Jennifer Anderson is an Associate Professor of Atlantic History at Stony Brook University. She holds a PhD in History from New York University. Her recent book, Mahogany: The Costs of Luxury in Early America (Harvard Univ. Press, 2012) examines the complex history of the colonial tropical timber industry. Since curating an exhibition at NYU about a 17th century slave plantation on Long Island founded by West Indian sugar planters, her new research delves into historical ties between Long Island and the Caribbean. She recently published “A Laudable Spirit of Enterprise: Re-Negotiating Land, Natural Resources, and Power on Post-Revolutionary Long Island,” in Early American Studies (Spring 2015) which won the John M. Murrin Prize (2016). As a public historian, she has served as an advisor to numerous New York museums and historic sites.
Jenna Wallace Coplin is an archaeologist working in Cultural Resource Management, and is completing her PhD at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Her focus is on shifting relationships between suburban and urban communities including intersections of co-residence, labor, race, and ethnicity to better understand how Long Islanders engaged the national economy emerging in the 19th century.
Nomi Dayan is the Executive Director of The Whaling Museum of Cold Spring Harbor. Ms. Dayan received her MA from Bank Street College in Museum Education and previously worked at the Prospect Park Zoo, NY Aquarium, and Brooklyn Children’s Museum. She is the author of the pictorial book Whaling on Long Island. Ms. Dayan currently serves on the Board of the Museum Association of NY, and enjoys sharing inspiration with others at museum conferences.
Dr. Georgette Grier-Key is the Executive Director and Curator of Eastville Community Historical Society of Sag Harbor, and consulting historian for various municipalities and projects, the President of the Association of Suffolk County Historical Societies, founding member and organizer of the Pyrrhus Concer Action Committee (PCAC), and Cultural Partner for Sylvester Manor of Shelter Island. Dr. Grier-Key is also an adjunct history and political science professor at Nassau Community College.
Allison Manfra McGovern is a professional archaeologist with more than 15 years of experience in archaeology and history on Long Island. She received an MA degree from Syracuse University, and MPhil and PhD degrees in Anthropology from the CUNY Graduate Center. She teaches at Farmingdale State College and Queens College, and serves as a consultant to several agencies, including the Division of Historic Services for Suffolk County Parks. She has conducted numerous research projects on the histories of marginalized peoples focusing on labor, inequality, and race. Her recent book is a co-edited volume (with Christopher N. Matthews) entitled The Archaeology of Race in the Northeast.
David Bunn Martine is a resident of the Shinnecock Reservation in Southampton. He has been Director/Curator of the Shinnecock Nation Cultural Center and Museum for 13 years. An accomplished artist himself, he is working on a forthcoming book about contemporary Native American artists.
Stephen N. Sanfilippo has labored in a textile mill, served in the U. S. Navy, and performed maritime songs since 1974 at venues from the Caribbean to Canada. He was also a high school teacher on Long Island. He now teaches at Maine Maritime Academy, dividing time between eastern Long Island and Downeast Maine. He received his PhD in History from Stony Brook University.
Nancy Shoemaker is a professor of history at the University of Connecticut. Her most recent books (reviewed in this issue) are Native American Whalemen and the World: Indigenous Encounters and the Contingency of Race (2015) and an edited collection of historical documents and oral histories called Living with Whales (2014). Her current book project is on Americans in nineteenth-century Fiji.
John A. Strong is a Professor Emeritus of History and American Studies at Long Island University. He is the author of four major books, including The Algonquian Peoples of Long Island From Earliest Times to 1700, “We Are Still Here”: The Algonquian Peoples of Long Island Today, The Montaukett Indians of Eastern Long Island, The Unkechaug People of Eastern Long Island, and numerous journal articles on the Indian peoples of Long Island.
Frank Turano is a native Long Islander who has spent 34 years in public education. He has a BS in biology and chemistry from St. John’s University, an MS in marine science from Adelphi University, an MA in anthropology and a PhD in historical archaeology from Stony Brook University. Turano has been teaching Long Island Environmental History at Stony Brook since the mid-1970s. In 1999 he collaborated on the production of the documentary film Baymen and was the writer/researcher for the Telly Award winning film A Farm Picture, which traced the development of farming on Long Island.