We're excited to announce the release of the preliminary program for the 13th Annual Atlanta Studies Symposium! We hope to see you all on Thursday, May 14th at Georgia State!

Many thanks to all who have already submitted proposals for the 13th Annual Atlanta Studies Symposium!

However, in order to maximize participation in this year's symposium, we are extending the abstract and session submission deadline by TWO WEEKS to Friday, February 27th!

📆🚨 REMINDER ⏰⚠️

Abstract submissions for the 13th Annual Atlanta Studies Symposium are due in EXACTLY ONE MONTH!

Be sure to submit your proposal for a paper, poster or organized session by February 13th! More info at the CFP below 👇👇

atlantastudies.org/2025/12/17/c...

As we ring in the new year, it's time to recap all the excellent Atlanta-focused scholarship from 2025 that was published outside of our own (virtual) pages! Catch up on all that you missed throughout the year with our annual round up here: atlantastudies.org/2026/01/01/s...

We are especially excited to welcome @brian-goldstone.bsky.social & Augustus Wood to deliver the keynotes at this year's symposium, sharing their respective work documenting the resilience & resistance of Atlanta's Black working class, who have long been left at the margins of Atlanta scholarship

We are excited to announce the 13th Annual Atlanta Studies Symposium, to be held Thursday, May 14, 2026 at Georgia State University.

More information on the symposium and how to submit your abstract or session proposal is available from: atlantastudies.org/2025/12/17/c...

In his new article in Atlanta Studies, Robert Birdwell makes the case for a racially integrated people’s movement across metro Atlanta to prefigure the kind of racially integrated and equitable society we hope to build. Check it out below 👇👇

atlantastudies.org/2025/12/09/t...

ABSTRACT The city of Atlanta is well known for its corporate-led white–Black urban regime and the ‘Atlanta Way,’ an approach that neglects the city’s low-income residents. Under Mayor Andre Dickens, the city made some changes in affordable housing policy, including standing up a new social housing developer and implementing a housing trust fund. National media and think tanks have praised the Dickens Administration for these efforts. Because affordable housing is a key component of equitable urban policy and planning, do such efforts signal a ‘beginning of the end’ of the Atlanta Way? Unfortunately, I find that the answer is no. I argue that these somewhat stronger affordable housing efforts do not constitute any sort of paradigm shift. The city has yet to address the undertaxation of commercial real estate, leaving it unable to capture a sufficient share of the growth in land values for more equitable development, and it has failed to devote sufficient resources towards deeply affordable housing for the lowest-income Atlantans. Moreover, the city derailed a referendum on its Cop City project, a major investment in policing favored by corporate interests. In the end, the Atlanta Way still seems to be very much alive.

💥 💥💥New Article Alert.

"The ‘Beginning of the end’ for the Atlanta Way? Not so fast."

First 50 copies free (please use your library access if available).

Library access: doi.org/10.1080/0266...

First 50 free (if no library access): www.tandfonline.com/eprint/CQ4VX...

Did you know that the Atlanta Braves' move to Cobb County in 2017 wasn't the first time the suburban county tried to lure a professional team with the promise of a new stadium?

Check out @andrewbramlett.bsky.social's new article in for more of this history!

atlantastudies.org/2025/10/20/c...

Check out our latest note from GSU librarian Bryan Sinclair on the recently published online exhibit “The Elevated City”, which explores the various ways Atlanta city leaders, designers and engineers have sought to raise the city about street level over time.

atlantastudies.org/2025/08/19/t...

In this excerpt from his new book, Augustus Wood examines one chapter in the long-neglected history of Atlanta's Black working class, telling the story of strikes against unjust labor practices and housing conditions by working class Black women in the 1970s

atlantastudies.org/2025/08/06/t...

In this excerpt from his book “America’s Black Capital: How African Americans Remade Atlanta in the Shadow of the Confederacy”, Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar reframes the politics of early 1970s Atlanta around what he calls Afro-self-determinism.

Give it a read 👇👇

atlantastudies.org/2025/07/24/a...

We’re delighted to share our latest article, an excerpt from Hannah Palmer’s latest book “The Pool is Closed”. As she writes in the introduction, this piece “feels like the emotional heart of my book and it isn’t even about pools.”

Check it out 👇👇
atlantastudies.org/2025/07/02/f...

We look forward to having an excerpt of Augustus Wood's new book on "Class Struggle in Black Atlanta" featured on ATLS in the coming months!

Be sure to check out Morehouse professor Keith Hollingsworth's new article in ATLS, providing new evidence about the perseverance - and growth - of Atlanta's Black business community in the wake of the city's infamous 1906 race massacre.

atlantastudies.org/2025/05/27/p...

How would @archiveatlanta.bsky.social fix Atlanta?

Looking to our past can help us better solve our current problems—especially since we've had many of the same issues since 1837.

