “Emory offers class on impact of FIFA World Cup.”

by emoryhistorydept

LaChance Speaks at GSU Law Event about the Death Penalty


L-R: Herman Lindsey, Cortney Lawler,  Corinna Barret Lain,  Katherine Raeymaekers (Consul General of Belgium), Daniel LaChance


Dr. Daniel LaChance, Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Fellow in Law and Associate Professor of History, recently spoke at a public event about the death penalty hosted by the School of Law at Georgia State University. Organized by the consulates of Belgium, France, Ireland, Germany, and the United Kingdom, the event was titled “Justice or Injustice? Moral and Legal Questions Around Capital Punishment.” Find the full program here.

LaChance is a legal scholar working at the intersection of American legal and cultural history, criminology, and literary studies. He is the author of Executing Freedom: The Cultural Life of Capital Punishment in the United States (University of Chicago Press, 2016) and Crimesploitation: Crime, Punishment, and Pleasure on Reality Television (Stanford University Press, 2022).

by emoryhistorydept

Byrnes (PhD, ’14) Publishes ‘The United States and the Ends of Empire’


Dr. Sean T. Byrnes, a 2014 graduate of the doctoral program in U.S. history, recently published his second book, The United States and the Ends of Empire: Decolonization, Hierarchy, and World Order since 1776, with Bloomsbury Press. The four-century history examines the relationship between the United States, empire, and decolonization from the revolutionary war through the present.

Fellow Emory History Department alum Dr. Elizabeth Stice (Palm Beach Atlantic University) recently interviewed Byrnes about his new monograph. Find their conversation here: “Interview with Sean Byrnes, author of ‘The United States and the Ends of Empire: Decolonization, Hierarchy, and World Order since 1776.’”

Byrnes’s research centers on U.S. politics, international relations, and global economic inequality. His first book, Disunited Nations: U.S. Foreign Policy, Anti-Americanism, and the Rise of the New Right, was published by LSU Press in 2021. His writings have also appeared in Time, The New Republic, Dissent, Jacobin, Diplomatic History, Diplomatica, International Journal, and for the History News Network. He hosts conversations with authors on the New Books Network, serves on the Board of Editors for Federal History, and is a Section Editor for the newly released Routledge Online Encyclopedia of the Cold War.

Byrnes completed his doctoral training under the advisement of Dr. Fraser Harbutt.

Read an abstract of the Byrnes’s new book below and learn more via Bloomsbury Press.

Few topics are more important to understanding the origins of the modern world than decolonization, and few countries have played a more important role in that history than the United States.In this book, Sean T. Byrnes provides a definitive, single-volume account of the relationship between the United States, decolonization, and world order.

Through a lively narrative history that ranges across four centuries, Byrnes reveals how the process of ending and replacing empires defined the American relationship to the world from the colonial era to the present. Despite the egalitarian rhetoric of the American Revolution, hierarchies born of the imperial age—and defined by ideas about race, capitalism, and civilization—fundamentally shaped American views of who was entitled to sovereignty and when. Therefore, far from building a world of “Westphalian” sovereign equality, the United States instead manipulated, expanded, and then attempted to dominate globe spanning structures of wealth and power that served the few at the expense of the many.

From early interactions with Native Americans and a decolonizing Latin America, to efforts to bolster global hierarchies after the World Wars and influence the postcolonial “Third World”, The United States and the Ends of Empire, tells the story of a US that may not always have embraced formal empire but nevertheless still sought to organize the world in imperial ways. In the process, it reveals how Americans helped build today’s modern, globalized world—and the unequal hierarchies of wealth and power that define it.

by emoryhistorydept

Mollie Nouwen (PhD, ’08) Promoted at Pacific Northwest College of Art


Dr. Mollie Nouwen, a 2008 doctoral program graduate in Latin American history, has been promoted to full professor at the Pacific Northwest College of Art (PNCA) at Willamette University. A specialist in Argentina, immigration, and Modern Latin America, Nouwen is the author of Oy My Buenos Aires: Jewish Immigrants and the Creation of Argentine National Identity (University of New Mexico Press, 2013).


She has served as Chair of Liberal Arts at PNCA since 2020, and her scholarly interests have expanded to include pedagogy, writing, and research in the humanities with a focus on artists and designers. 

Her recently published works include a chapter on pedagogical strategies for teaching Immigration to Latin America and the Handbook of Latin American Studies, published by the Library of Congress, for which she is the Modern Argentina editor. Nouwen completed her dissertation under the advisement of Dr. Jeffrey Lesser, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of History.