RHODE ISLAND ABRAHAM LINCOLN BICENTENNIAL COMMISSION
SPEAKERS LIST

Mark H. Dunkelman is the President of the Rhode Island Civil War Round Table and the author of four books and dozens of articles on the Civil War.

Contact information:
7 Arnold St.
Providence, RI 02906
401-831-4704
NYVI154th@aol.com

Lecture topics:  Lincoln Through the Eyes of a Civil War Regiment

Phil Gould is a Professor of English at Brown University. A specialist in early American literature and culture, he is the author of Covenant and Republic: Historical Romance and the Politics of Puritanism (Cambridge University Press, 1996) and Barbaric Traffic: Commerce and Antislavery in the 18th Century Atlantic World (Harvard University Press, 2003). He served as President of the Society of Early Americanists, and he is the Director of the American Seminar at Brown.

Contact information:
Department of English
Brown University
70 Brown Street, Rm. 328
Providence, RI 02912
401-863-3736

Lecture topics:

• The Other Lincoln-Douglass Debate: Abraham Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and the Problem of Slavery in Nineteenth-Century America
• Barbaric Traffic: Slavery and Antislavery in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World

Stanley Lemons received his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri in 1967 and was a professor of history at Rhode Island College for 39 years. He is the author or co-author of numerous books, including FIRST: The First Baptist Church in America; Rhode Island: The Independent State (with George Kellner); and Aspects of the Black Experience.

Contact information:
12 Pleasant View Avenue
Greenville, RI 02828
401-949-4572
jslemons@cox.net

Lecture topics:

• Slavery and Rhode Island and the Age of Lincoln
• Religion and Reform in Lincoln's Time

Joanne Pope Melish received her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in American Civilization from Brown University. In addition to her book, Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and "Race” in New England, 1780-1860 (Cornell University Press, 2000), she has written several articles on northern slavery, emancipation, free African American community life, and the evolution of racial ideology in 18th- and 19th-century New England. She also wrote the introductory essay and notes for a new edition of The Life of William J. Brown (University Press of New England, 2006), the memoir of a nineteenth-century Afro-Indian who lived in Providence, Rhode Island. She divides her time between Lexington, Kentucky, where she is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Program in American Studies, and South Kingstown, Rhode Island, where she lives with her husband Jeff and holds an appointment as a Visiting Scholar in American Civilization at Brown University.

Contact information:
Department of History
University of Kentucky
Lexington, KY 40506
jmelish@uky.edu

Lecture topics:

• The Worm in the Apple: Northern Slavery
• The First Emancipation and "Race" in New England
• African American Life in Antebellum New England
• Abolition in Black and White

Marie Schwartz, professor of history at the University of Rhode Island, is the author of two books on the history of slavery: Born in Bondage: Growing Up Enslaved in the Antebellum South (Harvard University Press, 2000) and Birthing a Slave: Motherhood and Medicine in the Antebellum South (Harvard University Press, 2006). She has received two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities as well as other awards for her research and writing.

Contact information:

Department of History
University of Rhode Island
80 Upper College Road, Suite 3
Kingston, RI 02881
401-874-4090
schwartz@uri.edu

Lecture topics:

• The Birth of a Slave Child: Black Mothers and White Doctors
• Slavery and the Nation's Founding Families
• Born in Bondage: Growing Up as a Slave

Charles Sullivan is the chair emeritus of the Rhode Island Council for the Humanities and a Professor of English at the Community College of Rhode Island.

Contact information:
English Department
Community College of Rhode Island
Warwick, RI
401-333-7389
csullivan@ccri.edu

Lecture topics: Lincoln in Walt Whitman's Poetry

James Tackach is a Professor of English at Roger Williams University and the author of Lincoln's Moral Vision: The Second Inaugural Address (University Press of Mississippi, 2002)

Contact information:
Department of English Literature and Creative Writing
Roger Williams University
Bristol, RI 02809
401-254-3234
jtackach@rwu.edu

Lecture topics:

• Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address
• Lincoln's Attitudes on Race and Slavery
• Lincoln's religious beliefs

Kathryn Tomasek teaches nineteenth-century U.S. History and U.S. Women's History at Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts. She has been a project scholar for grants from the Rhode Island Committee for the Humanities (RICH). These public history projects included research on a women's sewing circle that eventually became Goodwill Industries of Rhode Island and on the YWCA of Greater Rhode Island. She has lived in Rhode Island since 1995, currently residing in Pawtucket.

Contact Information:
Department of History
Wheaton College
Norton, MA 02766
508-286-3674
ktomasek@wheatonma.edu

Lecture topics: Antislavery and Women's Rights

Michael Vorenberg received his Ph.D. in History from Harvard University in 1995 and has been teaching at Brown University since 1999. He is the author of Final Freedom: The Civil War, the Abolition of Slavery, and the Thirteenth Amendment, as well as numerous essays on Abraham Lincoln and Civil War emancipation.

Contact information:
Dept. of History, Box N
Brown University
Providence, RI 02912
401-863-9577
Michael_Vorenberg@brown.edu

Lecture topics:

• A King's Cure: Abraham Lincoln and Emancipation
• Abraham Lincoln, the Constitution, and Slavery

Chief Justice Frank J. Williams is founding Chair of The Lincoln Forum and the author or editor of over eleven books relating to Abraham Lincoln. He serves on the U.S. Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission and chairs the R.I. Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial Commission. His latest book, The Emancipation Proclamation: Three Views, written with Harold Holzer and Edna Greene Medford, has been published by Louisiana State University Press.

Contact information:
Supreme Court of Rhode Island
250 Benefit Street
Providence, RI 02903
401-222-3290
alincoln@courts.ri.gov

Lecture topics:

• Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties in Wartime
• Abraham Lincoln – Attorney in the White House
• Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation – An Act of Political Courage