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2012 Summer Conversational Series and Teacher Institute

Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House Centennial:Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House Centennial:Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House Centennial: Legacy of a Powerful VoiceLegacy of a Powerful VoiceLegacy of a Powerful Voice

Daily Schedule

Sunday 15 July 2012 2:30 - 5:00 John Matteson, John Stauffer, and Michael Stoneham

Panel Discussion: “Transcending Time: A Legacy for the Ages”

We are once again delighted to partner with our friends at The Thoreau Society to conclude their Annual Gathering and begin our Summer Conversational Series this afternoon

Monday 16 July 2012 9:00 - 9:30 Coffee and Registration 9:30 - 10:45 Patricia West, Martin Van Buren National Historic Site

“If These Walls Could Talk: The Legacy of Alcott’s Orchard House and the Future of the Historic House Museum”

10:45 - 11:00 Break 11:00 - 12:15 Kathleen Harsy, Riverside-Brookfield High School

“Behind a Mask, or A Woman’s Power”

12:15 - 1:00 Lunch and Informal Discussions 1:00 - 2:15 Gabrielle Donnelly, Journalist / Author “` The Most Beautiful Thing in All the World´” 2:15 - 2:45 Conversation of the Day

2:45 - 4:30 Teacher Institute Proceedings

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Biographies of Our Distinguished Presenters

KYOKO AMANO - University of Indianapolis

Kyoko earned Master’s degrees in English from Aoyama Gakuin University (Tokyo) and Indiana State University, and a PhD from Binghamton University - SUNY. Her specialty is in Horatio Alger Jr., Louisa May Alcott, and their juvenile fiction. Kyoko’s article, “Bret Harte’s ‘The Heathen Chinee’ in Horatio Alger Jr.’s Pacific Series” appeared in The Journal of Popular Culture. She is currently working on a book that uses works by Alger and Alcott to compare and contrast 19th Century novels for children. Kyoko teaches American literature and composition at the University of Indianapolis and lives in Greencastle, Indiana with her husband and dog.

CATHLIN DAVIS - California State University-Stanislaus

Cathlin is an Associate Professor in the College of Education at CSU-Stanislaus. She started reading Louisa May Alcott’s books at the age of 11, and never stopped. Among her collection of Alcott works is a first edition of Little Women, which she has actually read -- with gloves on! Last year, as a part of her research into visitors to Orchard House, she fulfilled a long-held dream to give a tour of Orchard House. Cathlin has presented at the Summer Conversational Series for six years, and has published one article based on a Series presentation, with several others in the works. She specializes in Alcott's juvenile fiction, particularly in its connection to education and the depiction of the lives of children.

GABRIELLE DONNELLY – Journalist/Author

Gabrielle was born in London and had known that she wanted to be a writer for as long as she can remember. She graduated with a BA degree from London University at the age of 22 and has made her living as a journalist ever since. In 1980, Gabrielle moved to Los Angeles for a six-month stint and never left. She writes about show business for a variety of periodicals and is a member of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, but is also a novelist. The Little Women Letters is her fifth work (and the first one published in both Britain and the States) after Holy Mother, Faulty Ground, All Done With Mirrors, and The Girl In The Photograph. She is married to Los Angeles-born computer specialist Owen Bjornstad, and both have recently been elected as Corporators of Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House.

ANNE-LAURE FRANÇOIS – Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense

Anne is an Assistant Professor at Université Paris Ouest Nanterre La Défense. She received her MA from the Sorbonne and graduated from the École Normale Supérieure in Paris. Working in both the English and Law Departments, Anne teaches classes on British and American history, and on the evolution of constitutional, statute, and case law as well as modern issues and controversies in both countries. As a doctoral student, she specializes in 19th Century American literature and in women writers, both English and American. Anne’s dissertation will offer the first detailed study in French of Louisa May Alcott’s fiction, examining the author’s strategy at re-writing Transcendentalism and adapting its philosophical principles to the demands of the fast-growing American literary market in the second half of the 19th Century. As an educator, she contributed to the creation of an alternative high school in the South of France — a project notably based on Louisa May Alcott’s “Plumfield,” the school utopia created to pay homage to her father’s groundbreaking work and experiments as a pedagogue. Anne first visited Boston in 2004, has been a Presenter at the Summer Conversational Series since 2009, and has become a New Englander at heart.

