1356 Campus Drive, East Campus, 224 Classroom Bldg., Box 90719, Durham, NC  27708-0719 | (919) 684-3014 | history.duke.edu                                       vol. 6, May 2025

Highlighting the accomplishments of our faculty, graduate students, and alumni, as well as events and other noteworthy topics.  Suggestions and submissions are welcome at history@duke.edu.  Submission is no guarantee of inclusion.

Dear Friends of Duke History,

Greetings at the end of another eventful year when our faculty and students have accomplished much, as this newsletter also makes clear. I take this opportunity to recall...   [click for full text] 

Marty Miller on his new book from Routledge Press, Observers from Abroad: Twentieth Century Documentary Photography in the USSR

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"This project began with a visit to the used bookstore on Franklin Street in Chapel Hill. I found a book by John Steinbeck titled A Russian Journal with a cover image by the famed documentary photographer, Robert Capa. I learned that they had been granted visas in 1947 to travel to the Soviet Union. What especially caught my attention were the extraordinary images that Capa was able to take, on the one hand, of ordinary, personal lives, and, on the other, of the postwar devastation still visible, especially in Stalingrad. This led me to question whether other Western documentary photographers had also worked in the Soviet Union during the years before and during the height of the Cold War. I ended up with a dozen individuals, including Margaret Bourke-White and Henri Cartier-Bresson, over the entire span of the Soviet Union. In analyzing their work, much of which was obtained from archival collections, I am arguing that they reveal aspects of quotidian Soviet cultural life that clearly enrich our knowledge of the history of the USSR beyond the standard written texts in the field."

James Chappel has continued to promote his Fall 2024 book release: Golden Years: How Americans Invented and Reinvented Old Age. This has brought him to some surprising places, including the Miami Book Fair and several of the Triangle’s finest retirement communities. He has also been appointed to a statewide group called “All Ages, All Stages NC,” run from the state’s Department of Health and Human Services. Together with a gerontologist from UNC-Wilmington, he will be convening a set of statewide discussions in order to contribute to a governor-ordered “Multisector Plan” for the state’s aging population.

Ed Balleisen, along with Dean of the Graduate School Suzanne Barbour, has received an $8 million grant from The Duke Endowment to support the creation of interdisciplinary Ph.D. cohorts at Duke.  Balleisen also has co-authored an open-access guide to collaborative project learning, which showcases seventeen innovative programs across North America, including Duke’s Bass Connections program.

Ylana Miller's new publication, Fleeing from History: Zionism, Israel, and the United States is forthcoming from SUNY Press later this year.

Cecilia Marquez's popular course, History of Latinxs in the U.S., was featured on CSPAN's "Lectures in History" and CSPAN2's "American History TV" back in January.

Sarah Balakrishnan has a new article, “The Taviefe Massacre, 1888: Violence and Colonial Rule in British Ghana,” in The South Atlantic Quarterly (2025). This article uncovers a previously unknown massacre of 800-1000 people in southern Ghana by British colonial troops, arguing that the massacre was a central event in the colonization of the Gold Coast.

On February 14th, Thavolia Glymph was presented the Raymond Gavins Distinguished Faculty Award by the Samuel Dubois Cook Society.  Glymph was one of five award recipients whose work, research and service reflect Cook’s social activism and leadership.

Historian of Brazil John D. French was exhausted but happy when a Hip Hop Show by rappers from the NGO Enraizados (The Rooted) in Baixada Fluminense (Rio lowlands) ended a daylong conference on “Hip Hop, Faith, and Citizenship” on March 3rd after a week of activities, with nine Brazilian visitors, as part of a Bass Connections project co-sponsored by North Carolina Central University (an HBCU) and Duke University (an historically white university). The project was co-directed over two years by French and Duke alumna Gladys Mitchell-Walthour, the NCCU Dan Blue Endowed Chair in Political science, and two Duke Romance Studies graduate students Lucas Lopes and Courtney Crumpler. For more information, click here.  Pics: 1) Rapper Dudu de Morro Agudo, founder of Enraizados, and Montu Miller from Athens Georgia; 2) NCCU students Ronni Butts & Zaria Hanchell & Gladys Mitchell-Walthour and daughter Truth.

