UMass History Annual Writer-in-Residence
The History Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst is dedicated to the idea that an understanding of the past is essential to a free and enlightened citizenry. As a measure of that commitment, the Department of History's Writer-in-Residence program facilitates sustained conversation with widely-read authors whose historical work engages broad public audiences.
Each year, with major funding from Five Colleges, Inc., we bring a writer of national prominence to campus for a week-long residency in order to give focused attention in our graduate training to writing for a range of audiences and in a variety of venues well beyond the monograph or scholarly article. Our guest visits courses and seminars, meets with students and faculty over coffee, lunches and dinners, and gives a public lecture on campus or in Amherst.
The residency is embedded within our signature seminar, Writing History. The course centerpiece is the week-long residency of our guest author, whose work forms a focus for our semester-long discussion. In this way, graduate students from UMass Amherst expand their ability to write for a wider array of readers, sharing the insights of our discipline both within the academy and well beyond.
2013 Writer-In-Residence: Robin D. G. Kelley
Robin Kelley is an American historian whose research and teaching interests range widely, covering the history of labor and radical movements in the U.S., the African Diaspora, and Africa; intellectual and cultural history (particularly music and visual culture); urban studies, and transnational movements.
Some of his most popular books include: Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original, Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times, and Yo’ Mama’s DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America. His essays have also appeared in The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The African Studies Review, The Journal of American History, and many others. He visited UMass in March 2013 to meet with classes and give public talks on “The Long Rise and Short Decline of American Democracy” (March 5th, 4PM, Cape Cod) and his current book project on Grace Halsell, a white journalist known for her experiments in racial and cultural crossing (March 6th, 4:30PM, Paino Lecture Hall, Amherst College).
Watch Robin Kelley's talk "The Long Rise and Short Decline of American Democracy" (3/5/13) here.
March 4th-8th Schedule
Opening Reception
Monday, March 4th, 5PM (Herter 6th floor lobby - please rsvp to history@history.umass.edu)
Public Lecture: "The Long Rise and Short Decline of American Democracy"
Tuesday, March 5th, 4PM (Cape Cod Lounge)
Brown Bag Lunch with Graduate Students
Wednesday, March 6th, 12 noon (Reading Room, New Africa House)
Public Lecture: "Seeking Soul Sister: Grace Halsell and the Quest for a Compassionate World"
Wednesday, March 6th, 4:30PM (Paino Lecture Hall, Beneski Museum of Natural History, Amherst College)
Closing Reception
Friday, March 8th, 12:30PM (Herter Hall 601 - please rsvp to history@history.umass.edu)
The Department of History would like to thank its 2013 Program Partners: Five Colleges, Inc., UMass Department of English, UMass Department of Music, Amherst College Departments of Black Studies, History, and American Studes, School of Critical Inquiry and the Humanities Program, HACU; as well as its Sponsors: UMass Departments of Afro-American Studies, Political Science, and Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Mount Holyoke College Department of History, and Smith College Departments of History, American Studies, and Afro-American Studies.
2012 Tony Horwitz
Tony is a native of Washington, D.C., and a graduate of Brown University and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. He won the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting and worked as a staff writer for The New Yorker before becoming a full-time author. Four of his books have been national and New York Times bestsellers: A Voyage Long and Strange, Blue Latitudes, Confederates in the Attic, and Baghdad Without A Map. He lives with his wife, Geraldine Brooks, and their sons, Nathaniel and Bizu, on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts.
In March, Tony visited UMass courses in the History, Afro-American Studies, and Journalism departments, as well as meeting with the undergraduate History Club and graduate Public History students. He gave a public lecture on the subject of his new book, Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War.
2011 Jill Lepore
Jill Lepore is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American History at Harvard University. She is the co-founder of the magazine Common-place and a board member of the National Portrait Gallery and the Society of American Historians. Her essays and reviews have appeared in The New Yorker, the Times Literary Supplement, American Scholar, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, The Daily Beast, The Journal of American History, and American Quarterly. She has one the Anisfield-Wolf Award for the best non-fiction book on race, the Bancroft Prize, and the Ralph Waldo Emerson Prize. Her book The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party's Revolution and the Battle over American History (Princeton, 2010) was a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice.
2010 Debby Applegate
Debby Applegate is best known for her book The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher, which earned her a Pulitzer Prize for Biography in 2007. She has taught at Yale and Wesleyan University and serves on the board trustee of The New Haven Review. Applegate is an alumna of Amherst College '89. She completed her Ph.D. in American Studies at Yale.
2009 Russell Shorto
Russell Shorto is the author of The Island at the Center of the World: The Epic Story of Dutch Manhattan and the Forgotten Colony that Shaped America and, more recently, Descartes' Bones: A Skeletal History of the Conflict Between Faith and Reason. He is also a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and heads The John Adams Institute in Amsterdam.
2008 Charles C. Mann
Charles C. Mann is a correspondent for Science and The Atlantic Monthly, and a three-time finalist for the National Magazine Award. However, he is best known for his books 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, which won the National Academies Communication Award, and 1493: Uncovering the New World Columbus Created. As the UMass Depertmant of History's Writer-in-Residence, Mr. Mann met with a number of undergraduate and graduate classes in the History, Journalism, and Anthropology departments. His public lecture discussed how to bring historical and scientific research to non-academic audiences.
2007 Charles Sennott
Charles Sennott, the 2007 Writer-in-Residence, is an award-winning journalist and a former Middle East and European bureau chief for the Boston Globe. During his long career as a reporter and on-air analyst, he covered international stories such as the first World Trade Center bombing and the oil industry in Saudi Arabia. He has also produced an array of multimedia works. He is currently the Vice President and Executive Editor of GlobalPost news. Sennott completed his undergraduate degree in History at UMass Amherst and an M.S. at Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism.
2006 Dennis McNally
Dennis McNally, who completed his PhD at UMass Amherst, is the longtime publicist for The Grateful Dead and the band's official biographer. He is also the author of the book, Desolate Angel: Jack Kerouac, the Beat Generation, a work based on his doctoral dissertation.