Contributors

Johanna Bakmas
Johanna Bakmas is currently an M.A. candidate in the Museum Studies Program at George Washington University with a focus in museum administration. She holds a B.A. in History with a minor in Music from the University of the Pacific. Johanna's interests are museum development, donor events, and marketing, and has interned in Washington, D.C. at the American Writers Museum and the Smithsonian Associates. After graduation she plans to complete an internship with the membership department of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African Art and then move back to California to begin her museum career.

Emma Bilski
Emma Bilski is studying history at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., while working at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Her historical interests center primarily on the social and scientific history of nineteenth-century Britain. After completing her undergraduate degree, she plans to attend graduate school to continue her study of history.

Lydia Mattice Brandt, Ph.D.
Lydia Mattice Brandt is an assistant professor of art history at the University of South Carolina. She studies the history of buildings and landscapes, specializing in American architecture of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Her current research explores the ways in which Americans have remembered Mount Vernon from the eighteenth century to the present day and seeks to understand the influence of the house and its image on popular American architecture and visual culture.

Email: brandtlm@mailbox.sc.edu

Matthew A. Byron, Ph.D.
Dr. Matthew Byron received his BA in history from the University of Massachusetts - Amherst, his MA in history from Clemson University and his Ph.D. in history from the University of Arkansas - Fayetteville.  He is currently Assistant Professor of History at Young Harris College in Georgia where he teaches early American history and classical Greece and Rome. 

T. K. Byron, Ph.D.
Tammy K. Byron is currently Assistant Professor of History at Dalton State College in Dalton, Georgia, where she teaches coursees in Colonial and Revolutionary America. She received her Ph.D. in history from the University of Arkansas--Fayetteville in 2008. Dr. Byron's research interests include colonial/early America, women's history, and American religion.

Email: tbyron@daltonstate.edu

Scott Craig
Scott Craig is a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of History at Florida State University. His dissertation, "Convict Transportation, Penal Reform, and Imperial Ideology in the Making of America and Australia," is a trans-regional study of the politics of convict labor. He is particularly interested in the evolving definitions of penality, and how transportation eventually gave way to the rise of the penitentiary in the British Empire.

Email: wsc08@fsu.edu

Charlotte Doney
Charlotte Doney is currently a senior majoring in archaeology at the George Washington University. Her interests  include historical archaeology and Mesoamerican archaeology. For the past two years she has been working in objects conservation at the Smithsonian's Museum Conservation Institute. After graduation she plans to work in a museum related career.

Alana Donocoff
Alana Donocoff is a Master's student in the Museum Studies program at the George Washington University. She has written a thesis at SUNY New Paltz on “Pilgrimage in Santiago de Compostela: the Role of Pilgrimage in a Medieval vs. a Modern World.”  Alana is currently working in the Gelman Library Special Collections with the National Education Archivist and is studying to become a collections manager.

Shannon E. Duffy, Ph.D.
Shannon Duffy received her BA from Emory University, her MA from the University of New Orleans, and her Ph.D. from the University of Maryland. She is currently a Senior Lecturer at Texas State University. Dr. Duffy's research interests include Revolutionary Boston, Newport and Philadelphia, the Eighteenth-Century Enlightenment, and US Relations with the Barbary in the Early National Period.

Email: sd22@txstate.edu

Carol Ebel, Ph.D.
Carol S. Ebel received her doctorate in 1996 from the University of Georgia. Her fields of research include the colonial era, the Revolution, the Early Republic, and the southern frontier. She worked as an assistant professor of history at Armstrong Atlantic State University in Savannah, Georgia before she accepted her current position as an editor of the Presidential Series, The Papers of George Washington, at the University of Virginia. Dr. Ebel also studies the lives and careers of Virginians who migrated to Georgia during the late eighteenth century.

