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Erica Funkhouser is a professor of poetry and writing at MIT. Her fifth book of poetry, *Earthly*, was published by Houghton Mifflin in 2008.

Chris is currently a Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. While working on his BA in American Studies at Amherst College during the 1970s, Chris was inspired by a wave of new historical work that was exploring the lives of poor and working-class people and a host of other subjects long ignored by conventional scholars. He subsequently wrote an honors thesis on Appalachian coal miners. Chris continued on to graduate studies at Harvard University, getting a PhD in the History of American Civilization. His dissertation on American combat soldiers in the Vietnam War received the American Studies Associations prize for the years best dissertation in the field and became the basis for his book *Working-Class War*, which was published by the University of North Carolina Press and has been used in many college and university courses on modern U.S. history.

Judith Wilt is a founding member of the Women's Studies Committee at Boston College and has published essays and given papers recently on women writers as diverse as Ayn Rand, Toni Morrison, Georgette Heyer and Virginia Woolf.

J. Robert Barth was a scholar of the British Romantic poets and the former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. Barth first came to the University as the Thomas I. Gasson Professor in 1985. As dean, he established the music and theater departments, oversaw the opening of the McMullen Museum of Art, and was the first chair of the Boston College Arts Council, which, among other things, organizes BC's annual Arts Festival. He was also known for his old-fashioned and enthusiastic declamations of poetry, and recorded two CDs, including one featuring the poetry of Wordsworth and the other poems by Francis Thompson and Gerard Manley Hopkins, SJ.

Jennifer Haigh is a novelist and short story writer. Her first book, *Mrs. Kimble*, won the 2004 PEN/Hemingway Award for debut fiction. Her second,* Baker Towers*, was a *New York Times* bestseller and won the 2006 PEN/L.L. Winship Award for outstanding book by a New England author. Both have been published in nine languages. Other fiction has been published in *Granta*, *Ploughshares*, *Five Points*, *Good Housekeeping* and other places.

Joan Leegant has won numerous prizes for her story collection, *AN HOUR IN PARADISE* (W.W. Norton), including the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for the best book of Jewish-American fiction, and the L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award for the best book by a New England author. *AN HOUR IN PARADISE* was also a Fall 2003 Selection for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Program. Joan attended Radcliffe College, Boston University Law School, and the Vermont College MFA Program. After practicing law for several years, she went to Jerusalem for what was to be a six month stay. She remained there for nearly three years, becoming absorbed by the varieties of Jewish experience that later made their way into her fiction. She is a recipient of an artist grant from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and several fellowships from the MacDowell Colony. She teaches writing at Harvard University.

Charles Ogletree is the Jesse Climenko Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and the founding and executive director of the Charles Hamilton Houston Institute for Race and Justice at the law school. He is the author of the critically acclaimed *All Deliberate Speed*, and has received numerous awards and honors, including being named one of the 100+ Most Influential Black Americans by Ebony Magazine. In the immediate aftermath of the Crowley-Gates incident, Ogletree acted not only as counsel to Professor Gates but continues to act as advisor on police behavior to both Harvard University and the City of Cambridge. He was a senior advisor to President Barack Obama during his 2008 presidential campaign.

**Francis J. Bremer** is Professor Emeritus of History at Millersville University of Pennsylvania and Coordinator of New England Beginnings, a partnership of institutions and individuals organized to commemorate the cultures that shaped early New England. He is the author of over a dozen books on puritanism in the Atlantic world, including most recently _Lay Empowerment and the Development of Puritanism_. _One Small Candle: the Plymouth Puritans and the Beginning of English New England_ will be published in August.