{"id":1627,"date":"2021-08-10T11:33:43","date_gmt":"2021-08-10T15:33:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/?page_id=1627"},"modified":"2024-07-18T06:38:59","modified_gmt":"2024-07-18T10:38:59","slug":"about-the-authors","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/special-resources\/about-the-authors\/","title":{"rendered":"About the Authors"},"content":{"rendered":"

Banner image:\u00a0<\/strong> Editor Matthew Pinsker and contributor Spencer Crew from a 2017 panel on “Teaching the Underground Railroad” hosted by the National Archives at Kansas City, Missouri.\u00a0 (C-SPAN<\/a>)<\/p>\n

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\"BAKER\"<\/a><\/strong>H. <\/strong>ROBERT BAKER<\/strong> is an associate history professor at Georgia State University. He received his bachelor\u2019s degree in history from Pomona College in California, his master\u2019s degree in interdisciplinary studies from the University of Manitoba, Canada, and his doctorate in history from University of California, Los Angeles. He authored two books: Prigg v. Pennsylvania: Slavery, the Supreme Court, and the Ambivalent Constitution<\/em> (University Press of Kansas, 2012) and The Rescue of Joshua Glover: A Fugitive Slave, the Constitution, and the Coming of the Civil War<\/em>. (Ohio University Press, 2006). His area of interest is the influence of historical consciousness on constitutional thinking, as well as the nature of constitutional change over time.<\/p>\n

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\"BARKER\"<\/a>GORDON S. BARKER<\/strong>\u00a0is a full professor of history at Bishop\u2019s University in Sherbrooke , Quebec, Canada, where he specializes in African American, Revolutionary America, and Civil War Era history. He received undergraduate degrees in Economics and History from McGill University and his MA and PhD from the College of William and Mary. His works have appeared in leading scholarly journals such as the\u00a0Virginia Magazine of History and Biography<\/em>\u00a0and the\u00a0American Encyclopedia of Civil Liberties.\u00a0<\/em>He has authored two major books called\u00a0Fugitive Slaves and the Unfinished American Revolution: Eight Cases, 1848-1856\u00a0<\/em>(McFarland, 2013) and\u00a0The Imperfect Revolution: Anthony Burns and the Landscape of Race in Antebellum America<\/em>\u00a0(The Kent State University Press, 2010) as well as several book chapters in edited volumes.<\/p>\n

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\"BAUMGARTNER\"<\/a>ALICE L. BAUMGARTNER <\/b>teaches History at the University of Southern California. Baumgartner is the author of\u00a0South to Freedom: Runaway Slaves to Mexico and the Road to Civil War<\/em>\u00a0(Basic Books, 2020), which was a\u00a0New York Times\u2019\u00a0<\/i>Editors\u2019 Choice and a finalist for the\u00a0Los Angeles Times\u00a0<\/i>book prize in history.\u00a0Baumgartner graduated from Yale University with a B.A in History, received an M.Phil in Latin American Studies from the University of Oxford, and completed her doctorate from Yale University.
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\"BLACKETT\"<\/a>R.J.M. BLACKETT <\/strong>is an emeritus professor of history at Vanderbilt University, where he held the Andrew Jackson Chair. He specializes in United States and Caribbean history, particularly their efforts to end slavery and racial discrimination. Previously, he was the visiting Harmsworth Professor at Oxford University and taught at the University of Pittsburgh, Indiana University, and the University of Houston. He received his bachelor\u2019s degree in International Relations from the University of Keele, England and his master\u2019s degree in American Studies from the University of Manchester, England. He is the author of numerous books including The Captive\u2019s Quest for Freedom: <\/em>Fugitive Slaves, the 1850 Fugitive Slave Law, and the Politics of Slavery<\/em> (Cambridge, 2018).<\/p>\n