Email: cse7d@virginia.edu

Meredith Eliassen
Meredith Eliassen, the operations manager for Special Collections at the J. Paul Leonard Library at San Francisco State University, has studied the family in the United States and how the emerging nationalism of America's Early Republic era influenced the lives of ordinary individuals. She recently contributed an essay to Companion to George Washington, edited by Edward G. Lengel, (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012) examining how politicians shaped historic memory during the period of public mourning for George Washington in early 1800 to foster nationalism. Eliassen also wrote a chapter, for Reclaiming Beauty: Collected Essays on Political Anthropology, volume 1, edited by Agnes Horvath and James B. Cuffe (Ficino Press, 2012) exploring the semantics of "industry" as an element of beauty inculcated with fairy tales and fables published in primers and elementary readers to foster female characteristics needed to build and enduring democracy in the United States between 1790 and 1820.

Email: eliassen@sfsu.edu

William M. Etter, Ph.D.
William M. Etter, Ph.D is a Professor of English at Irvine Valley College in California. He is the author of The Good Body: Normalizing Visions in Nineteenth-Century American Literature and Culture, 1836-1867 and various articles in the fields of American Studies and Disability Studies.

Email: better@ivc.edu

Mason Faulkner Fields
Mason Faulkner Fields received his B.A. in history from Sam Houston State University in 2008. His MA thesis, in progress at Texas State University, is entitled "Washington and Mason: The Fairfax Collaboration" and examines the close personal and political relationship between George Washington and George Mason in the years preceding the Revolutionary War.

Email: mf1117@txstate.edu

Siobhan Fitzpatrick
Siobhan Fitzpatrick received her B.A. from Ramapo College of New Jersey and her M.A. in history from Villanova University. She has previously worked at Valley Forge National Historical Park and currently serves as the Curator of Collections and Exhibits for the Museum of Early Trades & Crafts in Madison, NJ.

E-mail: curator@metc.org

William F. Fowler, Jr., Ph.D.
William M. Fowler, Jr. the former director of the Massachusetts Historical Society is Distinguished Professor of History at Northeastern University. Professor Fowler received his undergraduate degree from Northeastern University and his Ph.D. from the University of Notre Dame. He is the former editor of The New England Quarterly and the author of a number of books relating to American history including: William Ellery A Rhode Island Politico and Lord of Admiralty; Rebels Under Sail: The Navy in the Revolution; The Baron of Beacon Hill: A Biography of John Hancock; Jack Tars and Commodores: The American Navy 1783-1815; Silas Talbot : Captain of Old Ironsides; Under Two Flags: The American Navy in the Civil War; Samuel Adams: Puritan Radical and Empires at War: The French and Indian War and the Struggle For North America, 1754-1763. He wrote the Introduction and Epilogue to Boston Looks Seaward and he is co-author of America and The Sea: A Maritime History of America. His most recent book (2011) is American Crisis: George Washington and the Dangerous Two Years After Yorktown, 1781-1783.

Michael P. Gabriel, Ph.D.
Michael P. Gabriel is a professor of history at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. Gabriel earned his Ph.D. at Penn State University and  has authored two books, The Battle of Bennington: Soldiers and Civilians (2012) and Major General Richard Montgomery: The Making of an American Hero (2002), and co-edited a third, Quebec During the American Invasion, 1775-1776: The Journal of François Baby, Gabriel Taschereau, and Jenkin Williams (2005).

Email: gabriel@kutztown.edu

Cassandra Good, Ph.D.
Cassandra Good received her Ph.D. in History at the University of Pennsylvania. She is working on a book project on friendships between men and women in the early American republic as well as a project on George Washington's descendants. She is now the Assistant Editor of the Papers of James Monroe at the University of Mary Washington.

Email: cgood@umw.edu
Website: http://umw.academia.edu/CassandraGood

Kevin Grimm, Ph.D.
Kevin Grimm received his Ph.D. in the history of American foreign relations from Ohio University in June 2012 and is currently a visiting assistant professor at Beloit College. His dissertation, "Symbol of Modernity: Ghana, African Americans, and the Eisenhower Administration," focused on attempts by black Americans to use Ghana in the civil rights movement as a symbol of black ability to wield power effectively, fairly, and safely in modern political systems. Grimm also traced the significant level of African American influence on both general U.S. foreign relations with Africa and on specific episodes in the American relationship with Ghana.

