Program CURRICULUM VITAE PERSONAL AND PROFESSIONAL DATA EDUCATION: Brown University, 1969-1975 Ph.D., American Civilization, 1975 A.M., American History, 1972 Springfield College, 1963-1967 B.S., Cum Laude, History and English, 1967 HONORS AND GRANTS: Neal W. Allen, Jr., History Award, Maine Historical Society, 2012 American and New England Studies University of Southern Maine P.O. Box 9300 Portland, Maine 04104-9300 207-797-0682 e-mail: conforti@.maine.edu Constance Carlson Public Humanities Prize, 2010, Maine Humanities Council Distinguished University Professor, 2007- Choice Outstanding Academic book, 2007, for Saints and Strangers Certificate of Merit, Association for the Study of State and Local History, 2006, for Creating Portland University of Southern Maine Trustees Research Fellowship, 2004 Annual Best Book Award, Northeast Popular Culture-American Culture Association, 2002, for Imagining New England National Endowment for the Humanities Grant, 1994-1996, for "Region and the Imagination: New England and the South," a three-year project for teachers in conjunction with the Maine Collaborative and the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, $275,000 (Co-author and co-lead scholar)
Page 2 National Endowment for the Humanities Grant, 1993-94, for "Creating New England: Memory, Nostalgia, and Tradition" a three week summer institute, academic year seminars and a conference for teachers, $140,000 (Co-author and lead scholar) Richard Beale Davis Prize for the Best Essay Published in Early American Literature, 1991, MLA Division of American Literature to 1800 National Endowment for the Humanities Grants, 1988-1989, 1989-1990, for Faculty and Curriculum Development in New England Studies, total $73,616 (Writer and Director) Davis Foundation Grant, 1990, New England Studies Program Development, $15,000 (Writer and Director) National Endowment for the Arts Grant for a Project on Traditional New England Town Design, 1989-1990, (Contributing writer and Project Co-Director), $39,000. USM Faculty Achievement Award, 1988 Rhode Island College Faculty Research Grants, 1984-1987 Rhode Island College Summer Research Grant, 1985 NEH Project for American Studies, Ball State University, August 1979
Page 3 Runner-up, Honorable Mention Citation, Brewer Manuscript Prize Competition, for Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity Movement, American Society of Church History, 1979 Brown University Nominee, Institute of Early American History and Culture, Postdoctoral Fellowship, 1975 Passed Ph.D Orals with distinction, 1973 Phi Beta Kappa TEACHING AND ADMINISTRATIVE EXPERIENCE: Distinguished Professor of American and New England Studies Emeritus, 2011 Professor of American and New England Studies, University of Southern Maine, 1987- Director and Professor of American and New England Studies, University of Southern Maine, 19871997 Associate Professor of English and History, Rhode Island College, 1982-1987 Assistant Professor of English and History, Rhode Island College, 1980-1982 Assistant Professor of History, Rhode Island College, 1978-1980 Instructor of History, Rhode Island College, 1976-1978 Teaching Assistant, American Civilization Program, Brown University, 1972-1974 Teacher, Fall River, Mass., Public and Catholic School Systems, 1967-1970, 1970-1971 OTHER EXPERIENCE: Executive Committee, New England Historical Association, 2000-2004 President, New England Historical Association, 2001-2002 Vice-President, New England Historical Association, 2000-2001 NEH Panel Reviewer, Regional Humanities Centers grant competition, Washington, D.C., May 2000
Page 4 NEH Site Evaluator, Winterthur Museum Fellowship Program, Delaware, Nov. 1999 Book Award Committee, New England Historical Association, 1998, 1994 Visiting Oral Ph.D. Examiner, University of Maine-Orono, 1997 Member, Executive Council, New England American Studies Association, 1992-1994 External Evaluator, History Program, Pine Manor College, 1994 Review Panelist, NEH, Division of Higher Education, Summer Fellowships, 1992 Project Scholar and Consultant, New England Foundation for the Humanities, Program on "Yankees and Strangers: The New England Town, 1630-1990," 1989-1992 External Evaluator, B.A. in History, Plymouth, N.H., State College, 1992 Nominating Committee, New England Historical Association, 1990-1993 (chair, '90-'91) Review Panelist, NEH, Division of State Programs, 1990 Steering Committee, "Maine in the Age of Exploration and Discovery," Maine Humanities Council Project, 1987-88 Visiting Ph.D. orals examiner in American religious history, Brown University, 1982-1983 Member, State of Rhode Island American Studies Team, sponsored by the NEH, 1979-1980 Publications and Research: Oral History Researcher, Rhode Island College Ethnic Studies Program, 1976 Consultant, Rhode Island State Historic Preservation Commission, 1976 Associate Editor, Monarch Publishing Company, White Plains, New York, 1975-1976
Books: Page 5 Lizzie Borden on Trial: Murder, Ethnicity and Gender (University Press of Kansas, 2015). Another City upon a Hill: A New England Memoir (University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth/University Press of New England, 2013). Saints and Strangers: New England in British North America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006; rpt., 2012). Choice Outstanding Academic Book, 2007. Creating Portland: History and Place in Northern New England (University Press of New England, 2005) editor and contributor. Certificate of Merit, ASSLH, 2006 Imagining New England: Explorations of Regional Identity from the Pilgrims to the Mid- Twentieth Century (University of North Carolina Press, 2001). [NEPCAC Book Award] Jonathan Edwards, Religious Tradition and American Culture (University of North Carolina Press, 1995). Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity Movement: Calvinism, the Congregational Ministry, and Reform in New England between the Great Awakenings (William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1981; rpt. With a Preface by Douglas Sweeney for the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale University (Wpf Stock Publishers, 2008) [Brewer Prize Runner-up, 1978]. A History of East Providence, Rhode Island, 196 pp. (White Plains, N.Y.: Monarch Publishing Co., 1976). Articles and Essays:
Page 6 New England, in Oxford Encyclopedia of American Social History (Oxford Univ. Press, 2012). New England Landscapes and Regional Identity, invited essay published in A Landscape History of New England (MIT Press, 2011), pp. 17-34. Connecticut: A Historic Identity-Free Zone, invited essay for special commemorative issue of Connecticut History ( Fall, 2010). The Salem Witchcraft Hysteria, The Encyclopedia of American Disasters and Catastrophes (New York: Facts on File, 2007). Celebrations of New England s Past, Encyclopedia of New England Culture (New Haven: Yale University Press 2005), pp. 745-46 New England Theology from Edwards to Bushnell, Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History, (New York: Scribner s, 2001), pp. 208-14. "Samuel Hopkins," Makers of Christian Theology in America, edited by James D. Duke and Mark G. Toulouse (Nashville, Tenn.: Abingdon Press, 1997), pp. 73-78. Edwards A. Park and the Creation of the New England Theology, 1840-1870, in Stephen Stein, ed. Jonathan Edwards s Writings: Text, Context and Interpretation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1996), pp. 193-207. The New England Religious Heritage: Some Aspects of Tradition, Horizons (Bangor Theological Seminary), (Fall 1995), pp. 27-47. "Jonathan Edwards and American Culture," Bulletin of the General Theological Library of Bangor Seminary (Spring 1993), pp. 3-12. "Mary Lyon, the Founding of Mount Holyoke College and the Cultural Revival of Jonathan Edwards," Religion and American Culture (Winter 1993), pp. 205-225. "The Invention of the Great Awakening, 1795-1842," Early American Literature (Fall, 1991), pp. 99119. [Davis Prize, MLA] "Jonathan Edwards and American Studies," review essay American Quarterly (March 1989), pp. 165-171. "Unitarians, Edwardsians, and the Memory of the Great Awakening," in Conrad Wright, ed., American Unitarianism, 1800-1860 (Northeastern University Press, 1989), pp. 31-50.
Page 7 "Ice and Granite: The New England Character," Maine Historical Society Quarterly (October 1988), pp. 92-108. "Antebellum Evangelicals and the Cultural Revival of Jonathan Edwards," Journal of Presbyterian History (Winter 1987), pp. 227-241. "Irving Fain and the Fair Housing Movement in Rhode Island, 1958-1970," Rhode Island History (February 1986), pp. 21-35. "David Brainerd and the Nineteenth-Century Missionary Movement," Journal of the Early Republic (Fall 1985), pp. 309-329. "Jonathan Edwards's Most Popular Work: 'The Life of David Brainerd' and Nineteenth- Century Evangelical Culture," Church History (June 1985), pp. 188-201. "Joseph Bellamy and the New Divinity Movement," New England Historical and Genealogical Register (April 1983), pp. 126-138. "The Rise of the New Divinity in Western New England, 1740-1800," Historical Journal of Massachusetts (Winter 1980), pp. 37-47. "Samuel Hopkins and the Revolutionary Antislavery Movement," Rhode Island History (May 1979), pp. 38-49. "Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity: Theology, Ethics, and Social Reform in Mid- Eighteenth-Century New England," William and Mary Quarterly (October 1977), pp. 572589. "Samuel Hopkins and the New Divinity...," reprinted in Peter C. Hoffer, ed., Collected Essays on Early America (New York: Garland, 1987); and in William Scheick, Critical essays on Jonathan Edwards (Boston, 1983). CONTRIBUTIONS TO REFERENCE WORKS: 11 Biographical and critical essays in: American National Biography. John Garraty, General Editor. University Press, 2001). (New York: Oxford The Blackwell Dictionary of Evangelical Biography: 1730-1860. Donald Lewis, Editor. (London: Basil Blackwell, 1991). Dictionary of Christianity in America. Harry Stout, et al., Editors. (Downers Grove, Ill.:
Page 8 Intervarsity Press, 1991). American Writers before 1800: A Biographical and Critical Reference Guide, 3 vols. James Levernier and Douglas Wilmes, Editors. (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1983). REVIEWS: Approximately 30 reviews in American Quarterly, Church History, Early American Literature, Journal of American History, New England Quarterly, Religious Studies Review, William and Mary Quarterly and others. OTHER PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES: Reader: Member: American Quarterly Church History Journal of American History Religion and American Culture The Historian Maine Historical Society Quarterly William and Mary Quarterly Johns Hopkins University Press Oxford University Press Religion in America series University of Massachusetts Press University of North Carolina Press Organization of American Historians New England Historical Association Maine Historical Society Advisory Board: New England Studies Series, University Press of New England, 1997-2000 Retrospection: The New England Graduate Review in American History and American Studies, 1990-95 Editorial Board: Religion and American Culture, 1998-2005 Maine Historical Society Quarterly, 1992-present
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