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\"BORDEWICH\"<\/a><\/strong>FERGUS M. BORDEWICH <\/strong>is an American historian who holds degrees from the City College of New York and Columbia University. His books include Bound for Canaan: The Underground Railroad and the War for the Soul of America<\/em> (HarperCollins, 2005) which was selected as one of the American Booksellers Association’s “ten best nonfiction books” in 2005, and more recently Congress at War: How Republican Reformers Fought The Civil War, Defied Lincoln, Ended Slavery, And Remade America<\/em>, (Knopf, 2020). His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, American Heritage, The Atlantic, Harper’s, New York Magazine, GEO, and Reader’s Digest, amongst others.<\/p>\n

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\"CHURCHILL\"<\/a>ROBERT H. CHURCHILL\u00a0<\/strong>is Professor of History at Hillyer College at the University of Hartford where he teaches courses on American History, Global History, and Political Violence. At Brown University Churchill received a B.A. in History and a Masters in teaching; Churchill also holds a Ph.D. in Early American History from Rutgers University. Churchill\u2019s publications include: To Shake Their Guns in the Tyrant\u2019s Face: Libertarian Political Violence and the Origins of the Militia Movement\u00a0<\/em>(University of Michigan Press, 2009) and\u00a0The Underground Railroad and the Geography of Violence in Antebellum America\u00a0<\/em>(Cambridge University Press, 2020).
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\"Cohen\"<\/a>ANTHONY COHEN<\/strong> is the creator of the Menare Foundation, a national non-profit that is dedicated to the preservation of Underground Railroad history, historic sites and environments, and the creation of vibrant educational programs. He received his bachelor\u2019s degree in American Studies from American University. As part of his research, Cohen has walked the Underground Railroad on multiple occasions, the first time traveling over 1,200 miles by foot, boat, and rail. His journey caught the attention of numerous radio, television, and print sources such as C-SPAN and the Washington Post. He has served as a consultant to the National Parks Conservation Association, Maryland Public Television and NASA, among others, and trained Oprah Winfrey for her role as Sethe in the motion picture\u00a0Beloved <\/em>(1998).<\/p>\n

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\"Crew\"<\/a><\/strong>SPENCER CREW <\/strong>\u00a0is the Robinson Professor of US history at George Mason University. Crew received a PhD degree from Rutgers University in 1979 and in 2003, he was named to the Rutgers Hall of Distinguished Alumni. He served as president of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center for six years and worked at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution for twenty years.\u00a0 He became the first African-American director of the NMAH in 1994.<\/p>\n

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\"Finkelman\"<\/a>PAUL FINKELMAN <\/strong>is a noted American legal historian who has held several distinguished faculty positions. In 2024 he will hold the Boden Chair at Marquette University College of Law.\u00a0 He received his undergraduate degree in American studies from Syracuse University and his master\u2019s degree and doctorate in American History from the University of Chicago. He was ranked among the most cited legal historians according to \u201cBrian Leieter\u2019s Law School Rankings.\u201d Finkelman is the author of more than 200 scholarly articles and the author or editor of more than fifty books including\u00a0An Imperfect Union<\/em>\u00a0(The University of North Carolina Press, 1981) and recently\u00a0Supreme Injustice<\/em>\u00a0(Harvard University Press, 2018). His op-eds and shorter pieces have appeared in the\u00a0New York Times<\/em>, the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>,\u00a0USA Today<\/em>, and on the\u00a0Huffington Post<\/em>.
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\"Eric<\/a>ERIC FONER <\/strong><\/strong>is the former DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University. Foner has served as the president of the Organization of American Historians, American Historical Association, and Society of American Historians. He has also served as a consultant of several historical sites and museums for the National Park Service. Foner\u2019s numerous publications include:The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln and American Slavery<\/em>(Norton, 2010) and Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad <\/em>(Norton, 2015). The Fiery Trial <\/em>won the Pulitzer Prize for History, the Bancroft Prize, and The Lincoln Prize. Gateway to Freedom <\/em>was awarded with the American History Book Prize by the New-York Historical Society.
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\"Grover\"<\/a>KATHRYN GROVER<\/strong> is an independent researcher, writer, and editor in American social, ethnic, and local history. Grover\u2019s publications include: Make\u00a0<\/em>A\u00a0Way Somehow: African American Life in a Northern Community<\/em>\u00a0(Syracuse University Press, 1994);\u00a0The Fugitive’s Gibraltar: Escaping Slaves and Abolitionism in New Bedford, Massachusetts<\/em> (University\u00a0of\u00a0Massachusetts Press, 2001); The Brickyard: The Life, Death, and Legend of an Urban Neighborhood<\/em> (Lynna Museum and Historical Society, 2004); and Rochester, New Hampshire, 1890\u20132010: \u201cA Com\u00adpact Little Industrial City\u201d<\/em> (Peter E. Randall, 2013); She is editor of\u00a0New Jersey History<\/em> of the New Jersey Historical Society. Grover has also published a Historic Resource Study of the antebellum African American community on the north slope of\u00a0Beacon Hill\u00a0for Boston African American National Historic Site.<\/p>\n