Sumathi Ramaswamy is happy to report the publication of an overdue essay in which she draws on contemporary art works to explore the entanglement of Gandhi in and with materiality, despite his yearning to become immaterial (“The Unbearable Lightness of Being Mahatma,” In Truth and Nonviolence in Post-Truth Times: Parleying with Gandhi, ed. Vinay Lal (Oxford University Press, 2025), pp. 135-173). Pictured: Gandhi and His Things, by Haku Shah.

Karin Shapiro was one of the inaugural winners of the Judith Deckers Teaching Prize for excellence in undergraduate education.  The committee received nominations for 120 faculty from across the university.  The award ceremony took place in late January.

Tamika Nunley has been named William & Sue Gross Professor, a five-year Bass chair that honors exceptional undergraduate teaching.  The full announcement follows here.  Tamika joins others in our department who have held (or are currently) Bass Chairs, a testimony to our dedication to undergraduate teaching: James Chappel, Malachi Hacohen, Gunther Peck, Tom Robisheaux, and Phil Stern.  More details about the Bass Society of Fellows with a complete list of fellows may be found here.  Still more congratulations are in order, as Tamika was also recently granted tenure as Full Professor in History!

Adam Mestyan, Associate Professor of History and Director of both the Middle East Studies Center and the Islamic Studies Center at Duke University, has accepted an offer as Professor of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University.  His expertise and collegiality will be sorely missed but, of course, we wish him all the best in the next phase of his life and career.

In May, Katharine Brophy Dubois, Ph.D., earns her J.D. from North Carolina Central University School of Law, a historically black university in the heart of Durham. Adding her new expertise in public interest law to her experience publishing historical novels and teaching history, religion, and popular culture courses, she hopes to help students explore the many paths that History and Religion majors can potentially travel after graduation.

Two of our majors- quite possibly graduates by the time you read this!- attended the American Historical Annual Meeting this January in NYC, where they got to hang out with some pretty amazing historians. From left to right: Steven Hahn (NYU), Megan Corey (History major, conference presenter, and co-president of the Duke History Union), Madeleine McLean (History major, representing the Malinda Project), Yael Sternhell (Tel Aviv University), our own Gunther Peck, and David Blight (Yale). Not to mention Thavolia Glymph, outgoing AHA President and Duke History superstar in her own right.

As mentioned in the last newsletter, we were pretty excited to be hosting NYT columnist Jamelle Bouie on February 6.  We're pleased to report the event was a great success, drawing approximately 400 people from Duke and the surrounding community.  It was a thoughtful and entertaining discussion of the current state of our politics and how we might orient ourselves in an historical context.  You can still view a recording of the event here. Pictured here, Bouie (center), with Thavolia Glymph (left), who introduced him, and James Chappel (right), who moderated audience questions to close out the night.

On January 12, a traveling exhibit, spearheaded by Mélanie Lamotte, was launched in the Franklin Gallery@History. "Slavery and Freedom: Journeys Across Time and Space" originated from another exhibit, "The Surprising Story of Furcy Madeleine" which indeed tells the remarkable tale- through a series of visually striking hanging panels- of Madeleine's lifelong struggle for legal freedom.  In 1817, at age 30, Madeleine asserted his status as a free man, having been born free to an Indian mother on French soil.  Twenty-six long and painful years later, Furcy's birthright was finally recognized, making of him a symbol of resistance against slavery and a champion of human rights in Réunion Island and France. The evening featured a guest lecture from Indrani Chatterjee, the John L. Nau III Distinguished Professor in the History and Principles of Democracy, at the University of Virginia.

The History Department’s Graduate Students once again secured several prestigious and competitive fellowships from the Graduate School, the Office of Interdisciplinary Studies and other university units to assist them in their dissertation research for the next academic year.  This list includes all awards secured during the fellowship cycle for 2024-2025, not including Summer Research Fellowships.  In cases where students received multiple awards, they might have had to decline one in favor of the other.  Congratulations to all award winners!   - DGS Jehangir Malegam