KATHLEEN HARSY – Riverside-Brookfield (Illinois) High School Kathleen is a teacher who has taught nearly every English course offered by her department and at all skill levels, from approaching to advanced. She received a BA in English and Education from St. Norbert College and the MA in Literature from Northwestern University. Her research and thesis focused on the role of the governess in Victorian Gothic literature. Kathleen also serves as the Intellectual Freedom Chair of the

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2012 Summer Conversational Series and Teacher Institute

Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House Centennial: Legacy of a Powerful Voice

Details

In 1912, Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House officially opened its doors as a museum and was, arguably, the first historic site established to commemorate the life of an American woman writer. Since then, it has been a pilgrimage destination for hundreds of thousands of people from all over the world who wish to pay tribute to an author who captured the imagination of generations. The powerful voice of Louisa May Alcott lives on through her works -- which have never lost their relevance or lasting impact on young and old alike -- and within the place where her legacy was founded: Orchard House. This year’s Summer Conversational Series will explore, through thoughtful presentations and lively discussions, how this powerful writer’s voice left such an inspirational and influential legacy for so many readers, writers, and social activists. Each day, ample opportunities for Q&A with Presenters, as well as small group discussions, will be available. A portion of each afternoon will be devoted to helping educators understand how the Series content can be applied to their curricular needs, with a keen awareness of Massachusetts Frameworks.

Participants

Educators from all grade levels and subjects -- including home schoolers -- are welcome to attend, as is anyone wishing to learn more about the remarkably talented and progressive Alcott family and their notable friends and neighbors. Massachusetts educators who participate receive up to 40 PDPs! Costs

Series + Teacher Institute (all sessions included): $240 (Members, $216; Students, $120)

Per Diem, Monday - Thursday: $60 (Members, $54; Students, $30)

Opening Event only, Sunday 2:30 - 5:00 pm: $30 (Members, $27; Students, $15)

Daily Lunch: $10 (No discounts; please BYO if not purchasing)

~ To register, please use the enclosed form or visit www.louisamayalcott.org ~

Biographies of Our Distinguished Presenters (continued) Illinois Association of Teachers of English, and recently published a lesson plan for The New York Times Learning Network. She has been awarded several National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships that have nurtured her love of literature. Kathleen’s current interests outside the English classroom include school-based sustainable gardening and mentoring teachers in India through the U.S. Department of Education.

ADRIANA LANZI – Universidad Nacional de Córdoba (Argentina) Graduate Program Adriana is from Facundo Quiroga, a small town near Buenos Aires. She began her teaching career in primary and secondary schools in Argentina, also ran a kindergarten, and later conducted a teacher training program at the Instituto Superior de Formación Docente. A former English Literature professor, she now teaches Language and Culture and is working on her Master’s in Anglo-American Literature. Adriana recently co-authored and published the book, Quiroga: Pueblo de Inmigrantes.

EVE LAPLANTE - Author

Eve is the sixth great-granddaughter of Judge Samuel Sewall and in 2009 authored Salem Witch Judge: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewell, which won the Massachusetts Book Award for Non-Fiction and was a Boston Globe bestseller. She has written two other critically-acclaimed books: American Jezebel, a biography of her ancestor Anne Hutchinson, and Seized, a narrative portrait of temporal lobe epilepsy. Eve holds degrees from Princeton and Harvard and has written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, Ladies’ Home Journal, Country Living, Gourmet, and Boston Magazine. She has also contributed to Why I’m Still Married, Boston: Voices and Visions, and The Aims of Argument. Eve lives with her family in New England on land once owned by Judge Sewall and eagerly awaits the publication of her new book, Marmee & Louisa: The Untold Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Mother (Free Press, November 2012).

KRISTI LYNN MARTIN – Boston University Graduate Program

Kristi is a doctoral candidate in American and New England Studies at BU, where she also earned her Museum Studies Certificate. Kristi’s areas of study are 19th Century American culture, Transcendentalism, and Concord’s authors. She has also worked in Special Collections and Preservation, and was a research assistant for Walter Stahr’s forthcoming biography of William Henry Seward (Simon and Schuster, September 2012). Since moving to Concord, Kristi has worked as a historical interpreter at The Old Manse, Emerson House, and Thoreau Birthplace, and is a licensed Town Guide. Her dissertation is planned on the Transcendentalist experience of death, grief, and mourning, and she is beginning research on a biography of the Alcott sisters as well. A long-time attendee of the Summer Conversation Series, Kristi is honored to be a Presenter during Orchard House’s Centennial, and delighted to speak on Louisa May Alcott, who first sparked her passionate love affair with Concord. Her annotated version of Adaline Lindsley’s diary is currently being considered by University of Rochester Press.