It's time for Atlanta to hire an official historian.

how-id-fix-atlanta.ghost.io/how-victoria...

You Can't Kill a Man Because of the Books He Reads The story of a young, Black Communist Party organizer wrongly convicted of attempting to incite insurrection and the landmark case that made him a civil rights hero., You Can't Kill a Man Because of t...

Anyone out there want to write a review of this new book for Atlanta Studies and connect the legacy of Angelo Herndon's case to the present day? Let us know!

Don't forget to register for next week's 12th Annual Atlanta Studies Symposium! We hope to see you at Morehouse on May 2nd!

Program: atlantastudies.org/2025/04/08/a...

Registration: docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

It means a lot to me that this piece—which I originally wrote as a preface to my dissertation—found a home in @atlstudies.bsky.social

“Calling it Weelaunee signals the utopic visioning of the Stop Cop City movement, which refuses a forward march of history that erodes commons and public spaces and treats any resource, like the Weelaunee River, as a tool for the state or for corporations.”

Check out our latest article by @dezmiller.bsky.social, a personal account of their experiences with the movement to Stop Cop City and learning to engage with the forests, creeks and streams around which Atlanta was built.

atlantastudies.org/2025/04/22/w...

Decorative Flyer for the 12th Annual Atlanta Studies Symposium

📣 We are excited to announce the program for the 12th Annual Atlanta Studies Symposium, to be held May 2, 2025 at Morehouse College!

Be sure to check out all the awesome sessions we have planned and register for the symposium at the link below!

atlantastudies.org/2025/04/08/a...

Great piece by Andy Walter, & this map of ticket buyers is pretty much map of affluent "favored quarter" of Atlanta metro, where local government, homeowners, & developers have worked to maintain and reinforce exclusion through "displace-and-replace" redevelopment, among other practices. #RedHotCity

In honor of tonight's home opener for the Atlanta Braves, revisit Andy Walter’s ATLS classic “Mapping Braves Country” to learn more about how the Braves used maps to justify their move out of Atlanta's urban core and into to the suburbs of Cobb County

atlantastudies.org/2015/09/09/m...

Atlanta - Night of Ideas Centered around the theme of “Common Ground”, the 2025 edition of Atlanta's Night of Ideas will question how we live in cities and embrace the diversity of worlds.

Don't miss 2025's Night of Ideas next Saturday, March 29th at The Goat Farm!

Hosted by Villa Albertine, the French Institute for Culture and Education, Atlanta’s edition will question how we live in cities and embrace the diversity of worlds.

Registration is free, but required!

Archival image of a downtown Atlanta street being prepared for elevation as part of the city's 1920s viaduct system

Take a step back in time to the streetscapes of south downtown in the late 1920s with GSU librarian Bryan Sinclair's new piece, which highlights archival images held by the GSU Library that were stitched together to show these streets prior to their elevation

atlantastudies.org/2025/02/15/b...

We're also excited to publicly announce the appointment of Taylor Shelton @jtsphd.bsky.social as the new executive editor of Atlanta Studies!

You can read Taylor's editorial introduction and more about his vision for Atlanta Studies at the link below 👇

Screenshot of the new design for the Atlanta Studies website

With just a couple of days delay, we are so excited to celebrate the 10th Anniversary of Atlanta Studies by launching our new website! 🎂🎉🥳

A huge thanks goes out to Bailey Betik of @ecds-emory.bsky.social for her work in leading the redesign and providing the journal with a new look and feel

Hannah Palmer is a writer and artist from the Southside of Atlanta. Through essays, memoir, and public art projects, she explores how hidden histories and wildness shape our lives in the urban landscape. Her memoir Flight Path: A Search for Roots beneath the World's Busiest Airport (Hub City Press, 2017) was included on Atlanta Magazine’s list of “essential books that explain today’s Atlanta.” Palmer’s newest book, The Pool Is Closed: Segregation, Summertime, and the Search for a Place to Swim was published by LSU Press in October 2024.

Hannah Palmer is a writer and artist from Atlanta’s Southside who will deliver our other keynote address. A longtime friend of Atlanta Studies, Hannah’s latest book “The Pool Is Closed: Segregation, Summertime, and the Search for a Place to Swim” was published this past fall by LSU Press.

Jeffrey O. G. Ogbar is Professor of History and the founding Director of the Center for the Study of Popular Music at the University of Connecticut. He is author or editor of six books, most recently America’s Black Capital: How African Americans Remade Atlanta in the Shadow of the Confederacy (Basic Books, 2023). He received his B.A. in history from Morehouse College and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in history from Indiana University.

Dr. Jeffrey Ogbar, professor of history at the University of Connecticut, will deliver the annual Cliff Kuhn Memorial Lecture. Dr. Ogbar is a Morehouse alum and author of the recent book "America’s Black Capital: How African Americans Remade Atlanta in the Shadow of the Confederacy”.