Speakers

• Peter Alden Presenter
  

  Peter Alden

  Presenter

  Peter Alden is the author of fifteeen books on nature and travel with three million sold. He is a tour- leader and lecturer on birds, mammals, and natural history, featured on cruises, safaris, and private jets to 100 countries over 50 years. He is creator of the world’s first bioblitzes, which now happen in 40 countries. The Great Walden Bioblitz in 2019 found 2,242 species of plants and animals in one day, honoring Henry and Dr. E. O. Wilson.

• Tyson Anderson Presenter (virtually)
  

  Tyson Anderson

  Presenter (virtually)

  Published scholarly articles in various areas, including analytic philosophy of religion, comparative philosophy, and Christian-Buddhist dialogue. Interests in philosophical theology and Russian thought.

• Barry Andrews Presenter
  

  Barry Andrews

  Presenter

  Barry Andrews is a leading authority on the Transcendentalist movement. His books include Emerson as Spiritual Guide: A Companion to Emerson’s Essays for Personal Reflection and Group Discussion and Thoreau as Spiritual Guide: A Companion to Walden for Personal Reflection and Group Discussion.

• Anna Anil George Presenter
  

  Anna Anil George

  Presenter

  Anna Anil George holds a Masters in English Language and Literature from the University College, University of Kerala, Trivandrum, India. She is presently a student of Teacher Training at the Mount Tabor Training College, University of Kerala. She participated in a panel presentation at the Annual Conference of the American Literature Association 2021 in Boston, MA.

• Keith Badger Presenter
  

  Keith Badger

  Presenter

  Keith Badger is a naturalist, tracker, world traveler, educator, and author. For 25 years he taught natural history, field ecology, and wilderness survival at the university and secondary school level. He resides in the Monadnock Region of NH and spends considerable time each year on the mountain’s summit pondering the best tracks to follow.

• Austin Bailey Chair
  

  Austin Bailey

  Chair

  Austin Bailey (He/Him/They) is a PhD candidate in English at the CUNY Grad Center. He teaches classes in American Literature and Composition and helps coordinate WAC as a WAC Associate at Lehman College.

  Austin researches C19 American Literature, pragmatism, and affect theory. His dissertation, “Radial Empiricism Before William James,” argues that radical empiricism–a pattern of thinking circulating among authors and philosophers extending beyond William James–contests American hegemonic norms more so than previously assumed.

• Albena Bakratcheva Presenter
  

  Albena Bakratcheva

  Presenter

  Albena Bakratcheva (she/her/hers) is Professor of American literature at New Bulgarian University, Sofia, Bulgaria. She has written various books and essays on nineteenth-century American literature and has translated Thoreau’s and Emerson’s major works in Bulgarian. Albena is a member of the Thoreau Society and founding member of IASA, the International American Studies Association. In 2014 the Thoreau Society gave her the Walter Harding Distinguished Service Award.

• Mario Bannoni Presenter
  

  Mario Bannoni

  Presenter

  “Mario Bannoni, a sixth generation Roman, passionate about the Risorgimento and the Roman Republic, studied foreign languages and literature at the La Sapienza University and cinematography at the Roberto Rossellini Institute in Rome. He later specialized in service marketing at Arizona State University and for many years held the position of head of market research, and director of marketing at a financial company of the Fiat Group, a conglomerate now known as Stellantis, a leading global mobility player, and at the holding of Italian Cooperative Banks.
  As an independent researcher, Mario Bannoni has thoroughly analyzed the manuscripts of Margaret Fuller, an eyewitness of the Roman Republic of 1849, and of her correspondents with particular regard to her Italian and French papers, largely preserved in the Houghton Library of Harvard, some of which were never taken into account and translated into English.
  By combining such manuscripts, the historical findings in Italian and Vatican archives, census maps, and parish registers, he was able to trace and reconstruct Fuller’s several Italian stays, moves and lodgments through the years; to find two manuscripts – only partially published in Hudspeth – of a dispatch written by Fuller to James Linton in defense of Mazzini and eventually published in 1847 on the People’s Journal of London; to discover an overlooked romance between Fuller and Anselmo Guerrieri Gonzaga in Milan, and so on.
  Moreover, he was able to draw up an exhaustive biography of Margaret Fuller, of Fuller’s Roman companion, the Marquis Ossoli, and of his noble family since their origins, with particular attention to the period Margaret Fuller sojourned in Italy.

  Publications.
  2010: “Margaret Fuller Ossoli, women and civil commitment in Risorgimento Rome”, co-author, curator of the Papers and organizer of the namesake Conference held on May 23, 1910 at the Fatebenefratelli Hospital (speakers: David Mees, Cultural Attaché of U.S. Embassy; Jaroslaw Mikolajewski, Director of Polish Institute; Laurie James, N.Y. U.U. Women; Cristina Giorcelli, Professor Emerita of American Literature at Rome 3rd University; Ginevra Conti Odorisio, Full Professor of Politic Doctrines at 3rd University; Fiorenza Taricone, Full Professor at Cassino University, et. Al.), 95 p.
  Canti Disperati, (colection of poems), ilmiolibro, 40 p.
  2012: Vi scrivo da una Roma barricata (I Write to You From a Barricaded Rome), co-author Gabriella Mariotti, publisher Conosci per scegliere, 352 p.
  2013: “”Margaret Fuller, a reporter in the Rome of the Risorgimento”” in History of the Marche in the Contemporary Age, n. 2, co-author Gabriella Mariotti, Fermo, pp. 83-85.
  2014: Magnetiche Risonanze, (collection of poems), ilmiolibro, 40 p.
  2015 “Margaret Fuller and that Vineyard. A note”, in Harvard Literary Bulletin, Summer 2014, v. 25: No.2., pp. 62-66.
  2015: Tra Palpiti e Pampini, (collection of poes), ilmiolibro, 100 p.
  2016: Margaret Fuller and the Ossoli family, Ilmiolibro, 112 p.

  Forthcoming publication
  2022: “Margaret Fuller Corrispondente di Guerra – Quando Roma Capitale d’Italia era ancora un sogno” (Margaret Fuller War Correspondent – When Rome, the capital of Italy, still was a dream), All-Around Editions, Rome 2022. A complete collection of 27 dispatches from Italy, published between 1847 and 1850 in the New-York Daily Tribune, the People’s Journal and the Democratic Review, for the first time translated into Italian by Mario Bannoni, with an introductory essay by Prof. Franco Tamassia.
  “Margaret Fuller’s Italian Dwellings”, by Mario Bannoni, forthcoming in Conversations, the Margaret Fuller Society Newsletter.
  Margaret Fuller and Anselmo Guerrieri Gonzaga. A Forgotten Romance, by Mario Bannoni. Article ready to be published in the US
  “Raccolta delle lettere italiane di Margaret Fuller, Giovanni Angelo Ossoli et Al.” (Collection of the Italian letters of Margaret Fuller, Giovanni Angelo Ossoli et Al.), edited by Mario Bannoni; awaiting fiscal funding for publication in Italy.
  “Collection of the Italian Letters of Margaret Fuller, Giovanni Angelo Ossoli et Al.”, translated and edited by Mario Bannoni; awaiting University Press or fiscal funding for publication in the United States.
  “Margaret Fuller and the Marriage Question,” by Mario Bannoni in AMS Press 15 p; pending publication in the United States.
  Giorni d’amore e di Gloria (Days of love and glory), by Mario Bannoni. The history of the Roman Republic emerging from the witness of Margaret Fuller. Awaiting funding for publication in Italy.
  “”Margaret Fuller philosopher of Transcendentalism””, Mario Bannoni’s translation into English of Franco Tamassia’s work presenting an unseen approach to Fuller as one of the outstanding but not recognized philosophers in the 19th century, or may be the first as a woman. For Tamassia Fuller’s philosophy comes out fully displayed and intelligible precisely from the 27 dispatches she wrote while in Italy, published in “Margaret Fuller, Corrispondente di Guerra”. Currently underway.
  Chronology of Margaret Fuller – March 1847 – July 1850. A detailed chronological agenda with the daily record of records, writings, correspondence, movements of Fuller, Ossoli and related persons, with indication of the concomitant historical events. Current underway.
  “Cristina Trivulzio di Belgiojoso tra giornalismo e Assistenza ai Feriti – 1849” (Christine Trivulzio di Belgiojoso between journalism and Wounded Care – 1849). Collection of newspaper articles published in Italy, France and elsewhere by Belgiojoso while taking care of the wounded of the Roman Republic, translated and edited by Mario Bannoni. Currently underway. Parallel Destinies, historical novel set at the turn of the Second World War, by Mario Bannoni. Currently underway.”

