Dr. Cynthia Burchell Patterson, Professor of History and Ancient Mediterranean Studies, has been appointed the Dabney Adams Hart Distinguished Visiting Humanities Professor at Agnes Scott College for Spring 2022. The Dabney Adams Hart Distinguished Visiting Humanities Professorship was established in 2003 by Madeline and Howell E. Adams, Jr. in honor of his sister, Dabney Hart ’48. This fund welcomes visiting scholars to campus in a variety of topics and disciplines.
Sean Andrew Wempe (PhD, 2015) Discusses ‘Revenants of the German Empire’ on New Books Network
Dr. Sean Andrew Wempe, A 2015 PhD alumnus and Assistant Professor of Modern European History at California State University–Bakersfield, was recently interviewed for New Books Network. Wempe discusses his 2019 book Revenants of the German Empire: Colonial Germans, Imperialism, and the League of Nations (Oxford UP) with Jack Guenther, a doctoral candidate in history at Princeton University. Find the link to the interview here.
History Dept. Co-Sponsors Rothschild Memorial Lecture Featuring Dahlia Lithwick
The History Department is a co-sponsor of the 13th annual Rabbi Jacob M. Rothschild Memorial Lecture, scheduled for Nov. 11 and featuring lawyer, writer, and journalist Dahlia Lithwick. A Supreme Court expert and senior editor at Slate, Lithwick is also Senior Fellow of the Shalom Hartman Institute’s Kogod Research Center and Lecturer at the University of Virginia School of Law, where she recently taught a course on the legacy of Justice Ginsburg. As a leading commentator on law, politics, and the Supreme Court, her work has appeared in the New York Times, Harper’s, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, The New Republic, and Commentary.
Lithwick will speak on the legacy of the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and will also give a faculty/graduate student seminar on the approach of the current Supreme Court to church-state issues. The program will explore the life and jurisprudence of Justice Ginsburg through a Jewish lens, including how her religious upbringing and immigrant background shaped her constitutional worldview and philosophy of what America could and should be. Find more information about the event, including registration, here.
The event is sponsored by Emory’s Tam Institute for Jewish Studies and co-sponsored by Emory University’s Bill and Carol Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry, Center for Ethics, Center for Women, Departments of German Studies, History, Middle Eastern and South Asian Studies, and Religion, Office of Spiritual and Religious Life, and School of Law.
Reuters Quotes Anderson as Supreme Court Revisits Second Amendment
Reuters recently quoted Dr. Carol Anderson in a piece titled, “NRA lawsuit gives SCOTUS chance to confront 2nd Amendment’s roots in racism.” The article discusses a pending Supreme Court case on the 2nd Amendment and the possible implications if the justices were to consider the central argument from Anderson’s most recent book, The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America (Bloomsbury, 2021): that anti-Blackness was fundamental to the clause guaranteeing the right to bear arms. Anderson is Charles Howard Candler Professor, Chair of African-American Studies, and Associated Faculty in the History Department. Read an excerpt from the Reuters piece below along with the full article: “NRA lawsuit gives SCOTUS chance to confront 2nd Amendment’s roots in racism.”
“But there’s another ‘originalist’ narrative evident in the very source materials the justices studied, which seems to have more support than their versions of history. Indeed, the historical record shows that the Second Amendment is rooted in racism and was written to preserve Southern state militias whose job it was to crush slave rebellions and capture runaways.
“The court’s acknowledgement of that narrative would indicate its willingness to confront our history in the forthright manner demanded by originalism — whether or not one agrees that we should adhere to the founders’ ideals.
“The thesis of racism at the root of the Second Amendment has been developed, most notably, by Carol Anderson, a bestselling author and historian at Emory University. Anderson published The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America in June. Anderson’s book also asserts that the right to weapons has been continuously denied to Black people.“
2020-’21 Clio Prize Winners Announced
The Emory History Dept. Undergraduate Committee recently announced the winners of the 2021-’21 Clio Prizes. These awards are given annually for the best research paper in a junior/senior History Colloquium and to the best paper in a Freshman History Seminar. Browse past winners here and see the 2021-22 recipients below:
The Clio Prize for the best paper written in a freshman seminar has been awarded to:
Julia Pecau
Paper title: “Justice in Medieval Europe”
Nominated by Prof. Michelle Armstrong-Partida
The Clio Prize for the best research paper written in a junior/senior colloquium has been awarded to:
Alex Levine
Paper title: “‘The Most Potent of All Human Agencies’: Missionary Printing and the Development of the Chinese Indigenous Church”
Nominated by Prof. Tonio Andrade
Scott Benigno (C22) Publishes Article on British Railway Investments in Brazil
History major Scott Benigno (C22) recently published an article in the Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History titled, “The Economics of Empires: An Analysis of British Railway Investments in 1850s Imperial Brazil.” The article investigates Britain’s interests in developing railways in Brazil before the country’s industrialization. The paper was mentored by Dr. Thomas D. Rogers, Associate Professor of Modern Latin American History and Arthur Blank/NEH Chair in the Humanities and Humanistic Social Sciences (2018-2021). Read the article abstract below and find the full piece here.
“While Brazil is not often thought to be connected to Britain in our present day, Brazil’s early independent history was inextricably linked with the European imperial power. Using A Report on the Proposed Railway in the Province of Pernambuco, Brazil written by British civil engineer Edward De Mornay in 1855 as an example, this paper looks specifically at Britain’s interests in developing railways in the mostly non-industrialized Brazil and the reasons behind.”