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\"Harrold\"<\/a>STANLEY HARROLD <\/strong>is an emeritus professor of history at South Carolina State University. Harrold received a B.A. in history from Allegheny College, and holds a M.A. and Ph.D. in nineteenth century American history from Kent State University. Harrold received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities for two of his publications. Harrold is a coauthor and coeditor of the world\u2019s bestselling African-American history textbook series, The African-American Odyssey <\/em>(University Press of Florida). Harrold is also the editor of the high school version of the textbook, Southern Dissent, <\/em>that consists of 28 books, six of them having won awards. Harrold was awarded with a faculty research award from the National Endowment for the Humanities for his book Border War: Fighting over Slavery before the Civil War<\/em> (University of North Carolina Press, 2010).<\/p>\n

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\"KCJ\"<\/a><\/strong>KELLIE CARTER JACKSON <\/strong>is the Michael and Denise Kellen 68\u2019 Associate Professor in the Department of Africana Studies at Wellesley College. She is the author of the award-winning book,\u00a0Force & Freedom: Black Abolitionists and the Politics of Violence<\/em>. Her essays have been featured in\u00a0The New York Times<\/em>, Washington Post<\/em>, The Atlantic<\/em>, The Guardian<\/em>, The Los Angeles Times<\/em>, The Boston Globe<\/em>, NPR, and other outlets. Carter Jackson serves as a Historian-in-Residence for the Museum of African American History in Boston and is commissioner for the Massachusetts Historical Commission. She is the host and executive producer of \u201cYou Get a Podcast!: The Unauthorized Study of the Queen of Talk” and\u00a0 co-host of the Radiotopia podcast \u201cThis Day in Esoteric Political History.\u201d Carter Jackson’s newest book is We Refuse: A Forceful History of Black Resistance to White Supremacy<\/em> (Basic Books).<\/p>\n

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\"Johnson\"<\/a>D\u00c9ANDA JOHNSON <\/strong>is currently the Civil Rights Historian with the National Park Service, Interior Region 2.\u00a0 She previously served as Midwest Regional Coordinator for the National Park Service Network to Freedom Program in Omaha, Nebraska. In that capacity, she worked with local, state, and federal entities, as well as other interested parties to preserve, promote, and educate the public about the history of the Underground Railroad. Previously, Johnson was the Coordinator of the African American Research and Service Institute at Ohio University and she also served as a visiting instructor in the Department of African American Studies. She received her BA from University of California, San Diego and her MA and PhD in American Studies from the College of William & Mary.<\/p>\n