• Kent Bicknell Presenter
  

  Kent Bicknell

  Presenter

  Kent Bicknell, Ed. D, is an educator. In 1973, he became the founding head of Sant Bani School in Sanbornton, NH. He is a scholarly collector with special interest in the Transcendentalists and their inspiration from the East who has published several articles on the Transcendentalists. In 1995, he acquired the manuscript of a Gothic thriller by Louisa May Alcott, A Long Fatal Love Chase, which he transcribed, edited and published. This book became a New York Times best- seller. He is co-author of Book of Books, Libri Publishing UK (2021). He lives in central New Hampshire.

• Jamie Lynne Burgess Presenter
  

  Jamie Lynne Burgess

  Presenter

  Jamie Lynne Burgess is the co-creator and co-host of “Let Genius Burn,” a podcast about the life and legacy of Louisa May Alcott. As a former Orchard House guide, she has been devoted to Alcott study for more than ten years. She received her master’s degree in English from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and has taught about Louisa’s life and work in both the United States and France. The podcast Let Genius Burn can be found on Instagram and Facebook @letgeniusburn, and at www.letgeniusburn.com

• Katrina Byrd Presenter
  

  Katrina Byrd

  Presenter

  Katrina Byrd, a writer/playwright, lives in Jackson, MS. A graduate of Mississippi University for Women MFA Program, Katrina is a five time Mississippi Arts Commission Artist Minigrant recipient. Recently, Katrina participated in MAJOA Performing Arts Southern Black Playwright’s Lab and Rutgers University’s Poet’s and Scholars Ant-racist conference. Katrina was recently published at Herstry Blog and her one act play had a developmental reading by The Bechdel Group. Katrina is a lover of feather boas and she is an ALS Advocate with I AM ALS.

• Kristen Case Chair
  

  Kristen Case

  Chair

  Kristen Case is Professor of English at University of Maine Farmington, where she teaches courses in American literature, environmental writing, and the intersection of 20th- and 21st-century American literature and philosophy. She has published essays on Henry David Thoreau, Emily Dickinson, Robert Frost, Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, and William James, and is the author of the book American Poetry and Poetic Practice: Crosscurrents from Emerson to Susan Howe (Camden House, 2011). She is co-editor of the volumes Thoreau at 200: Essays and Reassessments (Cambridge UP, 2016) and 21|19: Contemporary Poets in the 19th Century Archive (Milkweed Editions, 2019). Kristen’s first poetry collection, Little Arias was published by New Issues Press in 2015. Her second collection, Principles of Economics, published by Switchback Books, won the 2018 Gatewood Prize. She is the recipient of the Maine Literary Award in Poetry (2016 and 2020), a MacDowell Fellowship, and the UMF Trustee Professorship. She is co-Director of the New Commons Project, a public humanities initiative sponsored by the Mellon Foundation, and Director of “Thoreau’s Kalendar: A Digital Archive of the Phenological Manuscripts of Henry David Thoreau.”

• Raffaella Cavalieri Presenter
  

  Raffaella Cavalieri

  Presenter

  PhD – Università degli Studi di Siena (Italy). Specialized in the history of Travel Literature, I worked to several projects with one of the major Italian experts: prof. Attilio Brilli. My passion for humanities leads me not to interrupt my research and to continue as an independent researcher, publishing books, collaborating with several experts and teachers in universities such as Alma Mater Studiorum in Bologna, University for Foreigners in Perugia, or Institution such as Fondazione BEIC in Milan, Fondazione Bardini Peyron in Florence, CIRVI, CRLV, Associazione di Storia Contemporanea, Carla Rossi Academy. In these years I attended many conferences, in Italy, but also in England, France, Scotland. I also gained experience as literary translator, from French and English to Italian.

• Phyllis Cole Chair
  

  Phyllis Cole

  Chair

  Phyllis Cole (she/her/hers), professor emerita at Penn State Brandywine, has written many articles on Margaret Fuller, as well as the book Mary Moody Emerson and the Origins of Transcendentalism (1998); and along with Jana Argersinger she edited the essay collection Toward a Female Genealogy of Transcendentalism (2014). She is immediate past president of the Margaret Fuller Society and a current member of the Thoreau Society’s board of directors.

• Victor Curran Presenter
  

  Victor Curran

  Presenter

  Victor Curran teaches the Concord history course that prepares students to be licensed Concord tour guides. He writes and leads tours of Concord’s revolutionary, literary, and antislavery sites, and historic cemeteries. He is an interpreter at the Concord Museum and The Old Manse, and a contributing writer for Discover Concord Magazine. Like his fellow presenters, he has worked at the Thoreau Society Shop at Walden Pond.

• Daniela Daniele Presenter (virtually)
  

  Daniela Daniele

  Presenter (virtually)

  Daniela Daniele teaches Anglo-Am. Lit. at the univ. of Udine. She edited and translated the Italian versions of Alcott’s Moods and “Enigmas,” and is especially interested in the ground-breaking archival work pursued by the collective of American scholars who resurfaced many anonymous and pseudonymous work by this extraordinary Victorian American polygraph.

• Theodore M. David Presenter
  

  Theodore M. David

  Presenter

  Ted David, JD,LLM, Professor of Law and Taxation FDU, Teaneck, NJ. Member Board of Directors Thoreau Society

• Alice De Galzain Presenter
  

  Alice De Galzain

  Presenter

  Alice de Galzain is a PhD candidate at the University of Edinburgh. Both French and Italian in heritage, she has studied in many different countries, including France, Germany, Italy and the United States. Specializing in 19th century American literature, her research interests include American Transcendentalism, transnational writing, abolitionism and women’s studies. Her PhD project focuses on the Margaret Fuller/Ralph Waldo Emerson relationship: more specifically, it aims to understand the implications of their redefinition of “womanhood” on the concept of “Americanness”.

• Ryan Dong Yang Presenter
  

  Ryan Dong Yang

  Presenter

  Ryan Dong Yang is a doctoral candidate of comparative literature at the University of Georgia, currently writing his dissertation on the relation of affect and vitalism in Thoreau, Nietzsche, and Deleuze. His research interests include American transcendentalism, 20th century French philosophy, and film theory.