Rob Hardy, Ph.D.
Rob Hardy is a poet, writer, and research associate in classics at Carleton College. He has won a national poetry chapbook competition, had his adaptation of Aeschylus's Oresteia performed to sold out audiences at Carleton's new theater, and had his poetry stamped into downtown sidewalks in Northfield, Minnesota. His scholarship on America and the classical tradition has appeared in International Journal of the Classical Tradition, New England Quarterly, and Dickinson College's Blog Divided.

Email: rhardy@carleton.edu

Michael D. Hattem
Michael D. Hattem is a doctoral student at Yale University. He received his B.A. in History from the City University of New York. His work focuses on colonial and Revolutionary America, particularly the middle colonies. His research has examined the coming of the Revolution as well as the Enlightenment, religion, and print culture in colonial New York City.

Email: michael.hattem@yale.edu
Website: http://michaelhattem.tumblr.com
Twitter: @michaelhattem
Academia.edu: http://yale.academia.edu/MichaelHattem

David Head, Ph.D.
David Head is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of history at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. He received his Ph.D. in 2010 from the University at Buffalo, The State University of New York and has a book manuscript, titled To Sail in Foreign Wars: Spanish American Privateering from the United States and the Influence of Geopolitics in the Early Republic, under contract with the University of Georgia Press. Dr. Head regularly teaches courses in the American Revolution, Age of Jefferson, and Age of Jackson and is also interested in maritime history, Atlantic history, and U.S. foreign relations.

Email: david.head@ucf.edu

Alexander Immekus
Alexander Immekus is a B.A. candidate with a major in History with a focus on Catholic persecution in the American Colonies. He is a brother in Alpha Phi Omega, a co-educational community service fraternity. In addition to his studies, Alexander interns for the District of Columbia Public Schools. After completing his undergraduate degree, he hopes to work in the education field.

Jared Johnson
Jared Johnson is currently a senior majoring in History at The George Washington University in Washington, DC. His senior thesis was entitled "Thomas Brown, the 2nd District of Columbia Infantry, and the American Civil War." Jared's interests focus on U.S. military history with a strong attention to the Civil War. He is also a Civil War reenactor. Jared is currently the Historian of the GW Chapter of Phi Alpha Theta, the National History Honor Society. After graduation, he plans on staying in the Washington Metropolitan area to start his career.

E-Mail: jdj1862@gwmail.gwu.edu

Kate Johnson
Kate Johnson is a senior at the University of Northern Colorado studying History and German. Kate will graduate in August 2013 and her thesis research looks into the influence of religion on women's involvement in the American Revolution.

Email: kate.johnson1240@gmail.com

Maria Kimberly
Maria Kimberly is the research assistant at the Papers of George Washington, housed at the University of Virginia. Formerly the resource development coordinator at the Library of Virginia, she created numerous resources for the Virginia Memory Web site and assisted editor Warren Billings on The Papers of Sir William Berkeley: 1605–1677, (Richmond, 2007).

Email: mek4v@virginia.edu

William P. Kladky, Ph.D.
William P. Kladky, Ph.D. - William P. Kladky is an occasional lecturer at the College of Notre Dame of Maryland. He holds a BA in English from Muhlenberg College, and a MA and Ph.D. in sociology from Northeastern University.  He specializes in American history, civil rights, and religion.

Peter Kotowski
Peter Kotowski is a Ph.D. Candidate at Loyola University Chicago. His work focuses on early American History and the Atlantic World with a specific focus on labor and women's and gender history. Peter's dissertation reexamines colonial Pennsylvania as the best poor man's country through an analysis of the lived experiences of indentured servants.