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\"LaRoche\"<\/a>CHERYL JANIFER LAROCHE <\/strong>is an associate research professor at the University of Maryland who combines law, history, oral history, archaeology, geography, and material culture to define nineteenth century African American cultural landscapes and its relationship to the escape from slavery. She holds a PhD in American Studies with a concentration in Archaeology and African American history from the University of Maryland, College Park. She is the author of Free Black Communities and the Underground Railroad: The Geography of Resistance<\/em> (University of Illinois Press, 2014), which explores the landscapes of Black communities and their relationship to the Underground Railroad. She has consulted for Smithsonian\u2019s National Museum of African American History and Culture, several National Park Service sites, the African Burial Ground Project and numerous museums, cultural institutions and historic sites.
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\"Larson\"<\/a><\/strong>KATE CLIFFORD LARSON\u00a0<\/span><\/strong>is a historian and leading Harriet Tubman scholar who has taught at Simmons University in Boston, Massachusetts. After receiving undergraduate and master\u2019s degrees from Simmons, she received her MBA at Northeastern and PhD at the University of New Hampshire. She is a\u00a0New York Times<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/i>\u00a0best-selling author who wrote multiple books including\u00a0<\/span>Bound For the Promised Land: Harriet Tubman, Portrait of an American Hero\u00a0<\/span><\/em>(One World, 2003<\/span>)\u00a0<\/span><\/em>and\u00a0<\/span>The Assassin\u2019s Accomplice: Mary Surratt and the Plot to Kill Abraham Lincoln\u00a0<\/span><\/em>(2008)<\/span>.\u00a0<\/span><\/em>Her work helped establish the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad National Monument which was approved by President Obama\u2019s executive order.<\/span><\/p>\n

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\"Manning\"<\/a>CHANDRA MANNING <\/strong>is an American historian and Professor of History at Georgetown who specializes in 19th century US History. She graduated from Mount Holyoke College, received an M.Phil in Irish history and literature from the National University of Ireland, Galway, and a Ph.D. from Harvard in 2002. Her first book, What This Cruel War Was Over: Soldiers, Slavery, and the Civil War (<\/em>Knopf, 2007) won the Avery O. Craven Prize awarded by the Organization of American Historians. Her second book, Troubled Refuge: Struggling for Freedom in the Civil War (<\/em>Knopf, 2016),<\/em> about Civil War refugee camp, won the Jefferson Davis Prize awarded by the American Civil War Museum for best book on the Civil War.<\/p>\n

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\"Miller\"<\/a>DIANE MILLER<\/b> served as the national program manager for the National Park Service, National Underground Railroad Network to Freedom from 1999 to 2023. Diane began her career at the NPS in 1984 working in the National Register of Historic Places programs. She received her MA in History from the University of Maryland and BA in both History and Anthropology from Ohio University. In December 2019 she received her Ph.D. from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Her dissertation is \u201cWyandot, Shawnee, and African American Resistance to Slavery in Ohio and Kansas.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Newby\"<\/a>CASSANDRA L. NEWBY-ALEXANDER<\/strong> is an associate professor of History at Norfolk State University and a dean at its College of Liberal Arts. Newby-Alexander also currently serves on the executive board of Jamestown-Yorktown Foundation Board. Newby-Alexander was the co-chair of the Virginia Commission on African American History Education in the Commonwealth and Historical Commission of the Supreme Court of Virginia. Newby-Alexander received a B.A. in American Government and African American Studies at the University of Virginia and her Ph.D. in American History from the College of William and Mary, where she was a graduate teaching assistant and earned a teaching fellowship. Newby-Alexander is the author of Virginia Waterways and the Underground Railroad<\/em> (The History Press, 2017) An African American History of the Civil War in Hampton Roads<\/em> (Arcadia, 2010).<\/p>\n

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\"Oakes\"<\/a><\/strong>JAMES OAKES <\/strong>is an American historian and Distinguished Professor of History and Graduate School Humanities Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. An alumnus of Baruch College, Dr. Oakes holds M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California\u2013Berkeley. Before coming to the Graduate Center, he taught at Princeton and Northwestern Universities. His pioneering books include The Radical and the Republican: Frederick Douglass, Abraham Lincoln, and the Triumph of Antislavery Politics <\/em>(W.W. Norton, 2007); and Freedom National: The Destruction of Slavery in the United States, 1861\u20131865 <\/em>(W.W. Norton, 2012). His most recent book is The Crooked Path to Abolition: Abraham Lincoln and the Antislavery Constitution <\/em>(W.W. Norton, 2021).<\/p>\n