• Julia X. Du Presenter
  

  Julia X. Du

  Presenter

  Julia Xianju Du received her BA and MA degrees from Peking University, studied briefly at Oxford University, then completed her PhD at Brandeis University. She works in the software industry and writes and translates academic and literary books. Her Chinese translation of Walden: The Annotated Edition, annotated by Thoreau Institute curator Jeffrey Cramer, has been well received in China.

• Leslie Eckel Presenter
  

  Leslie Eckel

  Presenter
• Julie Edewaard Presenter (virtually)
  

  Julie Edewaard

  Presenter (virtually)

  Julie Edewaard is a doctoral student and undergraduate instructor at the State University of New York at Albany. Having focused on Japanese literature and language during her undergraduate career and on Henry David Thoreau’s concept of improvement during her Master’s, she is currently working on her dissertation which emphasizes the East Asian, particularly Confucian, influences on the Transcendentalist works of Lydia Maria Child, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

• Monika Elbert Presenter
  

  Monika Elbert

  Presenter

  Monika Elbert is Professor of English and Distinguished University Scholar at Montclair State University, and editor of the Nathaniel Hawthorne Review. She has published widely on nineteenth-century writers, including Alcott, Fuller, and Hawthorne, and on the Gothic. Her recent books include the co-edited Haunting Realities: Naturalist Gothic and American Realism, U of Alabama Press, 2017; Hawthorne in Context, Cambridge UP, 2018; and the co-edited American Women’s Regionalist Fiction: Mapping the Gothic, Palgrave Gothic series, 2021.

• Cristen E. Ellis Presenter
  

  Cristen E. Ellis

  Presenter

  Cristie Ellis is Associate Professor of English at the University of Mississippi. Her research focuses on histories of science, particularly environmental and racial science, in nineteenth century American literature. She is the author of Antebellum Posthuman: Race and Materiality in the Mid-Nineteenth Century (Fordham University Press, 2018)

• Kathy Fedorko Presenter
  

  Kathy Fedorko

  Presenter

  Kathy Fedorko is the author of Gender and the Gothic in the Fiction of Edith Wharton as well as many other publications about Wharton. Her essay “‘Henry’s brilliant sister’: The Pivotal Role of Sophia Thoreau in Her Brother’s Posthumous Publications,” appeared in the June 2016 issue of The New England Quarterly and “Revisiting Henry’s Last Words” in the Fall 2016 issue of the Thoreau Society Bulletin. She is currently working on a book about Henry Thoreau’s friendships and how they were influenced by his contemplative practices.

• James Finley Chair
  

  James Finley

  Chair

  James S. Finley teaches American literature and English pedagogy at Texas A&M University – San Antonio. A member of the Thoreau Society Board of Directors, he has published essays on Thoreau’s abolitionism and Maine writings and is the editor of Henry David Thoreau in Context (Cambridge University Press, 2017).

• Azelina Flint Presenter
  

  Azelina Flint

  Presenter

  Azelina Flint is a Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Creative Writing at Lancaster University and the lead organiser of the “Bearing Untold Stories” symposium. Her research concerns the recovery of understudied British and American women, and the connection between their religious faith, feminist advocacy and artistic practice. Her first book, The Matrilineal Heritage of Louisa May Alcott and Christina Rossetti (2021), recovers the influence of the authors’ mystical experiences, and those of their mothers and sisters, on their life-writing and published work. Her recently published co-edited collection, The Forgotten Alcott (May 2022), recovers the life and works of May Alcott Nieriker. Azelina has published a range of peer-reviewed articles in the fields of American and Victorian Studies and is also a published poet.

• Dr. Jane Goodall The Thoreau Prize for Literary Excellence in Nature Writing Honoree
  

  Dr. Jane Goodall

  The Thoreau Prize for Literary Excellence in Nature Writing Honoree

  Dr. Jane Goodall went into the forest to study the remarkable lives of chimpanzees—and she came out of the forest to save them. When she discovered that the survival of their species was threatened by habitat destruction and illegal trafficking, she developed a breakthrough approach to species conservation that improves the lives of people, animals and the environment by honoring their connectedness to each other. In 1977, she founded the Jane Goodall Institute to ensure that her vision and life’s work continue to mobilize the collective power of individual action to save the natural world we all share.

  Photo Credit: The Jane Goodall Institute / By Bill Wallauer.

• David Gordon Presenter
  

  David Gordon

  Presenter

  I have been teaching philosophy since 2004, most recently at Loyola University Maryland as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy. My master’s thesis was on the thought of Emerson, Thoreau, Muir, and Naess.

• Jayne Gordon Chair
  

  Jayne Gordon

  Chair

  Jayne Gordon lived in Concord for close to a half century before moving to Damariscotta, Maine, three years ago. She retired as Director of Education and Public Programs of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and before that was director of the Thoreau Society and of Alcotts’ Orchard House, and Director of Education at the Concord Museum. Since 2010, she has led ten week-long National Endowment for the Humanities workshops for teachers from across the country on both the Revolution in Concord and Henry Thoreau in Concord. Jayne is a Thoreau Society board member, and vice-president of Coastal Senior College (learning in retirement) in Maine. Her focus – both in Concord, and now teaching courses to older adults in Maine – has consistently been on the intersection of landscape, literature, and local history.

• Robert Gross Chair
  

  Robert Gross

  Chair

  Robert A. Gross is the James L. and Shirley A. Draper Professor of Early American History Emeritus at the University of Connecticut. He is the author of The Minutemen and Their World (1976), which won the Bancroft Prize, and of Books and Libraries in Thoreau’s Concord (1988); with Mary Kelley, he is the coeditor of An Extensive Republic: Print, Culture, and Society in the New Nation, 1790–1840 (2010). A former assistant editor of Newsweek, he has written for such periodicals as Esquire, Harper’s Magazine, The Boston Globe, and The New York Times, and his essays have appeared in The American Scholar, The New England Quarterly, Raritan, and The Yale Review. His most recent book is The Transcendentalists and Their World (2021).

• Charmion Gustke Presenter
  

  Charmion Gustke

  Presenter

  Charmion Gustke is an Associate Professor at Belmont University in Nashville where her courses focus on the interdisciplinary practices of writing, reading, and social action. Her scholarly interests include transatlantic literary studies, South African literature, Willa Cather, and, of course, Henry David Thoreau. She is committed to community engagement and employs her service-learning classes to connect students to non-profit organizations such as The Nashville Food Project in her continued support of sustainable food practices, social advocacy, and the liberal arts.

• Brandon Hernsberger Presenter
  

  Brandon Hernsberger

  Presenter

  Brandon Hernsberger is a professor at HCC. He has been teaching English for over 25 years.

• Richard Higgins Chair
  

  Richard Higgins

  Chair

  Richard Higgins is a writer, editor and author of Thoreau and the Language of Trees (2017). He has written about Thoreau’s deep religiosity in Harvard Divinity Bulletin, UU World, The Concord Saunterer, The Journal of Unitarian Universalist History and American Scholar, the latter in his Winter 2020 essay on Thoreau’s garret on Main Street. He has given his talk “Thoreau’s God” at Holy Cross, Harvard and other venues. Richard has an MTS from Harvard Divinity School and is a member of the Thoreau Society board.

