The University of Massachusetts Amherst/Five College Graduate Program in History is pleased to announce that the 2025 Writer-in-Residence is Alan Taylor, historian of early America, two-time Pulitzer Prize recipient and Professor Emeritus at the University of Virginia, where he held the Thomas Jefferson Chair in History. Dr. Taylor will be on campus April 6-11, 2025.
During his week on campus, Dr. Taylor will deliver the Distinguished Annual Lecture in History, "American Civil Wars: Canadian Dimensions," on Tuesday, April 8 at 6:00PM in the Commonwealth Honors College Events Hall. His address will discuss how the United States’ Civil War and Reconstruction periods affected the formation of the Canadian nation. Taylor most recently wrote on this topic in his 2024 American Civil Wars: A Continental History, 1850-1873. Taylor has published ten other books which have received multiple awards.
The Distinguished Annual Lecture is free and open to the public and is co-sponsored by the Five College Consortium and the UMass Amherst Department of History. Copies of Taylor’s books will be available for purchase from Amherst Books at the event.
Organized by the UMass/Five College Graduate Program in History, the Writer-in-Residence Program facilitates sustained conversation with widely-read authors whose historical work engages broad public audiences. Each year, the history department brings a writer of national prominence to campus for a week-long residency. Writers in Residence visit courses and seminars, meet with students and faculty over coffee, lunches, and dinners, and deliver a public lecture.
The Department of History’s Distinguished Annual Lecture celebrates the 1996 establishment of the UMass/Five College Graduate Program in History, and has featured addresses by the nation’s most preeminent historians. It is presented by the UMass/Five College Graduate Program in History with support from the UMass Amherst history department and Five Colleges, Inc.
For more information, contact Alice Nash: @email