Fox Center for Humanistic Inquiry

Juneteenth, otherwise known as “Emancipation Day” or “Freedom Day,” is a day to remember and celebrate the end of slavery in the United States.

If you are in Atlanta, there are a variety of ways to celebrate in and around town:

June 19-21: Come on down to Piedmont Park for the 14th annual Juneteenth parade & music festival! While the festival will host three full days of activities and vendors, the parade will take place on the 20th at 10 am. Visit https://bit.ly/4aURM6v for more information.

June 19, all day: The Hapeville Depot Museum will be hosting special programing in celebration of the holiday. All activities are free and open to the public. For a posted schedule, see https://bit.ly/4ovJUOD.

June 19, 11 am: Join the City of Roswell for a free Black Experience Tour at Barrington Hall. Learn about the enslaved experience in Roswell. For more information and to register, visit https://bit.ly/4eszbj8.

June 19, 6 pm: Enjoy a free screening of “Maynard,” a documentary about Atlanta’s first African-American mayor, at Historic Oakland Cemetery. There will be food trucks and kids activities as part of their “Finally, Friday” series.

June is Pride Month! Join the Fox Center as we celebrate and center LGBTQ pride and the history of the LGBTQ movement.

If you are looking for reading material this month, consider “Safe Space: Gay Neighborhood History and the Politics of Violence” (Duke University Press, 2013) by former postdoctoral fellow Dr. Christina Hanhardt (University of Maryland).

“Safe Space” was the winner of the 2014 Lambda Literary Award for Best Book in LGBT Studies and honorable mention for both the American Studies Association’s John Hope Franklin Prize and its Lora Romero Prize. In it, Hanhardt rewrites the story of the LGBT movement in the United States in the context of urban development, race, and US policy.

Learn more: https://www.dukeupress.edu/safe-space

Happy Friday! Today we are spotlighting 2025-26 Undergraduate Humanities Honors Fellow Kate Richardson.

Kate's senior thesis is titled, "The Life of Marian Diamond: Biography as Contextualization for the Regression of S*x Equalized Research within Neuroscience."

By reconstructing Diamond’s legacy to recenter the narrative on previously excluded material, Kate highlights how biographical storytelling can challenge dominant narratives and reveal systemic patterns of exclusion. As Kate said herself when she sat down with the Fox Center for her spotlight interview,

“The scientific method usually regards personal stories as erroneous or distracting from “hard” scientific truth. I believe that, through personal narrative, we can understand the impacts of science and how we do science.”

Now a graduated member of the Class of 2026, Kate will be working as a Genetic Counseling Assistant in the Atlanta Healthcare network while applying to her master’s program in Genetic Counseling.

To read our full interview with Kate, visit https://bit.ly/4ujdF6m.

Congrats, Kate!

This week, we are pleased to spotlight 2025-26 Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor of Catholic Studies Susan Reynolds! Her new book project, "Ways of the Cross," examines the narrative and ritual form of Christ’s passion as a way of telling different life stories.

In this interview, Susan discusses more about her experience as a 2025-26 Life/Story fellow and how her relationship to her own discipline has been deepened through the Fox Center fellowship.

"Every time I read a piece by one of my colleagues, I am astounded by how much I'm able to connect to it, even though it's in a discipline completely outside my own. The opportunity to have my own work read by colleagues who are outside my discipline has given rise to such rich and important insights, some of which have genuinely transformed my own vision of the project.

This is what a university is at its best. When you dream of a faculty job, or dream of teaching and working in a university, this is the kind of experience that you dream of."

Read the full interview now: https://fchi.emory.edu/news-events/news-articles/fellow-focus-susan.html

Summer may be in session, but we are still celebrating our 2025-26 Life/Story fellows!⁠
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This week, we are excited to spotlight Faculty Fellow Hwisang Cho. Hwisang is Associate Professor of Korean Studies at Emory University. In this conversation, Hwisang discusses his new book project, the importance of interdisciplinarity, and the benefits of breaking with routine.⁠
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In reflecting on the ways in which the fellowship has helped Hwisang out of his own disciplinary crisis, he had this to say:⁠
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"I think I'm sharpening my position at the disciplinary crossroad in more elegant ways through this fellowship because I appreciate the conversations that I have with the other fellows from different disciplines like anthropology, theology, theater and literature. These conversations help me to communicate in better ways with people across different disciplines. And, in a way, I can free myself from this burden that I have felt as a historian. Now I am trying to write something that is relatable to the informed readers."⁠
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Visit https://bit.ly/4dEL7PT to read Hwisang's full interview.

This week, we're spotlighting Faculty Fellow and Emory Anthropology Assoc. Professor Kristin Phillips ✨⁠
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During her fellowship year, Kristin worked on her book project "Light Bills & Black Lives" that examines the ways in which the energy system in Georgia and high electricity bills impact people's abilities to pay their rent, to buy food, to purchase medications, to make homes, and to live a good life.⁠
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On her favorite part of her Fox Fellowship, Kristin shared:⁠
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"I've always loved working at Emory. It's such a stimulating place. I wear a lot of different hats at Emory, and I've loved what all those have helped me to do and to become. But having this time and space here has felt very nurturing in terms of my scholarship and provided me with focus that is really hard to get when you're in the thick of teaching, mentoring, and service. [T]o have this dedicated time has been a unique blessing."⁠
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This spring, Kristin was also awarded a $1 million Alfred P. Sloan Foundation grant to study the impact of the rapid growth of data centers.

