2021 Summer Conversational Series - PANELIST Biographies

Phyllis is a long-time scholar of women in the Transcendentalist movement, especially Mary Moody Emerson and Margaret Fuller.  She is the author of many articles and Mary Moody Emerson and the Origins of Transcendentalism:  A Family History (1998), and co-edited Toward a Female Genealogy of Transcendentalism (2014) with Jana L. Argersinger.  Phyllis is a past president of the Emerson and Fuller societies, as well as a former resident of Concord, who recently retired as Professor Emerita of English, Women’s Studies, and American Studies at Penn State Brandywine. With her move to Providence, RI, she is glad to return to New England to have easy access to old Concord resources -- including Orchard House and its Summer Conversational Series.

Maria is Associate Dean for Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity at the Heller School for Social Policy at Brandeis University, as well as Co-Founder and President of the Robbins House, the c. 1800 Concord, MA home of former slave and Revolutionary War veteran Caesar Robbins.  She and her colleagues won the Human Rights Council for Freedom Award (2020) and the Concord Museum's Robert Gross Award for History (2019). 

Megan currently teaches narrative nonfiction writing and the art of archival research for the MFA program at Emerson College.  In 2014, she won the Pulitzer Prize for Biography & Memoir for Margaret Fuller:  An American Life, which also won the Massachusetts Book Award in Nonfiction.  Megan's 2005 book, The Peabody Sisters:  Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism, won the Francis Parkman Prize, the Mark Lynton History Prize, the Massachusetts Book Award, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer.  Her latest book, Elizabeth Bishop:  A Miracle for Breakfast (2017), is both an engaging tribute to her former professor/poetic mentor, and a thoughtful memoir of her own coming-of-age as a writer.  Megan has published numerous essays and reviews, received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Massachusetts Artists Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute, and spent the Fall of 2017 as a Visiting Professor at Kyoto University in Japan.   She has been a Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society since 1991, and currently serves as President of the Society of American Historians.

For two decades, Michael has been compelled to speak, write, and teach on Margaret Fuller and the Transcendentalists.  He is a mystic who comes from an intuitive female shamanic lineage with his DNA paternal line as Ashkenazi-Levite, who cared for the female presence of God in the wilderness Tabernacle and the Temple in Jerusalem.  For 32 years, Michael has worked as Blue Turtle - Intuitive Counselor, helping people to realize their full potential as guided by Spirit.  He earned his MDiv, magna cum laude, at Moravian Theological Seminary, and his MEd in Secondary Education and History and Citizenship Certification at Gwynedd Mercy University, where he also taught Religious Studies.  His speeches, articles, and poetry are published in The Universalist Herald, The Journal of Unitarian Universalist History, American Spirit, and Sedona Journal of Emergence. Michael also teaches Intuitive Sacred Marriage, writing classes, and workshops.  His videos, Blue Turtle - Discover Your Intuitive Self! are available on YouTube.

Barbara is the author of Massachusetts in the Woman Suffrage Movement:  Revolutionary Reformers (2018), Boston in the Civil War:  Hub of the Second Revolution (2014), and Walking Tours of Civil War Boston:  Hub of Abolitionism (2011, 2d ed. 2014).  She is also co-editor of Breaking Barriers:  The Unfinished Story of Women Lawyers and Judges in Massachusetts (2012).  Barbara earned her undergraduate degree from Harvard College and her law degree from Harvard Law School.  She is on the boards of Boston By Foot and the Royall House & Slave Quarters.  Barbara also worked as a Senior Attorney at the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court until June 2019.  She is currently a lecturer at Harvard Law School and teaches a course on woman suffrage at Tufts University.  For more information, please see www.barbarafberenson.com 

Melissa is a Longmeadow Historical Society board member and experienced museum educator and museum guide.  Currently, she is employed as a guide at the Emily Dickinson Homestead in Amherst, MA, where she shares details of the life and work of one of America’s most celebrated poetic voices.  She has researched extensively, and presented locally, the life and legacy of Sarah W. Storrs, a 19th century deaf student and educator who bequeathed land and money to establish the Richard Salter Storrs Library, Longmeadow’s public library.  She has also curated an exhibit featuring artifacts relevant to Sarah’s story that is currently on display at the Storrs House Museum in Longmeadow.  She holds a BA from Providence College, and an MEd from UMASS-Amherst.