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\"DA<\/a>DAMIAN ALAN PARGAS <\/strong><\/strong>is the Professor of History and Culture of North America at Leiden University in the Netherlands and executive director of the Roosevelt Institute for American Studies in Middelburg. Pargas studied social history at Leiden University, receiving his MA and PhD. Pargas has written multiple books and several articles on American slavery, slave family-life, and slave migration in the 19th<\/sup>century. His most recent monograph is\u00a0Freedom Seekers: Fugitive Slaves in North America, 1800-1860<\/i>\u00a0(Cambridge, 2022). Additionally, Pargas is a board member of the Netherlands American Studies Association as well as founder and chief editor of theJournal of American History. <\/em>Pargas supervises the NOW project \u201cNewcomers in Chains: Slave Migrants in the Antebellum South, 1820-1865.\u201d
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\"Pinsker\"<\/a>MATTHEW PINSKER<\/strong> holds the Brian Pohanka Chair of Civil War History at Dickinson College in Carlisle, Pennsylvania and serves as Director of the House Divided Project, an innovative effort to build digital resources on the Civil War era. Pinsker has previously held visiting fellowships at New America Foundation, US Army War College and the National Constitution Center.\u00a0 Pinsker directs the Slave Stampedes on the Southern Borderlands initiative in partnership with the National Park Service Network to Freedom.\u00a0 He is the author of two books on Abraham Lincoln and numerous articles on various topics in the Civil War Era, including on the Underground Railroad and resistance to slavery.\u00a0 Pinsker graduated from Harvard College and received a D.Phil. degree in Modern History from the University of Oxford.\u00a0 He often leads K-12 teacher-training workshops on the Underground Railroad for organizations such as the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. Pinsker currently serves the Organization of American Historians (OAH) as a \u201cDistinguished Lecturer” and sits on the advisory boards of several historic organizations, including Ford\u2019s Theatre Society, Gettysburg Foundation, National Civil War Museum,\u00a0 President Lincoln\u2019s Cottage at the Soldiers\u2019 Home, and the Thaddeus Stevens-Lydia Hamilton Smith site in Lancaster, Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

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\"Sinha\"<\/a>MANISHA SINHA<\/strong><\/strong>is an Indian-born American historian and the Draper Chair in American History at the University of Connecticut. She received her PhD from Columbia University and is the recipient of numerous fellowships, including from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Mellon Foundation. Sinha has authored multiple books including<\/span>The Slave\u2019s Cause: A History of Abolition<\/em>(Yale University Press, 2016) which won the Frederick Douglass Book Prize.\u00a0 She also wrote,<\/span>The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina<\/em>(University of North Carolina Press, 2000), which was named one of the ten best books on slavery by\u00a0Politico<\/i>. She has also written for many well-known sources including the\u00a0Wall Street Journal<\/i>,\u00a0New York Times<\/i>, and\u00a0Washington Post<\/i>\u00a0and served as an advisor and expert for the Emmy-nominated PBS documentary,<\/span>The Abolitionists<\/em>.<\/span>
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Banner image:\u00a0 Editor Matthew Pinsker and contributor Spencer Crew from a 2017 panel on “Teaching the Underground Railroad” hosted by the National Archives at Kansas City, Missouri.\u00a0 (C-SPAN) H. ROBERT BAKER is an associate history professor at Georgia State University. He received his bachelor\u2019s degree in history from Pomona College in California, his master\u2019s degree […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3340,"parent":1633,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"class_list":["post-1627","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1627"}],"version-history":[{"count":53,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1627\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4957,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1627\/revisions\/4957"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/1633"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3340"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/housedivided.dickinson.edu\/sites\/ugrr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}