Biography Seminar

The opening session, featuring Michael Burlingame, Dean Grodzins, and Tony Horwitz and moderated by Carol Bundy, will address the rewards and challenges of looking at this historical moment from a biographical perspective. 

Panelists: 

Michael Burlingame is the acclaimed author of the two-volume Abraham Lincoln: A Life, which won the 2010 Lincoln Prize, and The Inner World of Abraham Lincoln, as well as several edited volumes of Lincoln primary source material. Burlingame splits his time between the University of Illinois at Springfield and the University of Connecticut at New London. 

Dean Grodzins is a Visiting Scholar at the Massachusetts Historical Society and the author of American Heretic: Theodore Parker and Transcendentalism. His current book-in-progress is A Civil War in Boston: Runaway Slaves and the Crisis of the Union.

Tony Horwitz is the author of Midnight Rising: John Brown and the Raid that Sparked the Civil War. A Pulitzer prize winning journalist and former New Yorker staff writer, his Confederates in the Attic was a New York Times Best Seller. 

Moderator: 

Carol Bundy is the author of The Nature of Sacrifice: A Biography of Charles Russell Lowell, Jr.  She is now working on a book tentatively called McClellan in Boston: The Dark Underbelly of Boston’s War for Emancipation.

This session, featuring George Howe Colt, Paul Fisher, and Louise W. Knight and moderated by Megan Marshall, will explore the process of developing collective biographies, in particular, research and writing about siblings.  

Panelists:  George Howe Colt is the author of The Big House: A Century in the Life of an American Summer Home, a finalist for the National Book Award in 2003, and November of the Soul: The Enigma of Suicide. He is writing a book about brothers.  

Paul Fisher is a biographer of Henry, William, and Alice James in House of Wits: An Intimate Portrait of the James Family. He is an Assistant Professor of American Studies at Wellesley College, where he teaches 19th century American literature and culture.  

Louise W. Knight is the author of Jane Addams: Spirit in Action and Citizen: Jane Addams and the Struggle for Democracy.  A Visiting Scholar in the Gender Studies Program, Northwestern University, she is writing a biography of Sarah and Angelina Grimke.  

Moderator: Megan Marshall's The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism won the Francis Parkman Prize and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography. She is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Writing, Literature and Publishing at Emerson College.

This program has been postponed until our 2012-2013 New England Biography Seminar series. Ms. Schiff will present on January 24, 2013. We apologize for any inconvenience that this change may cause.