Noted Author Neal Gabler to Teach Course on Biography at Washington College

CHESTERTOWN, MD— Neal Gabler, one of America’s most accomplished biographers and public intellectuals, will be in residence at Washington College for the Spring 2013 semester and will teach a course on “The Art of Biography.”

Gabler is an author, cultural historian, screenwriter, producer, film and media critic, and commentator who has been called “one of America’s most important public intellectuals.” He has written prizewinning biographies of Walt Disney, Walter Winchell, and early Hollywood movie moguls and is now at work on a book about the late Senator Edward Kennedy and modern American politics. He has won many awards, including an Emmy, two Los Angeles Times Book Prizes, and a Guggenheim Fellowship.

Gabler's first book, An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, won the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for History. His second book, Winchell: Gossip, Power and the Culture of Celebrity, was nominated for the National Book Critics Circle Award and was named the non-fiction book of the year by Time magazine. His third book, Life the Movie: How Entertainment Conquered Reality, has been used in college courses across the country to examine the convergence of reality and entertainment. And his most recent book, Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination, a New York Times best-seller, was named the biography of the year by USA Today and won Mr. Gabler his second Los Angeles Times Book Prize.

As a visiting fellow at the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, Gabler will work on Against the Wind: Edward Kennedy and the Tortuous Course of American Liberalism, the first major biography of the late senator, which will be published by the Crown/Harmony division of Random House.

“This is an exceptional opportunity for Washington College students to learn from one of America’s most acclaimed contemporary masters of biography,” said historian and journalist Adam Goodheart, the director of the Starr Center, where Gabler will be a Patrick Henry Writing Fellow. “Studying biography with Neal Gabler is like having Michael Phelps as your swim coach.”

Mr. Gabler was graduated with high distinction and highest honors from the University of Michigan and holds advanced degrees in film and American culture. He has taught at the University of Michigan, Penn State, and SUNY Stony Brook.

The texts for his “The Art of Biography” course will include Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation, by Joseph Ellis; Master of the Senate: The Years of Lyndon Johnson, by Robert Caro; Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln, by Doris Kearns Goodwin; Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life, by Richard Ben Cramer; and Diane Arbus, by Patricia Bosworth. Students also will learn techniques for finding and dealing with original materials, conducting interviews, taking notes, organizing data and outlining a book. The semester will culminate with each student undertaking a biography of a major figure of his or her choosing.

Launched by the Starr Center in 2008, the Patrick Henry Writing Fellowship aims to encourage reflection on the links between American history and contemporary culture, and to foster the literary art of historical writing. It is co-sponsored by the Rose O’Neill Literary House, Washington College's center for literature and the literary arts. 

The fellowship’s funding is permanently endowed as part of a $2.5 million challenge grant package that the National Endowment for the Humanities awarded through its nationwide “We the People” initiative for strengthening the teaching, study and understanding of American history and culture. A generous gift was received from the Barksdale-Dabney-Patrick Henry Family Foundation, which was established by the Nuttle family of Talbot County, direct descendants of the patriot Patrick Henry.The Starr Foundation, the Hodson Trust and other donors have provided further support for the fellowship.

Founded in 1782 under the patronage of George Washington, Washington College is a private, independent college of liberal arts and sciences located in colonial Chestertown on Maryland’s Eastern Shore. Based in the Custom House along the colonial waterfront, the College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience fosters the art of written history and explores our nation’s past—particularly the legacy of its Founding era—in innovative ways, through educational programs, scholarship and public outreach. For more information on the Center and the Patrick Henry Writing Fellowship, visit http://starrcenter.washcoll.edu.    
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George Washington Book Prize Celebration Honors 2012 Winner Maya Jasanoff, Nov. 8 and 9

Prize winning author and historian Maya Jasanoff.

Click here to listen to Tom Hall's interview with Maya Jasanoff for the WYPR show Maryland Morning. 

CHESTERTOWN, MD— History, they say, is usually told by the winners. But the winner of the 2012 George Washington Book Prize, author Maya Jasanoff, has uncovered the compelling and often moving stories of men and women who found themselves on the losing side of the American Revolution.

Jasanoff will share stories and insights from her book Liberty's Exiles: American Loyalists in the Revolutionary World at this year’s George Washington Book Prize Celebration at Washington College, on Thursday, November 8 and Friday, November 9. All events – which are hosted by the College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience – are free and open to the public.

The main event, “Making History: A Conversation with Maya Jasanoff,” will take place on Thursday, November 8 at 5:30 p.m. in Decker Theatre, Gibson Center for the Arts, and will be followed by a reception. Guests who arrive early will have an opportunity to enjoy a book signing with the author and a performance by the Maryland Loyalist Battalion, a reenactment group.  The full schedule is as follows:

Thursday, November 8, Gibson Center for the Arts

4:15 p.m. - Book signing 

5:15 p.m. - Salute by the Maryland Loyalist Battalion

5:30 p.m. - “Making History: A Conversation with Maya Jasanoff and Adam Goodheart”

6:30 p.m. - Public Reception

Friday, November 9, The Egg, Center Stage, Hodson Hall Commons

9:30 a.m. - “Authors in the Egg: How Books Are Born.” Washington College students, faculty, and members of the public are invited to an informal conversation with Maya Jasanoff. A light breakfast will be served.