Email: pkotowski@luc.edu
Website: peterkotowski.com
Twitter: @pbkotowski

Nelly Lambert
Primarily a scholar of Emily Dickinson, Nelly Lambert also enjoys researching the work of modernist writers such as Henry James, Gertrude Stein, Edna Saint Vincent Millay, Robert Hayden, and Langston Hughes. Her current projects include work on humor in poetry, love in the American short story, and interdisciplinary essays linking European and eastern philosophy with nineteenth century American poetry. Currently a fellow with the American Association of University Women, Lambert trained in literature, film, American poetry, and philosophy at the University of Chicago, Georgetown University, Catholic University and Saint John's College, respectively. She has taught at Georgetown University, Catholic University, and Trinity Washington University; among her favorite subjects to teach are Shakespeare and the literature of Washington, DC.

Cody Lass
Cody Lass received his B.A. in History from Texas State University-San Marcos in 2008. In 2010 he completed his M.A. in History at Texas Tech University. Cody's research interests include Colonial America and the Atlantic World with a specialization in the American Revolution. He also works within the fields of United States Diplomatic History, Nationalism, and War and Society. Currently Cody is a Ph.D. Candidate at Texas Tech and also serves as an instructor for survey courses in American History.

Email: cody.lass@ttu.edu

Chris Logsdon
Chris Logsdon is a B.A. Candidate with a major in Political Science in the Columbian College of Arts & Sciences at The George Washington University. He is the recipient of The George Washington University Board of Trustees Academic Scholarship. He has worked in the offices of U.S. Senator Barbara A. Mikulski and Cumberland, MD Mayor Brian K. Grim. He is currently an intern in the office of U.S. Senator Ben Cardin. After completing his undergraduate degree, he plans to attend law school.

James MacDonald, Ph.D.
Dr. James MacDonald is an Associate Professor of History at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches, Louisiana.  MacDonald teaches courses in Colonial, and Revolutionary America as well as Atlantic Slavery and the American West. He has written book chapters on Abraham Lincoln and George Washington including the recently published "Revolution and Peace," in A Companion to George Washington, published by Wiley-Blackwell (2012).

Jim Mc Intyre
Jim Mc Intyre is an Assistant Professor of History at Moraine Valley Community College in Illinois. In addition, he is a Fleet Professor in the United States Naval War college Distance Learning Program at Great Lakes, IL. He received his Bachelor's in History from Temple University in Philadelphia in 1996 and his Masters in History from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1999. His primary research focus is the American War of Independence. He is currently writing a book on the role of the riflemen in that conflict.

Adam Meehan
Adam Meehan is originally from Southern California and is currently a doctoral candidate in literature at The University of Arizona. He specializes in nineteenth and twentieth century British and American literature, modernism, critical theory, and the novel.

Jeffrey Messina
Jeffrey Messina is a Bachelor of Sciences candidate in the Department of Economics at the George Washington University. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa, president of Omicron Delta Epsilon, the Honors Economics Society, and a member of the University Honors Program. He received a Luther Rice Fellowship from George Washington to study Federal Reserve Greenbook forecasts. He will be working at Bates White, LLC as an economic consultant beginning in August 2013.

Joseph Meyer, Ph.D.
Joseph Meyer received his Ph.D. in early American literature from the University of Arkansas. His research focuses on Judeo-Christian representations in early America. He has published articles on Herman Melville's "Bartleby, the Scrivener" and "Benito Cereno," as well as on the epic hero in James Joyce's Ulysses.

Curtis F. Morgan, Jr., Ph.D.
Curtis F.  Morgan, Jr.  has taught World and U.S. History at Lord Fairfax Community College since August 2000. He earned his Ph.D . in Modern European History from the University of South Carolina in 1998 and is the author of James F. Byrnes, Lucius Clay and American Policy in Germany, 1945-1947. His essay, "'A Merchandise of Small Wares': Nathanael Greene's Northern Apprenticeship, 1775-1780," recently appeared in the collection General Nathanael Greene and the American Revolution in the South, edited by Greg Massey and Jim Piecuch (Univ. of South Carolina Press, 2012). Morgan is presently working on a military biography of General Nathanael Greene.

