Dr. Sharon T. Strocchia, Professor of History and Department Chair, was awarded a fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton for the Fall of 2022. As a member of the School of Historical Studies, Strocchia will continue work on her new book project, “Health for Sale: Marketing Medical Trust in Late Renaissance Italy.”
Klibanoff Comments on Hate Crimes Convictions in Arbery Case for WABE
Hank Klibanoff, James M. Cox Jr. Professor of Journalism and Associated Faculty in the History Department, was recently a guest on WABE’s Closer Look with Rose Scott. Klibanoff discussed the recent convictions – on all counts – of the three men who killed Ahmaud Arbery in a federal hate crimes trial. Klibanoff hosts the âBuried Truthsâ podcast and serves as the director of the Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project at Emory. He was also recently confirmed to the Federal Civil Rights Cold Case Review Board. Listen to the interview here: “Jury Finds Ahmaud Arbery Killers Guilty On All Counts.”
Graduate Student Robert Billups Receives Research Fellowship from the American Jewish ArchivesÂ
Congratulations to graduate student Robert Billups on receiving the Joseph and Eva R. Dave Fellowship from the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives (AJA). The fellowship will provide Billups with research access to the AJA’s renowned collections on the historic campus of Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion (HUC-JIR) in Cincinnati, Ohio. Since its inception in 1976, the fellowship program has has brought nearly 600 scholars from over 20 countries to conduct research in Cincinnati. Billups’s dissertation, “‘Reign of Terror’: AntiâCivil Rights Terrorism in the United States, 1955â1976,” examines violence against the U.S. civil rights movement in the middle of the twentieth century.
Luke Hagemann to Discuss Compassionate Pedagogy as Part of Dobes Series for Excellence in Teaching
Doctoral candidate Luke Hagemann will introduce Laney Graduate students to the practice of compassionate pedagogy in an upcoming session titled “Practicing Compassionate Pedagogy in the College Classroom.” Participants will equip themselves with a framework for incorporating kindness into their course designs in order to make the classroom more accessible, supportive, and equitable. Hageman’s talk is part of the Dobes Series for Excellence in Teaching, which features winners of the Martha and William Dobes Outstanding Graduate Teaching Fellow Award. The event will take place via Zoom from 5-7pm on March 17, 2022. Find out more information below and here.
Strocchia and Kelly Publish Co-Authored Article in ‘Renaissance Studies’
Dr. Sharon T. Strocchia, Professor of History and Department Chair and her former honors student Ryan Kelly published a co-authored article titled “Picturing the Pox in Italian Popular Prints, 1550-1650” in the flagship British journal Renaissance Studies in March. The article drew on material from Kelly’s honors thesis, which received highest honors in May 2021. Read the article abstract below along with the full piece here.
“The disease commonly known as the âpoxâ or the âFrench Diseaseâ ravaged the European continent following its initial appearance circa 1495. Its devastating physical effects and sensory assaults, ranging from stinking sores to baldness and collapsed noses, invited both a social and medical evaluation of what was quickly recognized to be a sexually transmitted disease. Despite the prevalence and visibility of the pox in sixteenth-century Europe, its visual language has not been studied in much depth. This essay examines how cheap narrative prints issued between 1550 and 1650 helped construct the iconography of pox and disseminate medical information about it in late Renaissance Italy. Focusing on a group of best-selling Venetian and Roman prints, the essay argues that multimedial picture stories combining text and image provided one of the many sources of vernacular information by which Italians learned to read the body. In recounting stories of diseased prostitutes and their clients in vivid detail, these prints expanded vernacular health literacy and provided a ready-made language of disease. The prints analysed here enjoyed enormous social reach as components of a new health-promoting, communicative object â the hand-held paper fan â whose popularity cemented visual and epistemic connections between pox and prostitution.“
Tom Chaffin (PhD, ’95) Publishes ‘Odyssey: Young Charles Darwin, The Beagle, and The Voyage that Changed the World’
Tom Chaffin, a 1995 graduate of the doctoral program, has just published Odyssey: Young Charles Darwin, The Beagle, and The Voyage that Changed the World. Chaffin’s eighth book, Odyssey offers a glimpse into the often overlooked aspects of Charles Darwin’s five-year travels aboard the HMS Beagle and on land from the Americas to South Africa and Australia. An excerpt of the book was recently printed in Lapham’s Quarterly under the title, “A Disgrace to His Family: Meet Charles Darwin, somewhat aimless student and excellent beetle hunter.” Read a description of the book below and find out more information here.