• William Homestead Presenter
  

  William Homestead

  Presenter

  William Homestead is an Associate Professor at New England College, and has had a long association with the Ometeca Institute, a nonprofit devoted to the integration of the sciences and the humanities. His work with Ometeca, along with his interdisciplinary degrees (MA in Communication Studies, MS in Environmental Studies, MFA in Creative Writing), study with a spiritual teacher, and hiking experiences, provided much of the insight and inspiration for writing his recently published book, An Ecology of Communication: Response and Responsibility in an Age of Ecocrisis (Lexington Books, April 2021). An Ecology of Communication includes a chapter on Thoreau, “The Call to Responsibility: Thoreau and the Voice(s) of Nature.” Homestead is also a member of the International Environmental Communication Association (IECA), the National Communication Association (NCA), and The Thoreau Society, and is finishing up a new book, Not Till We Are Lost: Teaching and Learning in an Age of Climate Crisis: Thoreau, Education, and Spiritual Transformation. He lives in Vermont and spends much time walking in the woods with his dog, Snoopy, who was named by his three children.

• Thomas W. Howard Presenter
  

  Thomas W. Howard

  Presenter

  Thomas W. Howard is a PhD candidate in English and American Literature at Washington University in St. Louis. His dissertation, “Pragmatic Ambiguities: Aphoristic Thinking in the American Nineteenth Century,” examines the aphorism as a poetic method of thinking among nineteenth-century American nonfiction prose writers, especially the Transcendentalists and Pragmatists. Thomas has recently published an article on Thoreau’s “aphoristic forest thinking” in Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism. He is currently in Germany on a Fulbright Research Fellowship, being hosted by the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies, part of Freie Universität Berlin.

• Alan Jacob Presenter
  

  Alan Jacob

  Presenter

  Alan Jacob is a student of Graphic Arts at the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology, Alberta, Canada. He participated in a panel presentation at the Annual Conference of the American Literature Association 2021 in Boston, MA.

• Rochelle L. Johnson Chair
  

  Rochelle L. Johnson

  Chair

  Rochelle Johnson (she/her/hers) is president of the Thoreau Society and serves on its board of directors. She teaches literature and the environmental humanities at the College of Idaho, where she directs the Gipson Honors Program. Her publications focus on 19th-century environmental thought, with particular attention to Thoreau and his contemporaries. She has written and co-edited books about the 19th-century writer and philanthropist Susan Fenimore Cooper. Details about her work appear on her website: www.rochelleljohnson.com.

• Marc Jolley Presenter
  

  Marc Jolley

  Presenter

  Marc Jolley (PhD, 1993) has been in academic publishing since 1992 and has been a professor since 1986, teaching religion, literature, and philosophy in four different institutions (with Mercer University doing both since 1995).

• Michael Kellett Presenter
  

  Michael Kellett

  Presenter

  Michael Kellett, executive director of RESTORE: The North Woods, has more than 35 years of experience advocating for national parks, wilderness, and endangered wildlife. During that time, he has been active in efforts to safeguard the Thoreau Country, including development of the first proposal for a 3.2 million-acre Maine Woods National Park & Preserve, and initiatives to protect Walden Woods, the Thoreau birthplace, Estabrook Woods, Mount Wachusett, and the White Mountains. He has visited more than 250 National Park System units across America.

• Kathleen Kelly Presenter
  

  Kathleen Kelly

  Presenter

  Kathleen Coyne Kelly has published in Arthuriana, Exemplaria, postmedieval, Studies in Philology, and Year’s Work in Studies in Medievalism. She is the author of Performing Virginity and Testing Chastity in the Middle Ages and A. S. Byatt, and co-editor (with Marina Leslie) of Menacing Virgins: Representing Virginity in the Middle Ages and Renaissance, co-editor (with Tison Pugh) of Queer Movie Medievalisms and Chaucer on Screen: Absence, Presence, and Adapting the Canterbury Tales. She is currently working on a book, Lost and Invented Ecologies: Studies in Medieval Literature,
  in which she reads medieval literary texts as witnesses to natural
  places that no longer exist or that have changed dramatically. She is
  also collaborating on another book, Arthurian Tourism and English Heritage (with Susan Aronstein, Laurie Finke, and Martin Shichtman).
  In recent years, she has developed an interest in Henry David
  Thoreau, and, with graduate and undergraduate students, is creating a
  public, online, searchable and annotatable database of all the drawings
  that Henry David Thoreau included in his Journal, and is writing a book,
  ‘a pencil is one of the best eyes’: Thoreau’s Journal Drawings,” in
  which she examines the function, historical context, and overall
  significance of the drawings.

  She is looking for an agent for the first volume of a polymorphously perverse, post-apocalyptic, ecotopic cyberpunk trilogy.

• Rebecca Kneale Gould Chair
  

  Rebecca Kneale Gould

  Chair

  Rebecca Kneale Gould is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at Middlebury College. A scholar of American religion by training, she co-directs the Religion, Philosophy and Environment focus within the Environmental Studies program. She is the author of *At Home in Nature: Modern Homesteading and Spiritual Practice in America* and the co-creator with Phil Walker of the 2012 documentary film, The Fire Inside: Place, Passion and the Primacy of Nature (http://fireinsidefilm.com). Gould’s work crosses boundaries, genres and historical periods, including writing about Thoreau and race, as well as conducting research on religiously informed environmental advocacy. Gould is a proud graduate of Concord-Carlisle High School and now lives in Vermont with her wife and a small flock of adorable sheep. She currently serves on the board of directors of the Thoreau Society.

• Katie Kornacki Presenter
  Katie Kornacki

  Presenter
• John Kucich Chair
  

  John Kucich

  Chair

  John J. Kucich (he, him, his) is professor of English at Bridgewater State University and the recent past editor of The Concord Saunterer His edited collection, Rediscovering the Maine Woods: Thoreau’s Legacy in an Unsettled Land was published in 2019.

• Dr. J. Drew Lanham Dana S. Brigham Memorial Keynote Address
  

  Dr. J. Drew Lanham

  Dana S. Brigham Memorial Keynote Address

  A native of Edgefield, South Carolina, J. Drew Lanham is the author of The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature, which received the Reed Award from the Southern Environmental Law Center and the Southern Book Prize, and was a finalist for the John Burroughs Medal. He is a birder, naturalist, and hunter-conservationist who has published essays and poetry in publications including Orion, Audubon, Flycatcher, and Wilderness, and in several anthologies, including The Colors of Nature, State of the Heart, Bartram’s Living Legacy, and Carolina Writers at Home.

  An Alumni Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Master Teacher at Clemson University, he and his family live in the Upstate of South Carolina, a soaring hawk’s downhill glide from the southern Appalachian escarpment that the Cherokee once called the Blue Wall.

• Dan Lu Presenter
  Dan Lu

  Presenter

  Studied and taught sociology. Interested in every thing social, political, economical, and intellectual. Currently an analyst with a non-profit research organization.

• Carolina Maciel Presenter (virtually)
  Carolina Maciel

  Presenter (virtually)

  I am a 24 year old undergraduate student and Educational Counsellor from Rio de Janeiro. I work providing educational counselling to refugee students in a Coding school. In my free time, I like to write, hike, cook and listening to almost all kinds of music; I am also into historical costuming. In late 2019, I read Walden for the first time and started researching Transcendentalism on my own throughout 2020.

