Summer Fellowship Program Faculty
Read about our faculty members below, or visit the main Summer Fellowship page here.
JOHN DAVIS, PH.D.
John Davis is President of Historic Deerfield. He previously served as Provost and Under Secretary for Museums, Education, and Research at the Smithsonian Institution, Executive Director of the Terra Foundation for American Art Europe (Paris), and Alice Pratt Brown Professor of Art at Smith College. A graduate of Cornell University, he received his Ph.D. from Columbia University with a dissertation on 19th century American artists who traveled in the Holy Land. The author, co-author, and editor of seven books, John’s research interests include landscape painting, religion and visual culture, music and art, African-American representation during the Civil War and Reconstruction eras, the history of artists’ organizations, archival and documentary histories of American art, and 19th-century architecture and urbanism. His article, “Eastman Johnson’s Negro Life at the South and Urban Slavery in Washington, D.C.” was selected by the College Art Association as one of the 32 most important articles published in the first hundred years of the Art Bulletin. He has served as a visiting professor in Belgium, France, and Japan, and his research has been supported by the Fulbright Association, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, the Henry Luce Foundation, and the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts. John is an elected member of the American Antiquarian Society.
MICHAEL EMMONS, JR.
Michael Emmons, Jr. is the Director of Historic Preservation and Architectural Research at Historic Deerfield, where he oversees the preservation and restoration of the organization’s 55 historic buildings. He holds an MA in History from the University of Connecticut, an MA in Historic Preservation from the University of Delaware (UD), and he is a PhD candidate in Preservation Studies, also at UD. Previously, he served as Assistant Director at the University of Delaware’s Center for Historic Architecture & Design (CHAD), where for many years he helped oversee major projects in architectural research, documentation, designation, and preservation. He has taught undergraduate courses and graduate seminars in history, historic preservation, architectural history at several institutions, including the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Delaware, and Northwest State Community College in Ohio. His dissertation work involves finding, documenting, and evaluating thousands of historic graffiti discovered in dozens of early American buildings. Trained in vernacular architecture studies, his approach to studying historic buildings also draws on the traditions of material culture studies, focusing on buildings and their alterations as powerful evidence of human stories and historical change.
Erika Gasser, Ph.D.
Erika Gasser is Director of Academic Programs at Historic Deerfield, where she oversees the Summer Fellowship Program, the Deerfield-Wellesley Symposium, and other seasonal lectures and events. In addition, she teaches a course in the history and material culture of New England for Smith College and helps to organize Historic Deerfield’s participation in the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife and the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium. Previously, she was Associate Professor of History at the University of Cincinnati and Assistant Professor of History at Sacramento State University. She holds an M.A. in History and Ph.D. in History and Women’s Studies from the University of Michigan. She has published scholarship about religion, gender, and witchcraft-possession in early modern England and colonial New England, and her recent research interests include sensory history, gender, and religion across a vast early America and Atlantic world.
AMANDA LANGE
Amanda Lange is the Curatorial Department Director and Curator of Historic Interiors at Historic Deerfield. She received her undergraduate degree in Art and Art History from Rice University in Houston, Texas, and her master’s degree from the University of Delaware/Winterthur Program in Early American Culture. After graduation, she joined the curatorial staff of the Winterthur Museum as Assistant Curator of Ceramics and Glass. At Historic Deerfield she was part of a team that developed the Flynt Center of Early New England Life, a 27,000 square-foot facility for exhibitions, visible storage, and object work areas. She was responsible for opening a study gallery filled with over 3,000 decorative arts objects. Ms. Lange has developed several exhibitions and accompanying catalogues including Eye for Excellence: Masterworks from Winterthur, Delicate Deception: Delftware at Historic Deerfield, 1600-1800, and The Canton Connection: Art and Commerce of the China Trade, 1784-1860. Ms. Lange is also a contributing author to the publication, Global Trade and Visual Arts in Federal New England (University of New England Press, 2014). Currently Ms. Lange is working on a catalogue of Historic Deerfield’s British ceramics collection. She is a board member of the American Ceramic Circle, Chair of the American Ceramic Circle Membership committee, a member of the Ceramics Study Club of Boston, and a member of the Colonial Chocolate Society, a scholarly group of museum professionals, academics, and historians supported by Mars, Incorporated.