Charles Darwinâalongside Isaac Newton and Albert Einsteinâranks among the worldâs most famous scientists. In popular imagination, he peers at us from behind a bushy white Old Testament beard. This image of Darwin the Sage, however, crowds out the vital younger man whose curiosities, risk-taking, and travels aboard HMS Beagle would shape his later theories and served as the foundation of his scientific breakthroughs.
Though storied, the Beagleâs voyage is frequently misunderstood, its mission and geographical breadth unacknowledged. The voyageâs activities associated with South Americaâparticularly its stop in the Galapagos archipelago, off Ecuadorâs coastâeclipse the fact that the Beagle, sailing in Atlantic, Pacific and Indian ocean waters, also circumnavigated the globe.
Mere happenstance placed Darwin aboard the Beagleâan invitation to sail as a conversation companion on natural-history topics for the shipâs depression-prone captain. Darwin was only twenty-two years old, an unproven, unknown, aspiring geologist when the ship embarked on what stretched into its five-year voyage. Moreover, conducting marine surveys of distance ports and coasts, the Beagleâs purposes were only inadvertently scientific. And with no formal shipboard duties or rank, Darwin, after arranging to meet the Beagle at another port, often left the ship to conduct overland excursions.
Those outings, lasting weeks, even months, took him across mountains, pampas, rainforests, and deserts. An expert horseman and marksman, he won the admiration of gauchos he encountered along the way. Yet another rarely acknowledged aspect of Darwinâs Beagle travels, he also visited, often lingered in, citiesâincluding Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Valparaiso, Santiago, Lima, Sydney, and Cape Town; and left colorful, often sharply opinionated, descriptions of them and his interactions with their residents. In the end, Darwin spent three-fifths of his five-year âvoyageâ on landâthree years and three months on terra firma versus a total 533 days on water.
Acclaimed historian Tom Chaffin reveals young Darwin in all his complexitiesâthe brashness that came from his privileged background, the Faustian bargain he made with Argentinaâs notorious caudillo Juan Manuel de Rosas, his abhorrence of slavery, and his ambition to carve himself a place amongst his eraâs celebrated travelers and intellectual giants. Drawing on a rich array of sourcesâ in a telling of an epic story that surpasses in breadth and intimacy the naturalistâs own Voyage of the BeagleâChaffin brings Darwinâs odyssey to vivid life.
History Department Statement on the Russian Invasion of Ukraine
The faculty of the Department of History at Emory University are horrified and deeply saddened by events unfolding in Ukraine on account of the unprovoked and massive invasion by Russian forces. Putinâs government is directly responsible for this war of aggression. As historians, we understand the long struggles of Ukrainians for democracy and peaceful relations with all their neighbors â often against heavy odds. We affirm our solidarity with the Ukrainian people, and we join people of conscience throughout the world calling for crippling sanctions against the Russian regime and for urgent efforts to force an immediate withdrawal of Russian forces, address the humanitarian crisis, and restore democracy in Ukraine.
U.S. Senate Confirms Klibanoff and Dudley to Federal Civil Rights Cold Case Review Board
The U.S. senate has confirmed James M. Cox Jr. Professor of Journalism Hank Klibanoff and Rose library instructional archivist Gabrielle M. Dudley to the federal Civil Rights Cold Case Review Board. Established in 2019 and convened in 2022, the panel has received authorization through 2027 to investigate unsolved cases from the Civil Rights era. Klibanoff is director of the Georgia Civil Rights Cold Cases Project at Emory and host of the award-winning podcast Buried Truths. Read more about the federal cold cases panel and Atlantans’ significant roles within it: “Civil rights cold case board to have unique Atlanta flavor.”
History Major Kheyal Roy-Meighoo Earns Awards and Support for Filmmaking
Congratulations to undergraduate history major Kheyal Roy-Meighoo, who was recently awarded the Women in Film and Television Atlanta (WIFTA) 2021 Scholarship. The scholarship is awarded to “deserving female students based on their academic standing, artistic talents and commitment to a curriculum.” Kheyal’s film “My Bunny’s Story,” co-created with Isaac Gazmararian, won ten awards, including three Gold Tripod awards, in the 2021 Nationwide Campus Movie Fest.
Graduate Student Mary Grace DuPree on Track for Ordination to Priesthood in Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta
Mary Grace DuPree, a doctoral student in history, was recently accepted as postulant for ordination to the priesthood in the Episcopal Diocese of Atlanta. DuPree is an Ancient History student whose research centers on the intersections of history, religion, and art history. Her dissertation, titled “Faces of David: Late Antique and Medieval David Cycles in East and West,” analyzes the story of the Biblical King David as told in visual narrative in Coptic, Byzantine, Western Medieval and Crusader art.