  In late 2020, I created a Facebook account in order to join the Thoreau Society group. Through Barrow Bookstore’s Facebook page, I met a friend who introduced me to the “Transcendentalists 2021” Facebook group/Book club, where we have been meeting weekly to discuss our readings. By march, I became the group’s co-moderator/co-admin. I am also currently working on the first Brazilian edition of “A Week”, translating it to Portuguese, so that more people can get in touch with Henry and John’s journey and beautiful friendship.

• Megan Marshall Presenter
  

  Megan Marshall

  Presenter

  Megan Marshall is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Margaret Fuller: A New American Life, The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism, and Elizabeth Bishop: A Miracle for Breakfast. She is a past president of the Society of American Historians, and the Charles Wesley Emerson College Professor at Emerson College where she teaches in the MFA Creative Writing Program. She is coediting with Brigitte Bailey and Noelle Baker the first Library of America Edition of Margaret Fuller’s writings.

• Marc Martorana Presenter
  

  Marc Martorana

  Presenter

  Marc Martorana is a teacher in New York City’s alternative education programs. He recently developed a tutoring company that provides instruction that incorporates outdoor walking and mindfulness principles. His interests include practical philosophy, mindfulness, Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and hiking. He and his fiance split their time between Nyack, New York and the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

• James Mathew Presenter
  

  James Mathew

  Presenter

  James Mathew, MD, is a Cardiologist. He is the copyright author of Book of Books, Libri Publishing UK. Besides research papers in scientific journals, he has published articles in literature and the humanities. He has presented papers at the Annual Gatherings of the Thoreau Society in Concord, and at the Annual Conference of the American Literature Association in Boston (both in MA). He wrote and directed the dramatic reading performance, Life and Legacy of Henry David Thoreau [DVD, US Library of Congress Registration Number PAU 3-897-476]. He lives in Milwaukee, WI. Dr. Mathew, along with Anna Anil George and Alan Jacob, will present Part I.

• David McCann Presenter
  

  David McCann

  Presenter

  David McCann served in the first Peace Corps group in Korea, 1966-68, received M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Harvard University, taught Classical Japanese language and literature at Cornell University, and then Korean literature at Cornell and at Harvard. He retired in 2014 as the first Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Literature at Harvard. During his graduate studies at Harvard he took creative writing classes with Elizabeth Bishop, Robert Fitzgerald, Robert Shaw, and Jane Shore.

  David has published 32 books. Eleven collections of his poems have been published, including a dual-language edition of his sijo poems, Urban Temple, originally published by Bo Leaf Books in 2010, from Changbi Publishers, Seoul, in 2012. Three of his collections—Out of Words, Lost and Found, and Same Bird—have been published by Moon Pie Press. Most recently, a chapbook collection of his poems, The Under Story, was published by the poets group Every Other Thursday, in 2021.

  David McCann’s poems have received a Pushcart Prize, Touchstone Award, and publication in Haiku 2015, 100 notable ku from 2014. He received the Korean Manhae Prize in 2004 and the Korean Culture Order of Merit in 2006. His sijo poem “Landscape,” published in the Arlington Red Letter Poem Project, was translated and carved into one of the stones in the Sijo Stones Garden in Boryeong, Korea.

• Jake A. McGinnis Presenter
  

  Jake A. McGinnis

  Presenter

  Jake A. McGinnis recently completed his PhD in English at the University of Notre Dame. His work has appeared in The Thoreau Society Bulletin, The Concord Saunterer, ESQ, and other periodicals.

• Karen J. McLean Presenter
  

  Karen J. McLean

  Presenter

  Karen J. McLean is a writer of short fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. A graduate of Acadia University, she lives on the shores of the Bay of Fundy, in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. Karen’s work has appeared in The Citizen, Canadian Author and Bookman, Brunswick Business Journal, The Reader, and The Cormorant. Recently, her short work “The Shadow of the Saint” was long-listed for the International Amy MacRae Award for Memoir. At present, Karen is writing a book-length memoir entitled Crossing the Street.

• Deborah Medenbach Chair
  

  Deborah Medenbach

  Chair

  Deborah Medenbach is a writer, researcher and realtor who became involved with the Thoreau Society in 2007 and now serves on its board of directors. She has led environmental walks, water excursions and international tours since the early 2000s. She has organized the annual Sunday morning paddle on the Concord/Sudbury rivers for many years as well as plein air painting workshops on Monument Square in Concord. She served on the HDT Bicentennial Committee, was a Thoreau Ambassador, leading nature talks at NY area libraries in 2017 and currently chairs Annual Gathering Committee. At home in the Hudson Valley, she is founder of the Riverport Women’s Sailing Conference, the 2021 Town of Rochester Ash Tree Arts Festival and serves on the Rochester Historic Preservation Commission. She is a former journalist, published poet and currently writing about the philosophy of travel.

• Daniel Medina Presenter (virtually)
  

  Daniel Medina

  Presenter (virtually)

  Rev. Dr. Daniel Medina, CSR, author of the A Year in Haiku Series, Little Havana Haiku, Urban Guru, and The Scandalous Menu: Supper for Prophets & Disciples, was born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in Miami, Florida. He holds graduate degrees from the University of Oklahoma and St Thomas University (Florida Center for Theological Studies) Miami Gardens, FL, and completed the MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) program from Brown University. Along with his teaching service at South Dade Senior High School, Dr. Medina is a Professor at the Johnnie Coleman Theological Seminary in Miami Gardens, FL. He is an Ordained Minister with the United Church of Christ and serves as Pastor of Miami Lakes Congregational Church, Miami Lakes, FL. Dan is also a Camaldolese Religious, an InterSpiritual Director, a Lay Zen Practitioner, a Sound Therapist, a Certified Vipassanā Meditation Teacher and Vinyasa Flow Yoga Teacher, Martial Artist, Haiku Poet, Jazz drummer, Urban gardener, and Amateur Photographer. Dan is a member of the American Academy of Religion, the American Psychological Association, The Society of Buddhist Christian Studies, and a Life Member of Theta Alpha Kappa. He lives in the historic Little Havana area in the City of Miami with his wife, Victoria.

• Rebecca Migdal Presenter
  

  Rebecca Migdal

  Presenter
• Barbara Mossberg Presenter
  

  Barbara Mossberg

  Presenter

  President Emerita of Goddard College, and Professor of Practice, Clark Honors College at the University of Oregon, teaching eco literature, Emerson’s world and legacy, cultural leadership, and others, as well as Insight Seminars and Osher Institute of Lifelong Learning classes, Dr. Mossberg is an international prize-winning author, poet, and professor who has served leadership roles in academic institutions and national and international organizations, including service as a founder and president of the Emily Dickinson International Society. Publishing scholarship in books and academic journals, and public writing in newspapers and across media, as well as serving as dramaturg and writing and performing in plays, Mossberg’s work over forty years has been recognized, from being named by Choice Outstanding Academic Book of the Year for Emily Dickinson: When a Writer Is a Daughter, to research awards and honors from American Council of Learned Societies, Fulbright (Senior Distinguished Lecturer twice, and Fulbright Specialist Program), Danforth Foundation, Mellon Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council on Education, National Council of Research on Women, University of Oregon, Oregon Commission on the Humanities, California Laureate (Poet in Residence, City of Pacific Grove), Poet Laureate for the Lilly Conference on College and University Teaching, New Millennium Writings, Abbie M. Cotts International Prize, creator and host of the Poetry Slow Down since 2008, a weekly hour original AMTalk Radio, then internet radio, now podcast (Barbaramossberg.com), a federal appointment as U.S. Scholar in Residence, to columnist for Huffington Post Arts&Culture, with readings and lectures in over 30 countries. Her book Here for the Present, A Grammar of Happiness in the Present Imperfect, Live from the Poet’s Perch, published this June, represents poems and essays written as California laureate/Poet in Residence for the City of Pacific Grove, CA, based on Thoreau’s approach to Concord. She is a worldwide advocate for international education, and was named Outstanding Faculty for Study Abroad in 2019 for her Genius of Study Abroad Program on Revolutionary Imagination. Her paper comes out of research for this program and as a Reader at the Huntington Library. Recently she has led a memoir writing workshop based on Thoreau for The Write Connection of the Thoreau Farmhouse Trust.

