2025 Writer-In-Residence, UMass / Five College Graduate Program in History

The University of Massachusetts Amherst/Five College Graduate Program in History is pleased to announce that our 2025 Writer-in-Residence is historian Alan Taylor, who will be on campus April 6-11, 2025. He has published eleven books and is a two-time recipient of the Pulitzer Prize for History, among other awards. Dr. Taylor will give the UMass/Five College Annual Distinguished Lecture in History, "American Civil Wars: Canadian Dimensions," on Tuesday, April 8 at 6:00PM in the Commonwealth Honors College Events Hall.

Taylor's Lecture will focus on the Civil War and Reconstruction periods. During the 1860s, the American Civil War rebuilt the United States, but it also accelerated the creation of Canada as another transcontinental nation in North America.  American reconstruction and the Canadian emergence were closely related.  For it was the fear of the growing military power and political ambitions of a triumphant United States that pushed Canadians to seek security through their own, new confederation.  But to achieve that, Canadians had to overcome the invasion of Irish radicals and internal tensions between French and English speakers.

The Distinguished Annual Lecture is free and open to the public. Copies of Taylor's books will be available for purchase from Amherst Books.

The Department of History’s Distinguished Annual Lecture celebrates the 1996 establishment of the UMass/Five College Graduate Program in History. It is presented by the UMass/Five College Graduate Program in History with support from the UMass Amherst history department and Five Colleges, Inc.