Keynote Public Speaker and Co-Conference Organizer
Andrew Burstein: Ph.D. in History, University of Virginia, Charles P. Manship Professor of History, Louisiana State University. The only professional historian to have authored a complete biography of Washington Irving––The Original Knickerbocker: The Life of Washington Irving (2007); among his ten other books on early U.S. history are Lincoln Dreamt He Died and The Passions of Andrew Jackson. Coauthor with Nancy Isenberg of The Problem of Democracy and Madison and Jefferson.
Literary Symposium Speakers
Curtis Armstrong: film and television actor, author, Irvingiana collector. A graduate of Oakland University, in Rochester, MI, he trained as a stage actor, and has appeared (as a self-described “second banana”) in such popular movies as “Risky Business” (1983), “Revenge of the Nerds” (1984), “Ray” (2004), and “Akeelha and the Bee” (2006). On the small screen, he played memorable roles in “Moonlighting” (1987-1989), “Boston Legal” (2006), “King of the Nerds” (2011-2013), “American Dad” (2005-2019), “Supernatural” (2009-2013), and “New Girl” (2013-2018), to name just a few of his credits. He is the author of a memoir, Revenge of the Nerd: The Singular Adventures of the Man Who Would be Booger (2017); and, with Elliott Milstein, A Plum Assignment: Discourses on P.G. Wodehouse and His World (2018).
Thomas Augst: Ph.D. in the History of American Civilization, Harvard University, Associate Professor of English, NYU. Author of The Clerk’s Tale: Young Men and Moral Life in 19th Century America; co-editor of Institutions of Reading: The Social Life of Libraries in the United States.
Matthew Dennis: Ph.D. in History, UC Berkeley, Emeritus Professor of History and Environmental Studies, University of Oregon. Author of several books, including Seneca Possessed: Indians, Witchcraft, and Power in the Early American Republic; and Red, White, and Blue Letter Days: An American Calendar.
Amy S. Greenberg: Ph.D. in History, Harvard University, Edwin Earle Sparks Professor of History, Penn State University. She has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Philosophical Society. Among her books are Manifest Manhood and the Antebellum American Empire; A Wicked War: The 1846 U.S. Invasion of Mexico; and Lady First: The World of First Lady Sarah Polk.
Catalina Hannan: Research Librarian, Historic Hudson Valley. She holds degrees in History, Russian Studies, and Library Science, and has been at Historic Hudson Valley for eighteen years. Apart from institutional work on the history of the Hudson Valley, she has developed a special interest in the extended family of the Irving family across the centuries.
Tracy Hoffman: Ph.D. in English, Baylor University, Senior Lecturer at Baylor. President, Washington Irving Society and author of articles on Irving, including a recent contribution to Washington Irving and Islam: Critical Essays.
Nancy Isenberg: Ph.D. in History, University of Wisconsin, T. Harry Williams Professor of History, LSU. Author of White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America; Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr; and Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America. Coauthor with Andrew Burstein of The Problem of Democracy and Madison and Jefferson.
Alexis McCrossen: Ph.D. in History of American Civilization, Harvard University, Professor of History, SMU. Author of Marking Modern Times: Clocks, Watches and Other Timekeepers in American Life; and Holy Day, Holiday: The American Sunday. Current book project: “Time’s Touchstone: The New Year in American Life.”
Aaron Ritzenberg: Ph.D. in English, Brandeis University, Dept. of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia University, and associate director of First Year Writing. Author of The Sentimental Touch: The Language of Feeling in the Age of Managerialism and How Scholars Write.
Richard Robinson: Ph.D. in English, University of Virginia, Chair, Department of English, Hackley School, Tarrytown NY.
Shirley Samuels: Ph.D. in English, UC Berkeley, Professor of English and American Studies, Cornell University. Author of Reading the American Novel, 1780-1865; Romances of the Republic: Women, the Family, and Violence in the Literature of the Early American Nation; and editor of The Culture of Sentiment: Race, Gender, and Sentimentality in 19th Century America; Companion to American Fiction, 1780-1865, and The Cambridge Companion to Abraham Lincoln.
Michelle Sizemore: Ph.D. in English, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Associate Professor of English, University of Kentucky. Author of American Enchantment: Rituals of the People in the Post-Revolutionary World.
Steven Carl Smith: Ph.D in History, University of Missouri, Associate Professor of History, Providence College. Author of An Empire of Print: The New York Publishing Trade in the Early American Republic.
David Waldstreicher: Ph.D. in American Studies, Yale University, Distinguished Professor of History, Graduate Center, CUNY. Editor, Journal of the Early Republic and author of several books, including Slavery’s Constitution; Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery and the American Revolution; In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776-1820.
Erik Weiselberg: Ph.D. in History, University of Oregon, Social Studies Teacher, Irvington High School. Village Historian, Irvington, New York. Principal Historian of “Revolutionary Westchester 250.”
Sharon Aronofsky Weltman: Ph.D. in English, Rutgers University, Alumni Professor of English, LSU. Dickens Scholar, Co-Editor of the journal Nineteenth Century Theatre and Film, and author of Victorians on Broadway: Literature, Adaptation, and the Modern American Musical (forthcoming April 2020); Performing the Victorian: John Ruskin and Identity in Theater, Science, and Education (2007); and Ruskin’s Mythic Queen: Gender Subversion in Victorian Culture (1999). Current project: Dickens, disability, and embodiment.
