Dr. Tonio Andrade was awarded the Gillingham Prize for his article “Late Medieval Divergences: Comparative Perspectives on Early Gunpowder Warfare in Europe and China.” Andrade’s article appeared in the Journal of Medieval Military History in 2014. The Gillingham Prize is given annually by the Society for Medieval Military History to the best article by a member to appear in the preceding issue of the Journal of Medieval Military History.
This past April the History Department celebrated the accomplishments and contributions of senior majors and minors in the days before graduation. In addition to their leadership in other areas on campus, these students were celebrated as members of the History Honors Society (Phi Alpha Theta), history honors students, and/or recipients of a Department prize. The Department’s Senior Celebration was held on April 27 in the J. Russell Major Seminar Room.
Honors Students attending the Senior Celebration: (left to right, back row) Jane Chang, Emily Moore, Julia Wahl, Shannon Stillmun; (left to right, front row) Adam Goldstein, Gideon Weiss, Declan Hahn.
Members of the History Honors Society, Phi Alpha Theta, at the Senior Celebration: (left to right, back row) Julia Keating, Prof. Kathryn Amdur – Faculty Advisor, Julia Wahl, Emily Moore, Ami Fields-Meyer, Tom O’Leary; (left to right, front row) Adam Goldstein, Declan Hahn.
Senior Prize Recipients awarded at the Senior Celebration: (left to right) Declan Hahn – the Latin America & Non-Western World Prize; Julia Wahl – the George P. Cuttino Prize in European History; Adam Goldstein – the Matthew A. Carter Citizen-Scholar Award; Shannon Stillmun – the James Z. Rabun Prize in American History; Prof. Brian Vick, Director of Undergraduate Studies.
Professor Tonio Andrade recently authored an opinion piece for The Washington Post examining brewing tensions in the South China Sea. Andrade, who published The Gunpowder Age: China, Military Innovation, and the Rise of the West in World History with Princeton this year, urges U.S. policy makers to reckon with the histories of Chinese expansionism in the Eastern Hemisphere despite past and present claims otherwise. Check out the excerpt below and read the full article, “For U.S. leaders, confronting China is a dangerous game,” here.
What’s intriguing is that the timing of these bouts of expansive warfare was similar: They each occurred about 40 or 50 years after the dynasty was founded, after domestic control had been consolidated. And why did the Ming and Qing dynasties engage in such expansion after achieving domestic consolidation? In a word, security. In each case, leaders justified their military action with reference to China’s historic vulnerability. Only by achieving unquestioned preeminence in its hemisphere — or, as Chinese leaders put it, in the earthly realm — could China guarantee safety and security for its people. Expansion was meant to foster peace.
The German newspaper Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung (HAZ) reported on third year PhD student Claudia Kreklau’s work on nineteenth-century food. The regional paper featured Claudia’s research at the World of Kitchen (WOK) Museum in Hannover.
The archive welcomed the Emory student to gather data among their 7000-volume collection of cookbooks and ephemera, including various copies of the Practical Cookbook by nineteenth-century best-selling author Henriette Davidis, a vegetarian guide from the fin-de-siècle, and advertisements connected to the industrialization of foodstuffs. The wider collection houses objects of material culture which, along with Claudia’s findings of handwritten recipes, household diaries, and correspondence in the WOK’s manuscript collection, will contribute to her research on the development of German cooking traditions and questions of identity in the nineteenth century.
Claudia Kreklau is advised by Dr. Brian Vick.
The print version circulated July 7, 2016. E-version published July 10, 2016.
Carol Anderson‘s The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide (Bloomsbury, 2014) was recently reviewed by Jesse McCarthy in The New York Times. McCarthy’s review, titled “Why Are Whites So Angry,” appraised Anderson’s work as an “extraordinarily timely and urgent call to confront the legacy of structural racism bequeathed by white anger and resentment, and to show its continuing threat to the promise of American democracy.” Professor Anderson is Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of African American Studies. Read the full review here.
Over the last year Dr. Mark Ravina and history major TJ Greer have collaborated on a digital humanities project examining the rhetoric of student activism and university administration responses through text mining. The project was recently profiled by the editors of the website Digital Humanities Now, where the study’s findings will appear in a series of blog posts. Read an excerpt from their first post below (“Mining the Movement: Some DH perspectives on student activism”) and check out the full run here.
This first blog reflects our first preliminary results, but even at this early stage we feel comfortable with two declarations: one empirical and one political. The empirical observation is that university administrations are largely talking past students, employing a radically different vocabulary than that of student demands. Our political observation is that universities need to address student demands seriously and directly, even if that means admitting that some problems are deeply structural and that solutions will require decades rather than months or years.
Professor Brian Vick, Associate Professor of History, published The Congress of Vienna, Power and Politics after Napoleon with Harvard University Press in 2014. The internet network H-Diplo recently selected Vick’s monograph for a multi-review roundtable and a response from the author. One of the reviewers, Jonathan Sperber (University of Missouri), praises Vick’s extensive use of primary sources and original approach. Sperber asserts that The Congress of Vienna for offers “a striking reinterpretation of the Congress, the practice of diplomacy and the political culture of post-Napoleonic Europe, which substantially enhances our understanding of the era while opening new possibilities for historical investigation and provoking scholarly debate.” Read the full set of reviews and Vick’s response here.
Retiring Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of American History, Dr. Jim Roark, will be honored with a scholarship for undergraduate research bearing his name. The Roark Prize will support rising seniors in the History Department pursuing research in the United States relating to their honors thesis. The idea for the prize originated with two former history students, Ben Leiner (’14) and Naveed Amalfard (’14), who counted Roark as an inspiring mentor and professor. Read the Emory News Center’s full report on the prize here.
Reuben Lack, graduate of the Class of 2016, has released a science-fiction webseries called EPSILON. The story focuses on a world with various forms of artificial intelligence and its impact on humanity. With the collapse of food and habitable spaces for citizenry, people are forced within one of three refuges for protection. Each refuge relies on androids to help maintain security and protect against outsiders. The cities’ political dynamics are based off of several political theories, most notably Plato’s vision in the Republic of a philosopher-king and ‘Guardian’ protectors. If you’re interested in watching the first episode of the webseries or supporting the Patreon campaign for the project, please visit the project page here.
Dr. James Roark, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of American History, will retire at the end of the semester after 33 years at Emory. A specialist in the 18th and 19th century history of the American South, Roark has served as department chair twice and has authored or coauthored numerous works. They include Masters Without Slaves: Southern Planters in the Civil War and Reconstruction (1977), Black Masters: A Free Family of Color in the Old South (1986), and The American Promise, which is about to release its 7th edition.