• Dennis Noson Chair
  

  Dennis Noson

  Chair

  Dennis Noson is a member of the Thoreau Society and sits gracefully on its Board of Directors. He is an independent scholar in Thoreau studies, specializing in documenting Thoreau’s surveying career and his patterned practice of naming local places— there are 3,203 of them. This comprehensive “Thoreau Gazetteer” may someday be given the graphical expression it deserves: a map depicting the locations, all taken from Thoreau’s journal, which he visits while sauntering around Concord and neighboring towns. Part of this naming project has carried over to Thoreau’s use of sound and acoustics in his portrayal of the natural world. Thoreau felt compelled to naming sounds, too. The snipe’s sudden breeding-ground dive emits a “winnowing” sound (Thoreau’s coinage), while the return message of “Echo Woods” envelopes him in his own voice. Dennis is now completing a transcription of Thoreau’s manuscript, “Field Notes of Surveys,” with annotations and glossary. Thoreau is survey work was his “day job”– sustaining the poet’s work of writing, publishing, and being present in the world. Dennis has a PhD in acoustics from Kōbe University (Japan) and has lived since childhood in Seattle, surrounded by saltwater inlets and glacial peaks, set in a land of mountains beyond mountains.

• Keegan O’Connor Presenter
  Keegan O’Connor

  Presenter

  Keegan O’Connor is a PhD candidate at Queen Mary University of London, researching Emerson’s and Thoreau’s engagements with writers of the English Renaissance.

• Izumi Ogura Presenter
  

  Izumi Ogura

  Presenter

  Izumi Ogura is a Professor of English in the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Law, Daito Bunka University, Tokyo, Japan. She studied American literature and history at Mount Holyoke College, Boston College (MA 1980), and Brown University (MA 1986). She has published John Cotton and Puritanism (2004), Thomas Hooker and Connecticut (2020), and “The Concord Community: Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Antislavery Movement,” Japanese Journal of American Studies, No. 31, 2020.

• Daphne Orlandi Presenter
  Daphne Orlandi

  Presenter

  Daphne Orlandi is a third-year PhD student in the American Literature program at Sapienza – Università di Roma and at the Technische Universität Dortmund. As an Erasmus student at TU Dortmund, Daphne acquired a special interest in Ralph Waldo Emerson, who was eventually at the center of her M.A. thesis. Now a DAAD Scholarship holder, she is currently working – between Rome and Dortmund – on her PhD project centered around R. W. Emerson’s models of European and world literature, his transatlantic literary and cultural relations. Her main fields of interest include 19th century American literature and comparative literature. Besides Emerson, she is especially interested in Transcendentalism as a social force, in the works of Margaret Fuller and in Walt Whitman’s poetry.

• Henrik Otterberg Presenter
  

  Henrik Otterberg

  Presenter

  I am the bibliographer and review editor of the Thoreau Society Bulletin; also a member of the Thoreau Society BOD. I wrote my PhD dissertation on Thoreau’s aesthetics at the University of Gothenburg. In my civilian life I work as an economist at a technical firm, Kagaku Analys AB, at the Johanneberg Science Park in Gothenburg, Sweden.

• Jesse Paris Smith Performer
  

  Jesse Paris Smith

  Performer
• Beverly D. Pittman Presenter
  

  Beverly D. Pittman

  Presenter

  Beverly D. Pittman is the Founder and President of “We Shall Be Moved”, a culturally based, dance based preventive health organization for African American women. She is a lifelong dancer who received her PhD in Kinesiology and titled her dissertation “Afrocentric Kinesiology”. Beverly taught in academia for many years before striking out on her own to create the organization and a book of the same name as a resource guide and manual for addressing health disparities. Her mission is to bring the Black Dance world and the Black Health world together to eliminate health disparities. As such, she is a member of both the International Association of Blacks in Dance (IABD) and the Council on Black Health (CBH).

• Nikita Pokrovsky Presenter (virtually)
  

  Nikita Pokrovsky

  Presenter (virtually)

  Nikita Pokrovsky

  Head of the Department of General Sociology and full tenured professor at the National Research University “Higher School of Economics” in Moscow.

  His books Early American Philosophy (Vol. I. the Puritans); Ralph Waldo Emerson: In Search of His Universe; The Problem of Anomie in the Modern World, The Maze of a Lonely Personality (2009); Sociology: Paradigms and Themes [latter in
  collaboration], Tourism: From Social Theory to the Practice of Management (2009) were favorably reviewed by academic journals in Russia and abroad. With his chapter on “Globalization of Russian Youth” he became a principal contributor to The United Nations Human Development Report-2001 for the Russian Federation.

  Since 1999 Nikita Pokrovsky is the President of the Society of Professional Sociologists (Russia) and Vice-President of the Russian Society of Sociologists. He is a vice-president of the RC26 on Sociotechnics and Sociological Practice of the International Sociological Association.

  Life Member of H.D.Thoreau Society since 1978.

  Currently, as the head of a group of leading Russian social scientists, he is maintaining a longitudinal interdisciplinary research on Cellular Globalization and Focal Economy of Rural Communities in the North of Russia and the Process of De-Urbanization (2003-2021).

• Donna Marie Przybojewski Presenter
  

  Donna Marie Przybojewski

  Presenter

  Donna Marie Przybojewski (she/her/hers) is an author, artist and junior high school ELA/Writing teacher at St. Benedict Catholic School in Ohio whose mission is to make Thoreau’s teachings accessible to children. She is the author and illustrator of two coloring/discussion books about Thoreau including an ABC book, Henry David Thoreau, Who Can He Be?, Henry David Thoreau Loved the Seasons of the Year, and Henry David Thoreau: Bell Ringer for Justice. She integrated her love of the Southwest with Thoreau in If Henry David Thoreau Traveled the Southwest … An Imaginary Saunter. Her latest book is A Life of Joy, Childhood Memories of Henry David Thoreau.

  Donna Marie has been a speaker at former AG sessions and has had three of her books used as Story Walks at Walden Pond Reservation. She was selected to participate in the 2017 NEH Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshop in Concord–“Living and Writing Deliberately–The Concord Landscape and Legacy of Henry David Thoreau.”

• Brent Ranalli Presenter
  

  Brent Ranalli

  Presenter

  Brent Ranalli is a policy professional and a research scholar with the Ronin Institute. He edits the Thoreau Society Bulletin and performs as Henry David Thoreau for children and adults. Publications include Environment: An Interdisciplinary Anthology (Yale) and Common Wealth Dividends: History and Theory (Palgrave Macmillan).