Ananya Mahapatra – JB Duke International Research Travel Fellowship; Nikki Locklear – Anne Firor Scott Public Scholars; Rosalind Rothwell – Ottis Green Fellowship; Rosalind Rothwell – Bass Instructional Fellowship: Digital Education Fellowship; Rosalind Rothwell – Bass Instructional Fellowship: Instructor of Record; Reina Henderson - Rubenstein Library Internship: Eleanore Jantz Processing and Cataloging Intern; Reina Henderson – Bass Instructional Fellowship: Instructor of Record; Arthur Braswell - Rubenstein Library Internship: Eleanore Jantz Reference Intern; Arthur Braswell – Duke Military History Fellowship; Abram Smith – E. Bayard Halstead Fellowship; Abram Smith – Aleanne Webb Dissertation Research Fellowship; Erica Neighbors – Aleanne Webb Dissertation Research Fellowship; Alex Brandli – Von der Hayden Global Fellowship; Yaming You – Von der Hayden Global Fellowship; Dannie Brice – Duke Constellations Fellowship; Arielle Rochelin – Dissertation Travel Award: Domestic; Nora Williams – Dissertation Travel Award: Domestic; Shifa Nouman – Duke India Initiative Award

As we congratulate these individuals for their exemplary work, we also take a moment to express our deep gratitude to outgoing Director of Graduate Studies, Jehangir Malegam. Jehangir has worked tirelessly these last three years to adapt our PhD program to the needs of a challenging job market, increasing student opportunities for interdisciplinary scholarship, fellowships, travel grants, and more- all intended to better position our graduating PhDs for the professional landscape waiting just outside these walls.  His success is evident in the many competitive tenure-track jobs and prestigious positions beyond academia that have been secured by recent graduates.  On July 1, Tamika Nunley will assume the position of DGS.

Lesa Redmond (PhD, '25) successfully defended her dissertation this spring, marking the culmination of her doctoral studies at Duke. Dr. Redmond also shared her dissertation research at the National Academy of Education's Spring retreat with her peers in the Spencer Foundation's Dissertation Fellowship. Finally, Dr. Redmond will be joining the faculty of Wake Forest University this fall as a tenure-track Assistant Professor of African American History.

Charles McKinney (PhD ’03), has been promoted to Professor of History at Rhodes College. A former chair of Rhodes’ Africana Studies program, Dr. McKinney recently published the edited volume, From Rights to Lives: The Evolution of The Black Struggle (Vanderbilt 2024).  For more on McKinney’s time at Duke, click here.

Rochelle Rojas (PhD, '17) published her first book, Bad Christians and Hanging Toads: Witch Crafting in Northern Spain, 1525-1675 with Cornell University Press.  Rojas also received tenure at Michigan's Kalamazoo College.

Josh Strayhorn, (PhD, ’24) will be joining the University of Minnesota this fall as an Assistant Professor of African & African-American Studies and History.

Brianna Nofil (BA, ’12) received the Ellis Hawley Prize and the Frederick Jackson Turner Award at Organization of American Historians annual meeting for her book, The Migrant’s Jail: An American History of Mass Incarceration (Princeton University Press, 2024). The book also won a first book award from the Immigration and Ethnic History Society.  The Migrant's Jail grew out of Nofil's Columbia dissertation and Duke honors thesis. As a Duke history major, she won the 2011 Oliver W. Koonz Human Rights Award for her essay, "The Case at Krome: Conditions and Controversies of U.S. Immigration Detention Centers." She wrote this paper in Karin Shapiro's seminar, "American Immigration, Nineteenth Century to the Present."

Crystal R. Sanders (BA, '05) has received the prestigious Pauli Murray Book Prize from the African American Intellectual History Society for her 2024 publication, A Forgotten Migration: Black Southerners, Segregation Scholarships, and the Debt Owed to Public HBCUs (University of North Carolina Press).

The Southern Historical Association has awarded Allison Raven's (PhD, ’23) dissertation, “Separate But Equitable: Colorblind Progressivism and Resegregation in Austin Schools,” the C. Vann Woodward Dissertation Prize for the best dissertation in Southern history defended in the calendar year 2023!

Ashton Merck (PhD, '20) recently took a position as a Program Manager for Climate Research + Engagement at the Museum of Life and Science in Durham, NC. In this role, Ashton manages the Center for Collaborative Heat Monitoring, a $2.3 million NIHHIS Center of Excellence focused on community science to understand the local impacts of extreme heat.