THE INSTITUTE FOR HISTORICAL STUDY - Key Persons


Dan Kohanski

Job Titles:
  • Member of the Board of Directors

Elizabeth Thacker-Estrada

Job Titles:
  • President of the Board of Directors

Jim Gasperini

Job Titles:
  • Vice - President of the Board of Directors

Louis Trager

Job Titles:
  • Member of the Board of Directors

Marilyn Geary

Job Titles:
  • Secretary of the Board of Directors

Megan Kate Nelson

Job Titles:
  • Historian and Writer
Join the Mechanics' Institute and the Institute for Historical Study for this exciting talk about writing with historian Megan Kate Nelson who left academia in 2014 to become a full-time writer. During this Zoom event, she will offer advice for writers who want to publish trade history books and other pieces for general readers. Dr. Nelson will talk about how to make the transition from academic to narrative history writing, how to revise manuscripts for trade publication, and how to pitch articles and Op-eds to newspapers and magazines. Megan Kate Nelson is a historian and writer, with a BA from Harvard and a PhD in American Studies from the University of Iowa. She is the author of four books: Saving Yellowstone: Exploration and Preservation in Reconstruction America (Scribner 2022); The Three-Cornered War: The Union, the Confederacy, and Native Peoples in the Fight for the West (Scribner 2020; a finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in History); Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War (Georgia, 2012); and Trembling Earth: A Cultural History of the Okefenokee Swamp (Georgia, 2005). She writes about the Civil War, the U.S. West, and American culture for The New York Times, Washington Post, The Atlantic, Smithsonian Magazine, and TIME. Before leaving academia to write full-time in 2014, she taught U.S. history and American Studies at Texas Tech University, Cal State Fullerton, Harvard, and Brown. She grew up in Colorado but now lives in Boston with her husband and two cats.

Michael Griffith

Job Titles:
  • Treasurer of the Board of Directors

Peter Meyerhof

Job Titles:
  • Member of the Board of Directors

Sunday, August

Job Titles:
  • Pm, Public Program Via Zoom.

Tim Welsh

Job Titles:
  • Member of the Board of Directors