• Peter Reilly Presenter
  

  Peter Reilly

  Presenter

  As far as my bio goes. I grew up in Fairview NJ born 1952. I majored in history at the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester Mass. After a year in VISTA I went to the University of Chicago to study history. That did not end well. I got a second bachelors in business administration with a concentration in accounting from Clark University and had a career in regional public accounting working in Worcester, Westboro and Boston. Near the end of my career I was working for Grant Thornton. I wrote mostly about taxes, but a bit about history, for Forbes.com, Think Outside The Tax Box and Your Tax Matters Partner.

  My main interest in history has been the US social reform movements of the antebellum period. I would sometimes obsess about a particular person. One of them was Thomas Wentworth Higginson. I started collecting and reading his work which is pretty extensive. Then I came to his Fuller biography and started a new obsession. I thought it was the most romantic story in American history and wanted to go a biopic. My film maker friend convinced me that a documentary should come first. That was over a decade ago and my dream of the biopic may well likely remain a dream.

• Tammy Rose Presenter
  

  Tammy Rose

  Presenter

  Tammy Rose is the founder and Chief Creative Officer of TranscendentalConcord.Org, a social media platform for all Thoreauvian nerds that offers new content and community online. She is the host of Concord Days, a Youtube conversation series which features authors, academics and various members of the historical Concord community. “Walden,The Book; Concord, The Town” is a podcast of short Walden readings and commentary. She has published on Thoreau and in recent years has produced several plays on that favorite topic for the AG.

• Michael Schleifer Chair
  

  Michael Schleifer

  Chair

  Michael Schleifer is a past president (2012-2018) and current treasurer of the Thoreau Society.

  Retired following a 30 year teaching career at Hunter College (CUNY), he now devotes time to his other passions, sports and music. In the former, he will begin his 34th season this fall as the Voice of the Hawks, Hunter’s basketball teams. In the latter he is a guitar hack, which only diminishes his enjoyment. He has represented Thoreau at the 2017 Earth Day Preserver’s Hike at The Mohonk Preserve in New Platz, and in 2018 at The Bethel Woods Center of the Arts (Thoreau’s Influence on the Counterculture of the 1960s). In real life he is a practicing CPA specializing in taxation and personal financial planning. Born in Brooklyn in the year of her greatest glory, he and his wife Jamee divide their time between Brooklyn and Bethel, NY.

• Jonathan Schwartz Presenter
  Jonathan Schwartz

  Presenter
• Ben Shattuck Presenter
  

  Ben Shattuck

  Presenter

  Ben Shattuck, a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, is a recipient of the PEN/Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize and a 2019 Pushcart Prize. He lives with his wife and daughter on the coast of Massachusetts, where he owns and operates a general store built in 1793.

• Corinne H. Smith Presenter
  

  Corinne H. Smith

  Presenter

  Corinne H. Smith is an independent scholar and public speaker who first encountered Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience,” and “Walden” as a high school student in the suburbs of Lancaster, Pennsylvania, in the 1970s. She is the author of “Westward I Go Free: Tracing Thoreau’s Last Journey,” and “Thoreau for Kids: His Life and Ideas, With 21 Activities.” Her popular video series, “Studying Thoreau,” can be found on YouTube. She supervises The Thoreau Society at the Shop at Walden Pond and serves as an occasional docent at Thoreau Farm, his birthplace.

• Richard Smith Presenter
  

  Richard Smith

  Presenter

  Richard Smith has lectured on and written about antebellum United States and 19th-century American literature since 1995. He has worked as a public historian and Living History Interpreter since 1999 and has portrayed Henry Thoreau at Walden Pond and around the country. More recently, Richard was the Scholar In Residence for Longfellow’s Wayside Inn in Sudbury. He has written six books, including two about Henry Thoreau, for Applewood Books.

• François Specq Presenter
  

  François Specq

  Presenter

  François Specq is professor of American literature and culture at the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, France, and a researcher affiliated with IHRIM (in the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique). His scholarly activities focus on American literature from the colonial era to the early twentieth century and on ecocriticism and environmental humanities. He has published critical studies and translations of works by Thomas Jefferson, Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Margaret Fuller, Mary Austin, and Jack London. He has also edited or coedited collections of essays on Thoreau (Thoreauvian Modernities, University of Georgia Press, 2013; Thoreau Beyond Borders, University of Massachusetts Press, 2020); on the representations and philosophy of walking in literature and the arts (Walking and the Aesthetics of Modernity, Palgrave Macmillan, 2016); and in the field of ecocriticism (Environmental Awareness and the Design of Literature, Brill, 2016).

• Jym St. Pierre Presenter
  

  Jym St. Pierre

  Presenter

  Jym St. Pierre, Maine director of RESTORE: The North Woods, has worked for over four decades to preserve wild nature. Since 1995, he has been at the forefront of efforts to protect Thoreau’s Maine Woods from destructive resource extraction and misplaced development, including leadership in campaigning for a Maine Woods National Park & Preserve. He has visited dozens of National Parks across four continents.

• Catherine Staples Presenter
  

  Catherine Staples

  Presenter

  Catherine Staples is the author of Vert (Terrapin Books), forthcoming in fall of 2022. This new collection of poems, elegy for a lost brother and paean to the natural world, takes its lead from Thoreau’s journals and his enigmatic line: “I long ago lost a hound, a bay horse, and a turtledove, and am still on their trail. Many are the travellers I have spoken concerning them, describing their tracks and what calls they answered to.” The Rattling Window (The Ashland Poetry Press, 2013) was nominated by Eamon Grennan and won the McGovern Prize. Never a Note Forfeit (Seven Kitchens Press, 2011) won the Keystone Chapbook Prize. Staples is the recipient of a Dakin Fellowship from the Sewanee Writer’s Conference, the Southern Poetry Review’s Guy Owen Prize, and a several residencies at the Tyrone Guthrie Centre. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Copper Nickle, Gettysburg Review, Southern Review, Terrain, and the Moth. Sheteaches in the Honors and English programs at Villanova University.

• Mark Sturges Presenter
  

  Mark Sturges

  Presenter

  Mark Sturges is Associate Professor of English at St. Lawrence University in northern New York, where he teaches courses in early American and environmental literature and a creative writing class in the university’s Adirondack Semester. He has published articles on early American agricultural reform, the poetry of sheep farming, the cultural history of maple sugaring, and tuberculosis health-seekers in the Adirondacks. His most recent research concerns the intersection of disability studies and the environmental humanities.

• Alireza Taghdarreh Presenter
  Alireza Taghdarreh

  Presenter

  I am a 58 year old independent translator in Iran. You can find part of my life’s story here and here.

  A link to my talk at Walden Woods Project

  William Powers about the translation of his book: Hamlet’s BlackBerry

  I brought Mr. Powers to Iran’s national radio for a short talk about his book.

• Robert M. Thorson Chair
  

  Robert M. Thorson

  Chair

  Robert M. Thorson (he/him/his) is a Midwest native turned Northwestern geologist, turned Northeastern academic. He is a life member of the Thoreau Society and the author of four books Beyond Walden, Walden’s Shore, The Boatman, and The Guide to Walden Pond and multiple articles. Encountering Thoreau through his readings half a century ago was a turning point towards a more deliberate and joyful life.

• Jan Turnquist Presenter
  

  Jan Turnquist

  Presenter

  Jan Turnquist is Executive Director of Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House in Concord, Massachusetts. She won an Emmy for her documentary, Orchard House, Home of Little Women, which airs and streams on PBS. Jan is also an internationally-acclaimed living history portrayer of Louisa May Alcott and other historic women.

