Lisa Brooks is an Associate Professor of English and American Studies and Director of Studies at Amherst College. As a writer, literary scholar and historian, she works at the crossroads of early American literature & history, geography and Indigenous studies. Her first book,
The Common Pot: The Recovery of Native Space in the Northeast, focused on the recovery of Native writing and geographies, including the network of Indigenous writers which emerged in the northeast in the wake of English and French colonization. After focusing on comparative American literatures and Native American Studies as a graduate student at Boston College and Cornell University, she joined the faculty at Harvard University, teaching a wide range of courses in Native American literature, transnational American history and literature, and Oral Traditions. She was part of the collaborative group that published
Reasoning Together: The Native Critics Collective, and contributed the widely circulated “Afterword: At the Gathering Place,” to the provocative, collectively authored
American Indian Literary Nationalism. She continues to be active in community-based projects and networks, especially through the non-profit organization, Gedakina, which offers programs focused on cultural revitalization, youth and women’s empowerment, and Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) in Native communities across New England.
Lisa came to Amherst in 2012 from Harvard University, where she was the John L. Loeb Associate Professor of the Humanities. For her, learning from students and colleagues and being intellectually challenged in the classroom is a highlight of teaching in a liberal arts environment. She offers a wide range of courses in Native American & Indigenous studies, early American literature, contemporary literature, and comparative American Studies, which foster discussion of the intersectionality of race, gender, sexuality and nationhood. She strives to bring creative writers, scholars, and leaders from the region and beyond to Amherst and to the Kwinitekw (Connecticut River) Valley, which has always been a crossroads of exchange.
Professor Francis G. (Frank) Couvares received a Ph.D. in History from the University of Michigan. He is an E. Dwight Salmon professor of History and American Studies He is the author of
The Remaking of Pittsburgh: Class and Culture in an Industrializing City 1877-1919 (1984) and co-author of
Interpretations of American History, 8th ed. (2009). His current work is in the history of free speech and censorship; his edited collection of essays,
Movie Censorship and American Culture, is in its 2
nd edition (2006). He teaches courses in 19th – 20th century U.S. social and cultural history, as well as in American Studies. His most recent essay, "So This Is Africa: Race, Sex, and Censorship in the Movies of the 1920s and 1930s," appeared in
Journal of American Studies (2011). A review essay, "Religious Liberty in America: Myths and Realities," appeared in
Modern Intellectual History (2014). He recently completed a twenty-year term on the Board of Trustees at Mt. Wachusett Community College, and a six-year term as chair of the Board of Directors of the
Massachusetts Review. He is a member and president of Da Camera Singers.
Tekla A. Harms is Massachusetts Professor in Chemistry and Natural History (Geology) at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Harms completed her A.B. degree from Bryn Mawr College in 1977, a M.Sc. at Queen's University in 1982, and the Ph.D. at the University of Arizona in 1986. Harms was a National Research Council post-doctoral fellow with the U.S. Geological Survey before joining the faculty of the Geology Department at Amherst College in 1987. Her research centers on the evolution of mountain belts and the deformation of rocks caught in continental collision zones. Her expertise is in the geologic history of the North American Cordilleran mountain range. She has worked in the field in the Brooks Range of Alaska, southern Yukon and northern British Columbia, eastern Washington, southwestern Montana, and the Coast Range of California.
At Amherst, Tekla teaches mid- and upper-level courses in the Geology major and in the Department’s very popular introductory course “Principles of Geology” (some in the audience might remember that as Geology 11). Her teaching interests revolve around all forms of geodynamics, or the changes the earth undergoes that are driven by its internal heat, by mantle convection, and by plate motion-tempered by isostasy and gravity.
