by abritt

Anderson Analyzes Race and the Second Amendment for Detroit’s WDET

Dr. Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor, was recently interviewed by Detroit’s NPR affiliate station, WDET, for All Things Considered, Morning Edition. The story examines the key argument from Anderson’s newest book: that racial inequity has been embedded in U.S. gun policy since the Bill of Rights itself. For more information about Anderson’s book The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America (Bloomsbury, 2021), read our previous coverage here and here. Also read an excerpt from the WDET story below along with the full piece: “How the Second Amendment Built In Inequity in the Nation’s Gun Laws.”

“Dr. Carol Anderson, an Emory University professor who has researched the disparities between whites and Blacks when it comes to the Second Amendment, says the ‘right to bear arms’ by a ‘well-regulated militia’ wasn’t so much about curbing tyranny as it was about stopping a different sort of rebellion.

“‘What that militia was about was about controlling the enslaved population and putting down slave revolts. So sitting in the middle of the Bill of Rights, we have a right to control Black people,’ she says.

“A release from enslavement did little to improve the right to own firearms. As racist Jim Crow laws took hold in the 1870s, Black people’s ability to vote and exercise their First Amendment rights were curtailed. So too were their rights of gun ownership. That’s how it stayed until the rise of the civil rights era in the 1950s. Anderson says since then, there has been a dramatic rise in gun ownership among African Americans.“

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Anderson Recounts Life and Death Struggles of Black WWII Vets in ‘Smithsonian’

Dr. Carol Anderson was recently quoted in a Smithsonian Magazine piece written by Bryan Greene and titled “After Victory in World War II, Black Veterans Continued the Fight for Freedom at Home.” The article examines how Black veterans fought racist attacks in the immediate post-war period, thereby helping to lay the groundwork for organized and widespread Black freedom struggles in the decades to come. Anderson is Charles Howard Candler Professor, Chair of African American Studies, and Associated Faculty in the History Department. Her most recent book is The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America (Bloomsbury, 2021). Read an excerpt from the Smithsonian article below along with the full piece here.

“…when one reviews the 75 years since the violence and the government-sanctioned discrimination of 1946, it is remarkable how much African-Americans have achieved in a short span. Anderson, the historian from Emory, laments that many Americans don’t want to teach this history. ‘Because then the U.S. doesn’t make sense. Segregated neighborhoods don’t make sense. All-Black and all-white schools just don’t make sense.’ She cites also the G.I. Bill, which black servicemembers could not use to join the emerging middle-class in the suburbs. ‘The wealth gap [today]…Imagine if that that black veteran was able to hold onto that house in Palo Alto. That family would have some money, right?'”

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Guidotti-Hernandez Quoted in AJC Piece

Dr. Nicole Guidotti-Hernandez, Professor of English and associated faculty in the History Department, was recently quoted in an article in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Titled “Children of immigrants make giving back a priority,” the piece discusses how and why many Asian and Latinx second-generation immigrants in Atlanta engage in social justice and community service. Guidotti-Hernandez is the author of Unspeakable Violence: Remapping U.S. and Mexican National Imaginaries (Duke University Press, 2011). Read an excerpt from the AJC piece below along with the full article: “Children of immigrants make giving back a priority.”

“Children of immigrants are often influenced by their parents’ past to contribute to their communities, according to Nicole Guidotti, an English and Latinx studies professor at Emory University.

“She said it’s typical for people who’ve lived in places with economic, gender, racial and religious disparities to rely on strong communal ties for survival — and those bonds and those traditions ‘don’t stop when somebody leaves their home country.”

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CNN Article Quotes Anderson on Race and Gun Control

Charles Howard Candler Professor Carol Anderson was recently quoted in a CNN article written by Brandon Tensley and titled “How race permeates the politics of gun control.” The piece discusses how racial violence, anti-Black prejudice, and Black self-defense movements have shaped gun policy in the U.S. from the 1960s through the present. Anderson is the author, most recently, of The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America (Bloomsbury, 2021), which analyzes the Second Amendment in the context of the citizenship and human rights of African Americans. Read the CNN piece here: “How race permeates the politics of gun control.”

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Anjuli Webster Publishes Article in ‘Theoria’

History graduate student Anjuli Webster recently published an article titled ‘South African Social Science and the Azanian Philosophical Tradition‘ in the journal Theoria. Webster is a student in African history with research interests in legal history, empire, sovereignty, and borderlands in Southern Africa, especially. Read the abstract from Webster’s piece below, along with the full article: “South African Social Science and the Azanian Philosophical Tradition.”

This article discusses the contemporary history of South Afri-can social science in relation to the Azanian Philosophical Tradition. It is addressed directly to white scholars, urging introspection with regard to the ethical question of epistemic justice in relation to the evolution of the social sciences in conqueror South Africa. I consider the establishment of the professional social sciences at South African universities in the early twentieth century as a central part of the epistemic project of conqueror South Africa. In contrast, the Azanian Philosophical Tradition is rooted in African philosophy and articulated in resistance against the injustice of conquest and colonialism in southern Africa since the seventeenth century. It understands conquest as the fundamental historical antagonism shaping the philosophical, political, and material problem of ‘South Africa’. The tradition is silenced by and exceeds the political and epistemic strictures of the settler colonial nation state and social science.

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Suddler Named OAH Distinguished Lecturer

Dr. Carl Suddler, Assistant Professor of History, has been named a Distinguished Lecturer by the Organization of American Historians. The OAH’s Distinguished Lectureship Program is a speakers bureau comprised of nearly 600 historians dedicated to sharing American history. Read the OAH’s biography of Suddler below, and find out more about the other 22 scholars selected for this year’s cohort.