• Beth Van Duzer Presenter
  

  Beth Van Duzer

  Presenter

  Beth van Duzer has an undergraduate degree in English, a masters in History, and is a Certified Interpretive Guide in addition to being a licensed tour guide for the Town of Concord. Beth has written articles on Concord’s history for “Discover Concord” magazine and provides private, in-depth tours for groups such as MFA programs looking to dive deep into Concord history. As a public historian, her goal is to guide visitors through history in an educational and entertaining way.

• Anke Voss Presenter
  

  Anke Voss

  Presenter

  Anke Voss joined the Concord Free Public Library staff as the new Curator for the William Munroe Special Collections in October 2019. Anke received both a B.A. in History and an M.A. in United States Political, Social, and Women’s History from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Anke completed her Master’s Degree in Library and Information Science with a concentration in Archives and Preservation Management at the State University of New York at Albany. With work experience that spans both academic and public libraries, most recently Anke served as the Director of Archives and Special Collections, and Facilities at the Urbana Free Public Library (Illinois) from 2005-2019. She has served as adjunct faculty in the ISchool, School Information Sciences, at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign since 2006. With Tanya Zanish-Belcher she edited, Perspectives on Women’s Archives, published by the SAA in 2013.

• Cheryl Weaver Presenter
  

  Cheryl Weaver

  Presenter

  Cheryl Weaver is currently completing her dissertation at the University at Buffalo on nineteenth-century American women’s letters. Her scholarly interests include nineteenth-century American literature, epistolary fictions, and the pragmatics of postal delivery and postal history.

• Geoff Wisner Chair
  

  Geoff Wisner

  Chair

  Geoff Wisner is the editor of Thoreau’s Wildflowers and Thoreau’s Animals, and a contributor to the anthology Now Comes Good Sailing. His previous books include A Basket of Leaves: 99 Books That Capture the Spirit of Africa and African Lives: An Anthology of Memoirs and Autobiographies. He lives in New York City and serves on the board of the Thoreau Society.

• David Wood Presenter
  

  David Wood

  Presenter

  David F. Wood has been curator of the Concord Museum since 1985 and has written several articles on the craft community in Concord, including silversmiths, cabinetmakers, and clockmakers, as well as the book-length catalog An Observant Eye: The Thoreau Collection at the Concord Museum. David has curated some fifty exhibitions at the Museum including Early Spring: Henry Thoreau and Climate Change.

• Xiujuan Yao Presenter (virtually)
  

  Xiujuan Yao

  Presenter (virtually)

  Dr. Xiujuan Yao is a lecturer at Tianjin Chengjian University, China. She received her Ph.D. from Xiamen University, China and studied as a visiting scholar at Boston University from 2013 to 2014. Her major field is American transcendentalism, along with a great interest in western philosophy and visual art. She is the recipient of the third annual Thoreau Society Short-Term Research Fellowship and delivered her paper on a comparative study of Confucius’s influence on Thoreau in 2014 Thoreau Society Annual Gathering.

  Dr. Yao has published several papers on the nineteen-century American literature and is presently working on the project of “A Deep Ecological Study of American Transcendentalism.”

• Reverend Bertram Johnson Presenter
  

  Reverend Bertram Johnson

  Presenter

  Rev. Bertram Johnson is a faith leader who has spent more than two decades serving churches, non-profit, and faith-based organizations dedicated to social justice, spiritual care, and public health. Bertram is a minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) and was the first openly gay African American to be ordained in the denomination. He currently serves as a Chaplain at Union Theological Seminary in New York. A native Floridian, he holds a Master of Divinity from Princeton Theological Seminary and a Master of Social Work from Rutgers University.

• Danielle Legros Georges Presenter
  

  Danielle Legros Georges

  Presenter

  Danielle Legros Georges is the Director of the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Lesley University. She is also the former Poet Laureate of the City of Boston, where she was tasked with raising the status of poetry in the everyday consciousness of Bostonians, acting as an advocate for poetry, language and the arts, and creating a unique artistic legacy through public readings and civic events. She is the author of several books of poetry, including most recently Island Heart: The Poems of Ida Faubert, a book of English translations from the French (Subpress Collective, 2021).

• Kenneth Reeves Presenter
  

  Kenneth Reeves

  Presenter

  Currently the president of the Cambridge (MA) branch of the NAACP, Kenneth Reeves served the people of Cambridge for twenty-four years as Mayor (three terms), Vice Mayor, City Councilor, and Chair of the Cambridge School Committee. He was the first Black and the first openly gay mayor in Massachusetts and the first openly gay Black mayor in the US. A graduate of Harvard with a law degree from the University of Michigan, Ken served on the board of the Museum of African American History in Boston and was recently a Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. visiting scholar at MIT’s Department of Urban Studies and Planning.

• John Hughes Presenter
  

  John Hughes

  Presenter

  John Hughes is an internationally renowned composer, kora player, percussionist and vocalist whose style crosses myriad cultural boundaries and fuses disparate influences. Also a sculptor, dancer, instrument builder and educator, John holds a BFA from the Tyler School of Art of Temple University and the West Surrey College of Art and Design in Farnham, England and an MFA from the University of Wisconsin in Madison. John has studied the music song and dance of West Africa for over 28 years, training with numerous master drummers and dancers from Guinea and Mali, including Mamady Keita and Famoudou Konate. As a Kora player, his playing is deeply rooted in the ancient Mande tradition.

• Michael Lorence Presenter
  

  Michael Lorence

  Presenter

  Michael Lorence is founding President of the Innermost House Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to exploring the transcendental ethic of plain living, high thinking, and fellow feeling. The Innermost House experiment in lived transcendentalism began twenty years ago in the woods of coastal California and continues now in the woods of tidewater Virginia. He will be the Respondent to the panel presentation.

• Michael Frederick Presenter
  

  Michael Frederick

  Presenter

  Mike Frederick is an experienced Executive Director skilled in nonprofit management, development, and public relations. He has helped to lead the Thoreau Society since 2006. His field of study includes graduate work on Thoreau’s social philosophy and ethics as well as post graduate work on the publication of Thoreau’s Wild Fruits. He has worked with several non-profit Boards. He studied finance at Suffolk University, history at Harvard University, and nonprofit management at Northwestern University – Kellogg School of Management.

• Rebecca Solnit Presenter
  

  Rebecca Solnit

  Presenter

  Rebecca Solnit is the author of more than twenty books, including Recollections of My Nonexistence, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, The Faraway Nearby, A Paradise Built in Hell, River of Shadows, and Wanderlust. She is also the author of Men Explain Things to Me and many essays on feminism, activism and social change, hope, and the climate crisis. A product of the California public education system from kindergarten to graduate school, she is a regular contributor to The Guardian and other publications.

• Ron Hoag
  

  Ron Hoag

  Ron Hoag is past president of the Thoreau Society and a former member of the
  board of directors for 22 years. He edited volumes one through seven of The
  Concord Saunterer, New Series (1993-1999) and still serves on the editorial board
  for that journal and the Thoreau Society Bulletin. His publications on Thoreau
  focus on Henry’s career as a lecturer, including a book-length calendar of lectures
  before and after Walden (coauthored with Bradley Dean) and considerations of
  the importance of the Sublime in “Ktaadn” and other Thoreau writings. Hoag is
  Professor Emeritus at East Carolina University in Greenville, NC, where he taught
  for 37 years.