The Reverend S. Mark Heim ('72) is the Samuel Abbot Professor of Christian Theology at Andover Newton Seminary at Yale Divinity School. He is a 1972 graduate of Amherst College (B.A.
summa cum laude), Andover Newton Theological School (M.Div.) and the Boston College—Andover Newton Theological School joint doctoral program in systematic theology (Ph.D.). He has been deeply involved in issues of religious pluralism and Christian ecumenism. Books he has written include Salvations: Truth and Difference in Religion(Orbis, 1995), The Depth of the Riches: A Trinitarian Theology of Religious Ends (Eerdmans, 2001), Saved From Sacrifice: A Theology of the Cross (Eerdmans, 2006). He has also edited several volumes, including Faith to Creed: Ecumenical Perspectives on the Affirmation of the Apostolic Faith in the Fourth Century (Eerdmans, 1991) and Grounds for Understanding: Ecumenical Resources for Responses to Religious Pluralism (Eerdmans, 1998).
He has served as part of the founding teaching faculty for the American Academy of Religion summer seminars on theologies of religious pluralism and comparative theology which ran from 2009 to 2014. He is a member of the Colloquium on Violence and Religion and has also served as co-chair of the comparative theology group in the American Academy of Religion. He has received Templeton foundation awards for his teaching in the area of science and theology, and recently served as lead investigator on a grant awarded to Andover Newton Theological School by the American Academy for the Advancement of Science to support the integration of science into core theological education. He has been elected to the American Theological Society. He received a Thomas J. Watson fellowship in 1972-73, a Pew Evangelical Scholars' Research Fellowship in 1997-98 and a Henry Luce III Fellowship in theology in 2009-2010. He is currently team-teaching a course on theology and medicine, for doctors, chaplains and divinity students, with Dr. Benjamin Doolittle of the Yale Medical School.
An ordained American Baptist minister and former pastor of a New Hampshire church, Heim has represented his denomination on the Faith and Order Commission of the National Council and World Council of Churches. He has served on numerous ecumenical commissions and interfaith groups, including the Christian—Muslim relations committee of the National Council of Churches and the planning team for the current Muslim—Baptist dialogue in North America.
Michael A. Lord '93 is the Director of Content Development at Historic Hudson Valley, a network of five historic sites located in and around Sleepy Hollow, NY. Mr. Lord has more than twenty years of experience in public history, interpretive planning, museum education, and historic site management. A graduate of Amherst College with degrees in History and Black Studies, Mr. Lord began his career as a graduate student at the College of William & Mary where he worked as an historic interpreter in the African American programs department at Colonial Williamsburg.
In 1998 Mr. Lord came to Historic Hudson Valley to create, implement, and train staff in a ground-up reinterpretation of Philipsburg Manor. The award-winning reinterpretation made Philipsburg Manor the first historic site in the nation to focus its story on enslavement in the colonial north. Numerous on- and off-site projects have followed in Philipsburg’s success, including programs ranging from teaching about northern enslavement both in the classroom and online (Runaway Art; People as Property; On the Run), new methods of historic site interpretation at Washington Irving’s Sunnyside (Washington Irving and the Art of Storytelling), and an interactive downloadable game about New York piracy and transatlantic trade (Traders & Raiders).
Over the years, Mr. Lord has also served as the Director of Education at the South Street Seaport Museum and as the Site Manager of Washington Irving’s Sunnyside. He also writes, produces, and directs numerous museum theatre presentations and has published several articles on historic site interpretation and teaching enslavement in the classroom.
Alfred (Fred) Venne has worked in the non-profit and public education sector for over thirty years. His work includes serving as the CEO and program developer for several non-profits, consultant to the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, adjunct faculty with Fitchburg State University, science teacher, science curriculum developer, and school principal. Fred has presented at local and national conferences on the subjects of “Systemic Change” and “Universal Design for Learning (UDL)” and “Inquiry Based Science”. Fred currently facilitates PK16 science outreach for Amherst College. Fred has also worked and volunteered with such organizations as Look Memorial Park, the Hampshire Regional YMCA, The People’s Institute, the United Way, the American Red Cross, Northampton Youth Soccer and the Recreation Department.
A thread that runs through all of his work is a continued desire to demystify science making it accessible to the masses. Other interests: Avid runner, cyclist, coin collector and swimmer.