Carl Suddler is an assistant professor of history at Emory University. His publications, teaching, and public scholarship have placed him among a small number of African American scholars who study the intersections of Black life, crime, and sports since the late nineteenth century. Suddler’s first book, Presumed Criminal: Black Youth and the Justice System in Postwar New York (2019) is widely used in college and graduate classrooms across the country. He joined historians of the American carceral state who have produced a burgeoning wave of literature on criminalization, law enforcement, and imprisonment in America from the eras of slavery and settler colonialism to the modern age of mass incarceration and global counterinsurgency. In addition to his monograph, Suddler has published works that have appeared in the Journal of American History, Journal of African American History, American Studies Journal, Journal of Sports History; in 2020, he edited a special issue of The American Historian magazine that historically contextualized the global protests that occurred in the wake of the murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and others; and in 2021, Suddler worked with Harvard University’s Global Sports Initiative to help professional athletes become more informed on how to maximize their platforms to contribute to social justice efforts across the globe. With his recent op-eds and articles in outlets such as the Washington Post, Bleacher Report, HuffPost, and Brookings Institute, Suddler has built a name for himself outside of the academy. His expertise is in high demand from scholarly communities and media outlets such as CNN, ABC News, Al Jazeera, Black News Channel, and NPR. 

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Film Produced by PhD Student Ayssa Yamagutchi Norek Takes Gold at Locarno

History Ph.D. student Ayssa Yamagutchi Norek produced, assistant directed, and wrote the lyrics to the short film “Neon Phantom,” which recently won the Pardino d’Oro SRG SSR for the Best International Short Film at the Locarno Film Festival. The festival is one of the five biggest in the world. “Neon Phantom” has been selected for other international festivals, including the Festival Internacional de Cine en Guadalajara, Mexico. Norek’s graduate work centers on modern Brazil, women’s studies, and female incarceration. Her graduate advisors are Jeffrey Lesser and Thomas D. Rogers.

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Fulbright Awards Support Research by Brunner and Steinman

Two History Department students have received research awards through the Fulbright U.S. Student Program. PhD candidate Georgia Brunner will study and research gender, labor, and identity between 1918-1985 in the building of Rwanda. Undergraduate alum Jesse Steinman (21C), a history and German studies double major, was selected for the Fulbright Community-Based Combined Award in History for a project developing an interreligious educational program about Graz, Austria’s Jewish history. Read the full list of Emory students selected for Fulbright awards this season here.

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Andrade Publishes ‘The Last Embassy’ with Princeton UP

Dr. Tonio Andrade, Professor of History, has published a new book with Princeton University Press titled The Last Embassy: The Dutch Mission of 1795 and the Forgotten History of Western Encounters with China (2021). Through an immersive narrative that draws on sources in Qing, Korean, Dutch, French, and Spanish, Andrade revises prevailing narratives about diplomatic and cultural relations between the West and China in the pre-modern period. One reviewer described The Last Embassy as “a superbly written, illuminating, and thought-provoking book on an important topic long overlooked by historians.” Read the full book summary below, along with an interview Andrade gave to Princeton UP in July 2021.

George Macartney’s disastrous 1793 mission to China plays a central role in the prevailing narrative of modern Sino-European relations. Summarily dismissed by the Qing court, Macartney failed in nearly all of his objectives, perhaps setting the stage for the Opium Wars of the nineteenth century and the mistrust that still marks the relationship today. But not all European encounters with China were disastrous. The Last Embassy tells the story of the Dutch mission of 1795, bringing to light a dramatic but little-known episode that transforms our understanding of the history of China and the West.

Drawing on a wealth of archival material, Tonio Andrade paints a panoramic and multifaceted portrait of an age marked by intrigues and war. China was on the brink of rebellion. In Europe, French armies were invading Holland. Enduring a harrowing voyage, the Dutch mission was to be the last European diplomatic delegation ever received in the traditional Chinese court. Andrade shows how, in contrast to the British emissaries, the Dutch were men with deep knowledge of Asia who respected regional diplomatic norms and were committed to understanding China on its own terms.

Beautifully illustrated with sketches and paintings by Chinese and European artists, The Last Embassy suggests that the Qing court, often mischaracterized as arrogant and narrow-minded, was in fact open, flexible, curious, and cosmopolitan.

by abritt

Anderson Discusses the Voting Rights Act on its 56th Anniversary in ‘The Washington Post’

Dr. Carol Anderson, Charles Howard Candler Professor, Chair of African American Studies, and Associated Faculty in the History Department, was recently quoted in a story in The Washington Post. The piece examines the state of the Votings Rights Act on its 56th anniversary through interviews with activists, lawmakers, and scholars. Read an excerpt below along with the full article: “Frustration and persistence for activists on the 56th anniversary of the Voting Rights Act.”

“Carol Anderson, a professor of African American studies at Emory University and author of ‘One Person, No Vote,’ a history of voter suppression in America, said violent reactions of Southern officials to Black people protesting discriminatory voting laws shook awake a country that had been ‘lulled to sleep or seduced into believing that this was just the way it was because it was legal.’

“Although officials are not using clubs, hoses and dogs, she said Biden has abandoned Black voters to an electoral system that continues to discriminate against them.

“‘Biden is asking us to continue to be beaten for democracy. He’s continuing to ask us to be willing to stand in the 11-hour lines to vote. He’s continuing to ask us to be running around, trying to get the documents we need in order to be able to get the ID,’ Anderson said. ‘And he’s continuing to ask us to deal with the fact that 1,600 polling places have been closed since Shelby County v. Holder, the vast majority of those in minority areas.'”