Anderson Contributes to 11Alive Program ‘Drawing Conclusions’
Dr. Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor, recently contributed to the 11Alive news station’s “Drawing Conclusions” series. The series follows two Georgia parents who address their skepticism of Critical Race Theory and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives in public schools with a range of experts. Anderson, associated faculty in the History Department and, most recently, the author of The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America (Bloomsbury, 2021), was the first expert the parents interviewed. Find a video of the segment below and read more about the series here: “These parents questioned critical race theory and DEI programs in public schools. They interviewed experts and here’s what they found.”
Graduate Student Olivia Cocking Wins Snell Memorial Essay Prize from Southern Historical Association
Congratulations to second-year graduate student Olivia Cocking on winning the 2021 John L. Snell Memorial Prize from the European History Section of the Southern Historical Association. The prize recognizes the best graduate seminar paper in European History. Cocking was awarded for her piece, “Pronatalism’s Peripheries: Housing Poor Women in Early Third Republic Paris, 1880 – 1912.” Associate Professor Judith A. Miller advises Cocking’s graduate work.
Alumni Update: Jeffrey S. Reznick (PhD, 1999)
Jeffrey S. Reznick (PhD 1999), chief of the History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine (NLM), National Institutes of Health (NIH), has written the first study of Rudolf H. Sauter (1895–1977), the German-born artist, poet, cultural observer and nephew of the famed novelist John Galsworthy. To be published by Anthem Press in January 2022, War and Peace in the Worlds of Rudolf H. Sauter: A Cultural History of a Creative Life reveals its subject as a creative figure in his own right who produced an intriguing body of artistic and literary work spanning from World War I through the Cold War. Additionally, connected to his leadership of the NLM History of Medicine Division, Reznick recently co-authored “History matters: in the past, present & future of the NLM” in the Journal of the Medical Library Association. The article explains how—since the release of the 2015 report of the NIH’s Director’s advisory committee on the future of the National Library of Medicine—history continues to matter at NLM with its History of Medicine Division achieving many collaborative contributions toward the advancement of the library in the 21st century and for the benefit of historical research today and tomorrow.
Welcoming New Faculty: Q & A with Malinda Maynor Lowery
In July 2021 the Emory History Department welcomed Dr. Malinda Maynor Lowery, a historian and documentary film producer and member of the Lumbee Tribe of North Carolina. Dr. Lowery joins Emory as Cahoon Family Professor of American History. In the latest installment of our “Welcoming New Faculty” series, Dr. Lowery offers a glimpse into her research and teaching along with the factors that drew her to Emory.
Tell us about the focus of your research and principal current project.
I have a longstanding interest in collaborations using methods like oral history and documentary film; working with people to elevate narratives and events that are underappreciated but explain a great deal about our contemporary society has guided me through many projects. Right now I’m working on two projects. One is a media experience for a museum that focuses on the foundational role racial stereotypes have played in American entertainment. Combined with displaying objects from the museum’s collection, we are juxtaposing found footage from stand up comedy, television, film, and historical images and audio to reveal the ways that comedy both reinforces and refutes stereotypes. My other major project involves a book of essays on the shared history of Black and Indigenous Americans. Its premise is that violence and erasure are ongoing features of the United States, but Black and Indigenous Americans have been challenging and repairing that harm since the harm began. The essays are written with particular attention paid to the ways in which these communities constructed narratives of origin, wealth, and law to effectively combat assaults on sovereignty and independence. I’m writing with a sense of urgency—the US has enormous capacity to address the crises of our time, in particular climate change. As we face the prospect of human extinction, American stories that offer paradigms for belonging and possibility are more necessary than ever. Such history is a matter of life and death.
Was there a particularly memorable moment from archival or field research that has had a lasting impact on your work or career?
They come from unexpected places, for sure. My research room is the world, in a way I’m a little bit like an untrained ethnographer and I take my inspiration from everywhere. The book I’m working on now came together the day I learned that George Floyd was born in my home region of southeastern North Carolina. I had been reading, writing, and doing research in questions of race and Indigeneity for years, but that day it dawned on me in a different way. It was no longer just an abstract problem of the discipline that we were telling these stories separately, it was actually nonsensical, it was bad history. It was what an Australian aboriginal scholar, Susan Page, described to me once as a breakthrough concept—once you see it, you can’t unsee it. George Floyd was born in Fayetteville, NC, his family members still live there, only 30 minutes from where my father, uncles, aunts, grandparents, and hundreds of ancestors are buried in the Lumbee homeland. Floyd’s roots are entangled with my own, and in a Lumbee way of thinking, roots are not past, or dead. They are essential for the garden’s continued survival. Like our roots, our history should not a burden. It should be a source of nourishment from which we can continue to hold ourselves accountable to one another.
What sort of courses – undergraduate or graduate – are you most excited to offer at Emory?
I’m teaching a version of the Native American history survey that we are calling “Legal Histories of Native People”—using the law (both Indigenous law and U.S. law) as a throughline to understand a complex and sometimes contradictory history. There are over five hundred federally-recognized Indigenous nations in the United States, each with their own history and culture. Wrapping your mind around it takes a strong organizing principle, and the law helps us achieve that. On the way we read lots of primary sources, a novel, and we focus on gaining skills in research, analysis and argument, including partnerships with terrific people from the Carlos Museum, University Libraries, and the Barkley Debate Program.
What drew you to Emory?
This campus has a demonstrated commitment to reckoning with its history and there is a tremendous opportunity to do that work in partnership with the Muscogee Nation. They are the original owners of this land who produced knowledge in medicine, law, art, and so many other fields, created a language and built a nation here, where our campuses are located. Being a relevant research institution in the 21st century is more than just understanding this as a matter of history. They precede Emory’s contributions in those areas, yes, but they continue to nourish us, as roots nourish a garden.