 “Maya Jasanoff vividly tells the stories of individual people swept up in the treacherous – and sometimes fatal – currents of history,” says Adam Goodheart, Director of the Starr Center, who will lead the November 8 conversation. “She brings the past to life by putting readers in the shoes of these characters, from wealthy merchants to African-American slaves.”

Jasanoff received the $50,000 prize at a black-tie dinner at George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate Museum and Gardens last June. Sponsored by Washington College, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and George Washington's Mount Vernon, the Washington Book Prize is one of the largest literary prizes in the nation. Given annually for the year’s best book about America’s founding era, it particularly recognizes well-written books that speak to general audiences and contribute to a broad public understanding of the American past. 

In addition to the 2012 Washington Book Prize, Liberty’s Exiles also received the 2012 National Book Critics Circle Award for General Nonfiction and was shortlisted for the BBC Samuel Johnson Prize in Nonfiction. “At the heart of this smart, deeply researched and elegantly written history is Jasanoff’s re-creation of the lives of those who emigrated — rich and poor, white, black and in some cases red,” wrote New York Times reviewer Thomas Bender.

Jasanoff, a Professor of History at Harvard University, was awarded the 2005 Duff Cooper Prize for her first book, Edge of Empire: Lives, Culture, and Conquest in the East, 1750-1850, which was a book-of-the-year selection in numerous publications, including The Economist, The Observer and The Sunday Times. She has contributed essays to The New York Review of Books, The New Republic, The Guardian, The New York Times Magazine and other publications.

Created in 2005 to honor the year’s best book about America’s founding era, the George Washington Book Prize was presented that year to Ron Chernow for Alexander Hamilton. Subsequent winners have included Stacy Schiff (2006), Annette Gordon-Reed (2009), Richard Beeman (2010), and Pauline Maier (2011).

Washington College’s Starr Center administers the Book Prize, which is co-sponsored with the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History and George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate & Gardens.

About the Sponsors of the George Washington Book Prize:

Washington College was founded in 1782, the first institution of higher learning established in the new republic. George Washington was not only a principal donor to the college, but also a member of its original governing board. He received an honorary degree from the college in June 1789, two months after assuming the presidency. The C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, founded at the College in 2000, is an innovative center for the study of history, culture and politics, and fosters excellence in the art of written history through fellowships, prizes, and student programs. www.washcoll.edu.

Founded in 1994, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization supporting the study and love of American history through a wide range of programs and resources for students, teachers, scholars, and history enthusiasts throughout the nation. Gilder Lehrman creates and works closely with history-focused schools through its Affiliate School Program; organizes teacher seminars and development programs; produces print and digital publications and traveling exhibitions; hosts lectures by eminent historians; administers a History Teacher of the Year Award in every state and US territory; and offers national book prizes. The Gilder Lehrman website, www.gilderlehrman.org, serves as a gateway to American history online with rich resources for educators designed specifically for K–12 teachers and students.

 Since 1860, over 80 million visitors have made George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate & Gardens the most popular historic home in America.  Through thought-provoking tours, entertaining events, and stimulating educational programs on the Estate and in classrooms across the nation, Mount Vernon strives to preserve George Washington’s place in history as “First in War, First in Peace, and First in the Hearts of His Countrymen.”  Mount Vernon is owned and operated by the Mount Vernon Ladies’ Association, America’s oldest national preservation organization, founded in 1853.  A picturesque drive to the southern end of the scenic George Washington Memorial Parkway, Mount Vernon is located just 16 miles from the nation’s capital.  www.MountVernon.org

Chestertown Book Festival Returns November 1-3, Authors include Andrea Wulf, Adam Goodheart

A reading by Andrea Wulf, author of Chasing Venus, will
open the Chestertown Book Festival November 1.

CHESTERTOWN, MD—The Annual Chestertown Book Festival returns November 1, 2, and 3, with author talks, readings, artworks and a book sale.  All events are free and open to the public.

The festival kicks off Thursday, Nov. 1, at 5:30 p.m. on the Washington College campus with a reading by Andrea Wulf, acclaimed author of Chasing Venus: The Race to Measure the Heavens and Brother Gardeners, in Decker Theatre, Gibson Center for the Arts. Wulf’s visit is sponsored by the College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience.

Adam Goodheart.

Also at Washington College, at 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 2, Adam Goodheart, author of the New York Times bestseller 1861: The Civil War Awakening, will talk about “history and the writing life” and take questions from the audience. Sponsored by the Rose O’Neill Literary House, the talk will take place in Hynson Lounge, Hodson Hall.