Read more about this special honor: https://news.emory.edu/stories/2026/01/esc_sloan_grant_funds_15-01-2026/story.html
Check out Kristin's full spotlight interview: https://fchi.emory.edu/news-events/news-articles/fellow-focus-kristin.html

📣 Fellowship Application Deadline Extended to June 1st! 📣⁠
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If you're a rising Emory College senior, there's still time to apply for the Fox Center's 2026-27 Undergraduate Humanities Honors Fellowship! ⁠
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Guided by our "Habitat" theme, we invite students whose honors thesis tackle any of the following: the natural environment; climate change and natural disasters; architecture, housing and urban spaces; rural-urban divides; migration and identity; industrialization, globalization, and technological change 🌱🏭 🌊⁠
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Undergraduate Humanities Honors Fellows receive research funding, mentorship from senior fellows, and opportunities to participate in exclusive Fox Center programming. ⁠

Proposals from all humanistic and creative disciplines are welcome, and it is not necessary to have started work on your thesis project.

Learn more: https://fchi.emory.edu/fellowships/ug-fellowship.html
Apply now: https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=nPsE4KSwT0K80DImBtXfOCl0gQ5r2z1AuIwaK9PDCgFUNUdZQUNFTDdPQkhZWUJIOU0wTU45N0pOTyQlQCN0PWcu

This week we're spotlighting Undergraduate Honors Fellow and Economics and History double major Daniel Bell 🌟 Daniel's honors thesis project examined the life of Herbert Jenkins, the longest serving police chief in Atlanta's history. ⁠
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On the 2025-26 research theme "Life/Story," Daniel shared: "What I'm trying to extricate, and why I like the “Life/Story” theme so much, is: where does the individual end and the system begin? It's a really useful and necessary question for understanding history. ⁠
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By asking this question, I am hoping to identify which events were the result of [Herbert] Jenkins’ actions versus which events were a natural consequence of the various systems in which he was operating."⁠
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If you're interested in becoming a 2026-27 Undergraduate Honors Fellow, there's still time to apply! The application deadline has been extended to June 1st. ⁠
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Read Daniel's spotlight: https://fchi.emory.edu/news-events/news-articles/fellow-focus-daniel.html
Learn more about the fellowship: https://fchi.emory.edu/fellowships/fellowship-types/ug-fellowship.html

Congratulations to our graduating Undergraduate Honors Fellows! 🎉🎓️ ⁠
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This past April, the Fox was proud to gather for our annual Undergraduate Honors Fellows' Colloquium where Fellows presented their thesis projects and participated in three conference-style panels, moderated by Mellon Postdoctoral Fellows Jeff Williams and Victoria Bergbauer and Non-Residential Faculty Fellow Héctor Álvarez. ⁠
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The program included:⁠
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* Thiên Nguyễn - “Making Them Known: The Lives of Working First-Generation College Students at an Elite University” ⁠
* Samuel Chao - "Heathen for Heaven: Religion, Race, and Chinese American Relational Redemption in the Chinese Exclusion Era, 1873-1920"⁠
* Anita Osuri - "Uncommon Illness, Unequal Burden: Rare Disease at the Intersections of Identity"⁠
* Abby Brown - “Out of Sight, Out of Mercy: Death Row Through the Eyes of Loved Ones”⁠
* Isabel Buyers - “Memory, Movement, and Identity: Narratives of Neurodegeneration in Latin American Literature and Film” ⁠
* Thora Jordt - “Beyond psychology: Technology and agency in Aelita (1924)”⁠
* Olivia Gilbert - "Screening Obscenity: The Role of Censorship in She Done Him Wrong, Deep Throat, and Showgirls"⁠
* Eunjae Thompson - “The Birth of the No-Body Behind Venus & Meditations on Touch” ⁠
* Daniel Bell - “Public Men in Glass Houses: Herbert Jenkins and the Reformers of the Atlanta Police Department”⁠
* Leo Raykher - “Economics, Espionage, and Exile: the Surveilled life of David Drucker, esq.”⁠
* Kate Richardson - “The Life of Marian Diamond: Biography as Contextualization for the Regression of S*x Equalized Research within Neuroscience” ⁠
* Claire Burkhardt - “Jihadist, Rebel, Statesman? A microhistory of Ahmed al-Sharaa”⁠
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The Fox Center is so proud of everything our Undergraduate Fellows accomplished and we can't wait to see what they achieve next!⁠
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Watch the Colloquium: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_z9DJpGKbg&t=3s
Learn about our Fellows' next chapters: https://fchi.emory.edu/news-events/news-articles/lifestory-congrats.html

We're excited to announce that Undergraduate Honors Fellow and History major Leo Raykher has won the 2026 FCHI Undergraduate Honors Award! 🌟⁠
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This award recognizes Leo's outstanding work on his thesis project and exemplary engagement in the Undergraduate Honors Fellowship this academic year. On winning the award, Leo shared:⁠
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"I'm so humbled and grateful to have been able to work with not only accomplished but compassionate people this past year at the Fox Center. This award is a culmination of all the time that I spent working on this project, which was deeply personal for me. I'm so honored that Dr. Freeman and the Fox Center team saw that in my work."⁠
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Congratulations, Leo! Read more on our site: https://fchi.emory.edu/news-events/news-articles/fchi-award-raykher.html