Cathlin is a professor at CSU-Stanislaus, where she teaches in the Liberal Studies department, preparing pre-service teachers.  She first read Little Women at the age of 11, and has since read every single thing Alcott ever wrote.  Her research focus has been on Alcott’s juvenile fiction, both the novels and short story volumes.  She has an extensive Alcott collection, including a few first editions, which she is not afraid to read, as books that are loved should be read.

Diane holds an advanced degree in Public Administration and taught Political Science and American History classes on the college level for University of Maryland University College and for several Community Colleges, both in-person and online.  She has taught for the University of Maryland University College on an Air Force base in South Korea, and also taught American Studies in Russia under a Fulbright Grant.  For several summers, Diane spent a month in China teaching English to Engineering students at a University in Xian.  Currently, she teaches American History topics to senior citizens through a Community College program, offering such courses as History of Witchcraft in Salem, Murder and Mayhem, and Pirates and Explorers.

Susan has been passionate about women’s history ever since she realized it’s been left out of history books.  To learn more about this rich heritage, Susan researched and wrote about the radical suffragette newspaper, The Revolution, as part of the requirements for her Master of Journalism degree at Temple University in Philadelphia, PA.  Currently director of communications at a national non-profit organization near Philadelphia, Susan is also a video producer and freelance writer and editor.  She has worked as a researcher at Ms. magazine, and for a decade and a half, wrote a restaurant review column for The Morning Call of Allentown, PA. 

Adriana teaches advanced literature and culture courses at Teachers Training Colleges in Buenos Aires, Argentina.  She is currently pursuing her Masters in Anglo-American Literature at the University of Cordoba, with the thesis of “The Afterlife of Little Women as a Feminist Text.”  This will be her fourth time presenting at the Summer Conversational Series in the past decade.  She lives in Facundo Quiroga, a small town in Buenos Aires Province, and is the proud grandmother of five beautiful grandchildren.

Kristi is an independent interdisciplinary scholar specializing in Concord’s 19th century literary circle.  As a public history and museums and archives professional, she is proud to have worked with all of Concord’s literary/historical sites, including as an Historical Interpreter at Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House.  Kristi received her PhD as well as a Museum Studies Certificate from Boston University, and is currently at work on a biography of the Alcott sisters. 

Marianne received her MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and primarily writes on topics related to women’s history in the frontier era.  She has taught English and Creative Writing at the community college and university levels, and is the author of 11 books for children and adults, including her most recent release, Her Quiet Revolution:  A Novel of Martha Hughes Cannon, Frontier Doctor and First Female State Senator (Shadow Mountain Press, 2020).  Marianne is also founder of The Writer’s Guild, a literary non-profit, and writes from a 100-year-old house in Astoria, OR.  For more information, please visit www.mariannemonson.com. 

A Professor of English, Todd’s writings have appeared in such journals and books as The Concord Saunterer, The New England Quarterly, The Walt Whitman Quarterly Review, The Oxford Handbook of Transcendentalism, and Approaches to Teaching the Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson.  He has also served as President of the Ralph Waldo Emerson Society.  

Lorraine is a practicing physician and an independent scholar who graduated from the State University of New York-Downstate Medical School.  She did her post-graduate training in Internal Medicine at St. Vincent’s Hospital in Greenwich Village, NY during the AIDS epidemic, and devoted her career to the care of people infected with HIV and to the education of young physicians.  Her first book combined both of those interests into A History of the Medical Profession in Westfield, NJ:  From Origins to the Twentieth Century (Westfield Historical Society); her second book was born of a lifelong passion for Louisa May Alcott’s work as well as a love for her hometown of New York City -- Only Gossip Prospers: A Novel of Louisa May Alcott in New York (December 2019).  Lorraine continues to practice medicine in New York and New Jersey while working on two more books related to Louisa May Alcott.

Krissie is a writer and academic working in the fields of American literature and childhood.  Her first book, Louisa May Alcott and the Textual Child, was published in March of 2020 by Palgrave Macmillan, while her second, Reading the Salem Witch Child, was published in December of 2020.  Krissie’s writings on Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, and the Transcendentalists have regularly been published, and she is currently planning her third book -- a new biography of Louisa, her family, and her circle.