MHS News

New 2010 Fellows Elected

The election of the following Fellow nominees was approved by the Fellows of the Massachusetts Historical Society at the Annual Meeting on 19 May 2010:

Elizabeth Blackmar
Elizabeth Blackmar is a professor of history at Columbia University, where she has taught since 1983.  A graduate of Smith College and a recipient of the Ph.D. from Harvard, she is an urban historian.  Her first book, Manhattan for Rent, 1785-1850 (Cornell University Press), won the Abbott Lowell Cummings Book Award of the Vernacular Architects Forum.  Her second book, The Park and the People: A History of Central Park (Cornell University Press), co-written with Roy Rosenzweig, received half a dozen honors.  She spent much of the summer of 2009 in the Society’s reading room, where she was conducting research with the support of a grant from the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium for a book on family property and inheritance in the nineteenth century.

Edward S. Cooke, Jr.
Edward S. Cooke, Jr., is the Charles S. Montgomery Professor of American Decorative Arts in the Department of the History of Art at Yale University.  A B.A. graduate of Yale, he earned an M.A. from the University of Delaware through the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture and a Ph.D. from Boston University in American and New England Studies.  Prior to his appointment at Yale in 1992, between 1985 and 1992 he was an Assistant then an Associate Curator in the American Decorative Arts Department of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.  In this capacity he played a role in the Society’s 1991 bicentennial exhibition at the museum.  In addition to many articles and scholarly catalogs his publications include Making Furniture in Pre-industrial America: The Social Economy of Newtown and Woodbury, Connecticut (Johns Hopkins University Press).  He has accepted an invitation to serve as an Overseer of the Society.

Curt Jonathan DiCamillo
Curt Jonathan DiCamillo is the executive director of the National Trust for Scotland Foundation USA.  In this capacity he is responsible for all aspects of the work of this organization, a support group for historic preservation activities in Scotland.  Mr. DiCamillo is the founder and author of The DiCamillo Companion to British & Irish Country Houses, a web site with information on 7,000 buildings.  He remains actively engaged in this research, with a goal of documenting every British or Irish house ever built, together with a history of the architecture, gardens, and occupants.  He has also lectured widely on historic houses and the decorative arts.  He looks forward to drawing on the Society’s collections for research for a book on the early and continuing influence of Britain in Massachusetts.  Prior to undertaking his present positions, between 1991-2004 Mr. DiCamillo worked for the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in several capacities, including Planning and Project Manager for the Department of Conservation and Collections Management and Documentation Coordinator for the Information Resources Department. 

Eliga H. Gould
Eliga H. Gould is an associate professor of history at the University of New Hampshire, where he has taught since 1992.  He received the A.B. degree from Princeton University and the Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University. Professor Gould’s first book, The Persistence of Empire: British Political Culture in the Age of the American Revolution (University of North Carolina Press) won the Jamestown Prize of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture.  In 2010, Harvard University Press will publish his second monograph, An Unfinished Peace: The American Revolution and the Legal Transformation of the European Atlantic.  With Peter Onuf he is also co-editor of Empire and Nation: The American Revolution and the Atlantic World (Johns Hopkins University Press).  He has presented papers twice and commented at the Society’s Boston Area Seminar on Early American History.  He has also served twice on the selection committee for the Society’s short-term fellowships.

David J. Hancock
David J. Hancock is a professor of history at the University of Michigan, where he has taught since 1996.  Prior to this appointment, he taught at Harvard University, 1990-1996.  He holds an A.B. in history and music from the College of William and Mary, an A.M. in music from Yale University, and both an A.M. and a Ph.D. in history from Harvard.  Professor Hancock’s research focuses on transatlantic business and economic history.  He is the author of Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community, 1735-1785 (Cambridge University Press) and Oceans of Wine: Madeira and the Emergence of American Trade and Taste (Yale University Press).  Professor Hancock took part in our conference in 1994 on the Boston business community; the essay he presented on that occasion appeared in 1997 in the edited collection of essays the Society published, Wright and Viens, eds., Entrepreneurs: The Boston Business Community, 1700-1850.  He has also served on our committee to select long-term fellows and led a week-long teacher seminar for the Society.

Barbara L. Packer
Barbara L. Packer is a professor of English at UCLA.  The recipient of a B.A. from Stanford University, she earned an M.Phil. and a Ph.D. from Yale University.  Professor Packer’s research focuses on nineteenth-century American literature, with a special interest in the Transcendentalists.  Her publications include Emerson’s Fall: A New Interpretation of the Major Essays (Continuum Books) and volume 2, “The Transcendentalists,” in The Cambridge History of American Literature.  She took part in our scholarly conferences on the Transcendentalists (in 1997) and on Ralph Waldo Emerson (in 2003).  In each case, the piece she presented later appeared in the conference essay collection.  She has also chaired the committee to select our NEH-funded long-term fellows.

Margaret R. Sullivan
Margaret R. Sullivan is the records manager and archivist of the Boston Police Department, where she has worked since 2008.  She received her B.A. from Brandeis University and an Ed.M. in Policy. Planning, and Administration from Boston University, where she worked in a variety of administrative positions before accepting her present appointment.  In her work at the Boston Police Department she devotes much of her time to retrieving and reconstituting historical records that have been lost or ended up in private hands.

William P. Veillette
William P. Veillette became the executive director of the Northeast Document Conservation Center in September after a career in business and several years as the executive director of the New Hampshire Historical Society, where he focused on the care of collections and providing services to local historical societies.  An active advocate for local, state, and regional historical organizations, he served as both the treasurer and chairman of the New Hampshire Preservation Alliance and is currently both a trustee of Historic New England and a board member of New Hampshire’s Land and Community Investment Program.