ANNE DIGAN LANNING
Anne Digan Lanning is Senior Vice President of Historic Deerfield, Inc. She supervises the following departments: Library, Academic Programs, Education and Interpretation, and Historic Preservation. She has worked at Historic Deerfield since 1986 and during this time has also held the positions of Vice President for Museum Affairs, Curator for Interpretation, and Chair of the Curatorial Department. Ms. Lanning’s research interests focus on women’s history topics from the colonial period to the colonial revival, historic foodways, taverns, and the history of technology. She developed two of the museum’s signature interpretative programs–open hearth cooking demonstrations and classes and the historic trades demonstration series–as a way to engage and teach visitors about life and work in pre-industrial New England. She has lectured and published on a variety of topics. She received an undergraduate degree in history from the College of New Rochelle (NY), and a master’s degree in History Museum Studies from the Cooperstown Graduate Program (NY). Prior to joining the staff at Historic Deerfield, she worked as Director of the Patterson Homestead and Director of Education at the Montgomery County Historical Society, Dayton, Ohio.
Lauren D. Whitley, PH.D.
Lauren D. Whitley is the Curator of Historic Textiles and Clothing at Historic Deerfield and oversees its collection of more than 8,000 objects. She received her B.A. in Art History from Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, and her M.A. in Fashion and Textiles Studies: History, Theory, Museum Practice from the Fashion Institute of Technology, State University of New York in New York. In 2023, she completed her Ph.D. in Humanities at Salve Regina in Newport, Rhode Island. Before joining Historic Deerfield in 2023, she was senior curator in the Department of Textile and Fashion Arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. There she was engaged in all aspects of the curatorial department and its global collection of more than 50,000 textiles and fashions. Ms. Whitley developed more than fourteen exhibitions including Fabric of a Nation: American Quilt Stories (2021) , Beyond the Loom and Subversive Threads in “Women Take the Floor” (2019), #techstyle (2016), and Hippie Chic (2013). In addition, in 2022, Ms. Whitley helped organize the exhibition Fashion Reimagined: Themes and Variations 1700-Now as a freelance curator for the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina. She is a member of several professional organizations including the Textile Society of America, the Costume Society of America, The Society of Dress Historians UK, and the Textile and Costume Curators Forum.
PHILIP ZEA, PRESIDENT EMERITUS, HISTORIC DEERFIELD
Philip Zea became of President of Historic Deerfield, Inc., in 2003 and retired in 2021. He worked as Vice President for Museums and Collections at the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities (now Historic New England) in Boston between 2001 and 2003 and prior to that as Curator of Furniture at the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation in Williamsburg, Virginia, beginning in 1999. He was employed previously by Historic Deerfield for eighteen years, concluding as Deputy Director and Chief Curator. Phil has also been a staff member of the New Hampshire Historical Society and a consultant to many museums on the topics of early furniture, clocks, and historical interpretation. A New Hampshire native, Zea holds degrees from Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut, and the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture at the University of Delaware. Phil is the 2009 recipient of the Award of Merit from the Antiques Dealers’ Association of America (ADA). He has lectured and written widely. Publications include Clock Making in New England, 1725-1825: An Interpretation of the Old Sturbridge Village Collection; The Dunlap Cabinetmakers: A Tradition in Craftsmanship; “Useful Improvements, Innumerable Temptations”: Pursuing Refinement in Rural New England, 1750-1850. His latest book with Jean M. Burks, Rich and Tasty: Vermont Furniture to 1850 won Historic New England’s 2016 Honor Book Award.