On Saturday, Nov. 3, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., more than 45 authors will exhibit their books for sale to the public at the Festival’s main site, Emmanuel Church Hall, 101 North Cross St., in downtown Chestertown.

During the day that Saturday, six guest authors will give special readings. They include 

Richard Ben Cramer.

Chestertown resident Richard Ben Cramer, Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and author of What It Takes: The Way to the White House; Joe DiMaggio: The Hero’s Life; Ted Williams: The Seasons of the Kid; and How Israel Lost: The Four Questions. 

Also reading is Ryan Grim, Washington Bureau Chief for The Huffington Post and author of the book This is Your Country on Drugs. Grim, a native of Worton and a graduate of Kent County High School, was awarded a 2010 Sidney Hillman Award for socially-conscious journalism for his Huffington Post article “The Poorhouse,” and the 2011 Maggie Award from Planned Parenthood for “Behind the Assault on Planned Parenthood.”

Food and art will complement this year’s festival on Saturday. The Lemon Leaf Restaurant will offer a luncheon menu on-site.  And the Chestertown River Arts will host “Illustrating the Narrative,” an exhibition of expressive artwork, art objects and photography, in its gallery at 315 High St., Suite 106.  (The exhibit will continue through November.)

The Chestertown Book Festival operates as a 501.c(3) nonprofit organization. This year’s sponsors include the Kent County Public Library, The Rose O’Neill Literary House at Washington College, the C.V. Starr Center for the American Experience, Chester River Press and the Kent County Arts Council. For more information, visit http://www.chestertownbookfestival.org. 

Leading Historian Beeman Invites Audiences to "Meet the Founders," Beginning October 24

CHESTERTOWN, MD—We often think of America’s Founders as a committee of like-minded sages who sat down together and methodically crafted the new nation. Richard Beeman, one of America’s leading historians of the Revolutionary era, will shatter that familiar notion in “Meet the Founders,” a series of three public talks debuting at Washington College on Wednesday, October 24.

It is hard to imagine personalities more different than the voluble – indeed, nearly manic-depressive – John Adams; the angry, pugnacious recent English immigrant Tom Paine; and the quiet, but deeply intellectual Thomas Jefferson. In his October 24 talk, Beeman will delve into the lives and characters of each of these men as they came together in common cause during the months leading up to the colonies’ independence. Later talks will focus on James Madison and Patrick Henry (November 7) and George Washington (November 14).

All three events will take place at 5:30 p.m. in Decker Theatre, Gibson Center for the Arts, and will be followed by book signings. They are hosted by Washington College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience, where Beeman is a senior fellow.

Beeman, the John Welsh Centennial Professor of American History Emeritus at the University of Pennsylvania, has been a member of that university’s faculty for 44 years and has served as Chair of the Department of History and as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. He was the winner of the 2010 George Washington Book Prize, one of the largest literary prizes in the nation, for Plain, Honest Men: The Making of the American Constitution (Random House). The New York Times called the book a “scholarly yet lively account” of the “passion-filled crucible” that was the 1787 Constitutional Convention.

“There will be two general themes at work in these lectures,” Beeman said. “The first is that the founding of an independent, united, American nation was not only not inevitable, but improbable – indeed, in some senses, audacious. The second is that the individuals instrumental in the American founding were a diverse bunch, different in cultural backgrounds, personalities, and political ideologies.”

Beeman is the author of seven books on Revolutionary-era America, including The Penguin Guide to the American Constitution (Penguin, 2010) and Patrick Henry: A Biography (McGraw-Hill, 1974), which was a finalist for the National Book Award. Other honors have included fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, and the Huntington Library. He has served as a Fulbright Professor in the United Kingdom and as Harmsworth Distinguished Professor of American History at Oxford University. He has written articles and book reviews for many publications and has appeared with Jon Stewart on “The Daily Show.”

“Meet the Founders” serves as a sequel to “Inventing a Nation,” a series of four talks that Beeman offered at Washington College in the fall of 2011. That series was cosponsored by the College’s Institute for Religion, Politics, and Culture, where Beeman is also a senior fellow.  “Dr. Beeman’s series last year was a smash hit, and we’re thrilled to have him return,” said Adam Goodheart, the Starr Center’s Hodson Trust-Griswold Director. “There are few historians as gifted as he is at bringing to life the vivid personalities who played starring roles in the Revolutionary drama.”

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Founded in 1782 under the patronage of George Washington, Washington College is a private, independent college of liberal arts and sciences located in colonial Chestertown on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

The College’s C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience is dedicated to fostering innovative approaches to the American past and present. Through educational programs, scholarship and public outreach, and a special focus on written history, the Starr Center seeks to bridge the divide between the academic world and the public at large. For more information on the Center, visit http://starrcenter.washcoll.edu.