Russell S. Perkins
Russell Perkins has been working in higher education administration for several years, primarily serving adult and military students. Mr. Perkins holds an M.A. in Military History for Norwich University, an MS degree in Information Management-Project Management from Grantham University, a BA in United States History from Graceland University, and has published in The Mexican War Journal and On Point: The Journal of Army History.

Patrick Allan Pospisek
Patrick Allan Pospisek is a doctoral candidate at Purdue University specializing in the early American republic and nineteenth century Midwest. His work has been published in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society and Historical Geography. His current projects include a monographic study of Galena, Illinois during the nineteenth century and research into the federal government's role in the Midwestern mineral booms preceding the California gold rush. 

Email: ppospisek@gmail.com

David Alan Rego
David Alan Rego studied history at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he was the recipient of the Harold W. Cary History Prize. In addition to his undergraduate degree, he also holds an M.A. in History from Tufts University.

Katrina Schoorl
Katrina Schoorl is currently an M.A. candidate in the Museum Studies program at the George Washington University focusing on Exhibition Development. She holds a B.A. in Sociology with a minor in History from the University of California, Davis. Katrina is interested in the visitor experience of museums, including public programming, visitor education, and museum evaluation.

Adam D. Shprintzen, Ph.D.
Adam Shprintzen is the Project Coordinator and Editor of the Digital Encyclopedia of George Washington at Mount Vernon. Adam holds a Ph.D. in History from Loyola University Chicago, an M.A. in History from Hunter College, CUNY, and a B.A. in History from Manhattanville College. Shprintzen's research focuses on nineteenth century reform, specifically the development of vegetarianism in the United States from the Early Republic through the Progressive Era. Adam's first book, The Vegetarian Crusade: The Rise of an American Reform Movement, 1817-1921 is forthcoming from the University of North Carolina Press (Fall 2013).

Stephen Santelli
Stephen Santelli received his B.A. in Classical Studies from the College of William and Mary and M.A. in history from George Mason University.  He is currently a doctoral student in history at West Virginia University. His dissertation will focus on the causes for the preservation movement in the late nineteenth century in America, Britain and the British Empire. Stephen has worked as a park ranger at the Manassas National Battlefield Park in Virginia.

James M. Scythes
James M. Scythes is an Instructor of History at West Chester University of Pennsylvania. He received a B.A. in History from Rowan University in 1995 and an M.A. in History from Villanova University in 1997. His research focuses on eighteenth and nineteenth century military history. Scythes has written a number of encyclopedia entries and has a book under consideration, which focuses on the life of 2nd Lieutenant Thomas James Howell, a seventeen year old officer in the American Civil War.

Maria Seidel
Maria Seidel is a B.A. candidate at the George Washington University. A recipient of the George Washington University Board of Trustees Academic Scholarship, she is an English major and a Spanish and History double minor. Maria is currently the Director of External Affairs for GW Shakespeare as well as an alumni of the Dean's Scholar in Shakespeare program. Following graduation, Maria hopes to work in a position related to her areas of study before pursuing a graduate degree in a relevant field.

Mary Stockwell, Ph.D.
Dr. Mary Stockwell is a 2012 Earhart Foundation Fellow at the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan and a Research Fellow at the Lincoln International Center at Louisiana State University Shreveport. She previously served as the American History Professor at Lourdes University where she was the Chair of the Department of History, Political Science, and Geography.  Dr. Stockwell is the author of textbooks used by young people throughout the United States including The Ohio Adventure, A Journey through Maine, and Massachusetts, Our Home, the 2005 winner of the Golden Lamp Award from the Association of Educational Publishers for Best Book. She is also the author of Woodrow Wilson: The Last Romantic in the First Men in America Series for Nova Press and has just completed Many Trails of Tears: The Removal of the Ohio Tribes for the Ohio University Press and A History of the United States to 1865 for Bridgepoint Education. She is currently researching the life and letters of General Anthony Wayne.