JOHN MATTESON – Pulitzer Prize Winner/John Jay College

John is a full Professor at John Jay, where he has taught since 1997, and also serves as Faculty Director of its Honors Program. He holds an AB in History from Princeton, a PhD in English from Columbia, a JD from Harvard, and has practiced as a litigation attorney in California and North Carolina. John’s first book, Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father, was awarded the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for Biography. His shorter works have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Harvard Theological Review, New England Quarterly, Leviathan: A Journal of Melville Studies, among others. John is a Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society and former Fellow of the Leon Levy Center for Biography, and has

2012 Summer Conversational Series and Teacher Institute

Sunday - Thursday July 15 - 19, 2012

The Concord School of Philosophy on the grounds of Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House

399 Lexington Road Concord, Massachusetts www.louisamayalcott.org 978.369.4118

Biographies of Our Distinguished Presenters (continued) received the Distinguished Faculty Award from John Jay’s Alumni Association as well as the Dean’s Award for Distinguished Achievement from Columbia. His second book, The Lives of Margaret Fuller: A Biography, was just published by W. W. Norton and Company in January of this year.

DEBRA RYALS – Pensacola State College

Debra has taught high school through graduate school over the past 20 years. She holds a PhD in Literature and Criticism from Indiana University of Pennsylvania with a specialty in 19th C. American Literature, and completed her dissertation on Alcott and the Theatre. Currently, Debra serves as Assistant Professor of English at Pensacola State College where she teaches classes in Composition, American Literature, and British Literature. She is also a frequent conference speaker, most recently at the 2012 College English Association.

JOHN STAUFFER – Harvard University

John received his PhD from Yale in 1999, began teaching at Harvard that year, and has been there ever since. He writes and lectures on the Civil War era, anti-slavery, social protest movements, and visual culture, and has authored seven books and nearly 50 articles, among them The Black Hearts of Men: Radical Abolitionists and the Transformation of Race, which won four major awards including the Frederick Douglass Book Prize, the Avery Craven Book Award, and the Lincoln Prize runner-up. John’s essays have appeared in Time Magazine, Raritan, The New York Post, 21st: The Journal of Contemporary Photography, and The Harvard Review, and he has appeared on national radio and television shows. His latest book is Giants: The Parallel Lives of Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln (Twelve, November 2008). Currently, John is completing the book Free State of Jones on radical inter-racialism and Unionism in Civil War-era Mississippi (with Sally Jenkins), which will also become a major motion picture. He lives in Cambridge with his wife and son.

MICHAEL STONEHAM – United States Military Academy at West Point Michael is an Academy Professor in the English and Philosophy Department at West Point and also a Special Forces officer in the Army. He has been deployed to Senegal, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines, and most recently Afghanistan, where he served as an academic mentor at the National Military Academy there. In 2009, Michael published “Literary Confrontation in the Era of John Brown,” a critical evaluation of the way in which radical abolitionist, freedom-fighter, and terrorist John Brown inspired literary America to confrontation during his short but dramatic career as a public figure in antebellum America. This work focuses on the reasons public intellectuals embraced Brown’s radical tactics and celebrated his effort to inspire an errant nation to a new moral awareness of their own public responsibilities. Michael hopes that by studying our historical celebrations of terrorists, he might gain insight into how contemporary terrorists inspire intelligent men and women to valorize and validate their actions, and can discover ways of reducing the probability that they will serve as cultural catalysts that accelerate support for violent terrorists. His latest work is “Reading Thoreau in Afghanistan.”

PATRICIA WEST – Martin Van Buren National Historical Site

Patricia is a public historian and Curator of Van Buren National Historic Site in Kinderhook, NY. She received her PhD from Binghamton University - SUNY (with Alcott scholar Prof. Sarah Elbert as her advisor), and is the author of Domesticating History: The Political Origins of American’s Historic House Museums, which utilized Orchard House as one of its case studies. Patricia has worked in the museum field for thirty years and has also supervised public history internships, participated in tenure and promotion reviews for public historians, taught graduate and undergraduate history, and coordinated numerous collaborative projects between public and academic historians.