Mary V. Thompson
Mary Thompson has a B.A. in History, with a minor in Folklore, from Samford University in Birmingham, Alabama, and an M.A. in History from the University of Virginia, where her thesis dealt with the relationship between colonists and Native Americans in Georgia and the Carolinas in the mid-eighteenth century. She is currently the Research Historian at Mount Vernon, with a primary focus on everyday life on the estate, including domestic routines, foodways, religious practices, slavery, and the slave community.  More recently, Mary authored the book In the Hands of a Good Providence:  Religion in the Life of George Washington (Charlottesville:  University of Virginia Press, 2008), for which she received the 2009 Alexandria History Award from the Alexandria [Virginia] Historical Society.  Mary is currently putting the finishing touches on a book focused on slave life at Mount Vernon.

George Tsakiridis, Ph.D.
George Tsakiridis is currently an Instructor at South Dakota State University in philosophy and religion. His research is broadly on the interaction of religion and science, specifically early Christianity and science. George also teaches Religion in American Culture and has deep interest in the creative arts, specifically film. He holds a Ph.D. from the Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago.

Email: george.tsakiridis@sdstate.edu
Website: http://georgetsakiridis.com

Katie Uva
Katie Uva received her BA in Classics and American Studies from Boston University in 2010. She is currently a Ph.D. student in History at the CUNY Graduate Center. She is also the Museum Technician at Governors Island National Monument, and a history blogger for www.queensbeat.com. Her research interests include cultural history, urban history, and the American presidency.

Victoria Williams, Ph.D.
Victoria Williams was awarded a Ph.D. in English from King's College, London for a thesis examining the role of continental European fairytales in nineteenth-century British literature and art, and on film. Williams' research interests focus on fairytale, folklore and the Gothic, particularly in relation to Victorian literature and British and American film, and Hollywood during the Studio Era. She has worked as an editorial assistant on several digital humanities projects including Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition, and worked at Leighton House Museum, London. In addition, Williams was a regular contributor to Routledge's Annotated Bibliography of English Studies.

Email: vrw123@hotmail.com

Twitter: @vrw123

Robert Wolfe
Robert Wolfe is a senior history student at Clemson University and will graduate in December 2012. Robert spent ten weeks working for Mount Vernon as an intern in the Historic Trades Department. Over the course of the internship, Wolfe researched the relationship between London Merchants and planters in the American Colonies.

Email: robertj.wolfe91@gmail.com

Gwendolyn K. White
Gwendolyn K. White is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of History and Art History at George Mason University.  Her dissertation "Commerce and Community at Mount Vernon," is a study of the interactions of the residents of George Washington's plantation and the surrounding community within the framework of local and global commerce. White has a Master of Architectural History from the University of Virginia and previously held a fellowship at Mount Vernon transcribing some of Washington's farm and financial papers.

Email: gwhite5@gmu.edu

Amanda Walli
Amanda Walli is a second year M.A. student in George Washington University’s Museum Studies Program. She is focusing on collections management with an academic emphasis in material culture and will graduate in May 2013. She has completed several internships in various museums in the Washington, D.C. area, including the National Portrait Gallery, the Stabler-Leadbeater Apothecary Museum, and the National Building Museum.

E-mail: awalli@gwu.edu

Ben Wynne, Ph.D.

Jeffrey A. Zemler, Ph.D.
Jeffrey A. Zemler is currently an adjunct instructor at Brookhaven College in Farmers Branch, Texas. He received his Ph.D. in 2011 from the University of North Texas and has a book manuscript, titled A Political Realignment: James Madison, the South, and the Trans-Appalachian West, under contract. The author of several articles on Texas, he is currently working on a political biography of the late eighteenth-century Virginian/Kentuckian George Nicholas.

Email: zemlerj@hotmail.co

Xu, Yijin
XU, Yijin is currently an international exchange student in the Elliott School of International Affairs at The George Washington University. She is a joint-degrees candidate at The Sydney Law School, double majoring in international affairs and history with a concentration in East Asian studies. Before returning to Australia to complete her degrees, she plans to travel extensively throughout the United States. She is also a recipient of the Sydney International Exchange Scholarship sponsored by the Australian government.