EMERSON WOODS BAKER II
38 Old East Scituate Road History Department York, ME 03909 Salem State University 352 Lafayette Street [email protected] Salem, MA 01970 www.salemstate.edu/~ebaker (978) 542-7126
EDUCATION
1986 Ph.D. in History, College of William and Mary.
1983 M.A. in History (Historical Archaeology Concentration), University of Maine.
1980 B.A. in History, Bates College.
CURRENT POSITION
Professor of History at Salem State College, Salem, Massachusetts (initially hired as Assistant Professor in September 1994). Specialization: early America, museum studies, archaeology, material culture, ethnohistory, and public history. My service includes five years as department chair (2002-2007) and a year as Interim Dean of the School of Graduate Studies (2009-2010).
RELATED PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE
1995 to Director of the Chadbourne Archaeology Project, South Berwick, Maine, an on-going present exploration of a 1643-1690 homestead and saw milling complex..
1988-94 Executive Director, York Institute Museum and Dyer Library, Saco, Maine. Administered a museum of regional history and art, and a 60,000 volume public library. This included a managing a staff of 17, an operating budget over $300,000, and a million dollar endowment.
1986-88 Historian and Archaeologist, York Institute Museum, Saco, Maine. Carried out research and public programs on local history, and directing the York County Archaeological Survey.
1985-86 Resident Archaeologist, Old York Historical Society, York, Maine. Designed and implemented an archaeological survey and public education program for York County.
1984-85 Intern, Department of Archaeology, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. Working on a cultural resource management plan for historic sites in the greater Jamestown and Williamsburg area.
1981-83 Supervisor, Field Foreman, and Field Assistant at colonial sites in Maine and Virginia, including sites excavated by the College of William and Mary the Virginia Research Center for Archaeology, the University of Maine and the Maine Bureau of Parks.
I have also served as consultant and facilitator to numerous museums, agencies, preservation groups, and web projects including Parks Canada, National Geographic, Plimoth Plantation, National Park Service, Seashore Trolley Museum, Strawbery Banke Museum, and many historic district commissions. I have served as an expert witness for the Province of Nova Scotia and the Town of Wells, Maine. I have presented and/or consulted to twelve Teaching American History grants, and three NEH teacher institutes.
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PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
Member, Maine Historic Preservation Commission, 1996 to 2006, and 2012-present. My service has included six years as vice-chair of the commission.
Member, Editorial Board for Maine History, 1993 to present.
Member, Collections Committee, Peabody Museum, Andover, Massachusetts, 2003 to present.
Chair, Maine Cultural Affairs Council, 2000 to 2002. Appointed by the Governor of Maine as the head of the board of oversight for Maine’s seven state cultural agencies: Maine Arts Commission, Maine Historical Society, Maine Historic Preservation Commission, Maine Humanities Council, Maine State Archives, Maine State Library and Maine State Museum.
Council Member, Maine Humanities Council, 1991 to 2000. My service to this state affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities included two years as co-chair of the council.
HONORS AND AWARDS
2010 Elected to membership, Phi Kappa Phi, National Honors Society.
2009 Essays on Northeastern North America: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries by John Reid with contributions by Emerson Baker receives the Canadian Historical Association’s Clio Award for Atlantic Canadian History.
2008 Co-Presenter, Salem State College Academic Colloquium, April 11, 2008
2005 Graduation speaker, Graduate School Commencement, Salem State College.
2004 “Amerindian Power in the Early Modern Northeast: A Reappraisal” received the Order of the Cincinnati in Washington, D.C.’s award for best article in 2004 (co-recipient with John Reid).
2003 Awarded the James Phinney Baxter Award for best article in the journal Maine History (co-recipient with James Kences).
1999 Awarded Maine Historical Society's Allen Award for outstanding contributions to Maine history.
1999 Awarded the Canadian Nautical Research Society’s Keith Matthews Award for outstanding book in maritime history (co-recipient with John Reid).
1997 Elected to membership in the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.
1995 American Beginnings is made an alternate selection of the month by the History Book Club.
SCHOLARLY REVIEW
I have refereed grant proposals for the National Endowment for the Humanities, Memorial University, the Maine Department of Education, and the Maine Humanities Council, reviewed manuscripts for Ethnohistory, National Geographic, William and Mary Quarterly, Historical Archaeology, The Historian, Northeast Historical Archaeology, and Maine History, and reviewed book-length manuscripts for the Maine Historic Preservation Commission, the Maine Historical Society, Houghton Mifflin, and the University of Nebraska Press. I have also served as an outside reader for theses and dissertations at William and Mary, University of New Hampshire, the University of Maine and Memorial University.
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CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECT
A Storm of Witchcraft: Salem and the American Experience, manuscript under contract to Oxford University Press for their Pivotal Moments in American History series.
PUBLICATIONS
Emerson Baker and Stephen Hornsby, “European Settlement in the Seventeenth Century” in Steven Hornsby and Richard Judd eds., Historical Atlas of Maine, University of Maine Press, forthcoming, 2012.
“The Archaeology of 1690: Status and Material Life on New England’s Northern Frontier,” in Georgia Barnhill and Martha McNamera, eds., New Views of New England: Studies in Material and Visual Culture, 1680-1830. Boston: Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 2012, 1-16.
John Reid with contributions from Emerson Baker, Essays on Northeastern North America: Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009.
“The Spread of Lithobolia.” New England Ancestors, 9 no. 3 (2008), 29-30.
The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft and Conflict in Early New England. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007.
Mary Beth Norton and Emerson Baker eds., “The Names of the Rivers: A New Look at an Old Document.” New England Quarterly, 80, no. 3 (2007), 459-87.
“Formerly Machegonne, Dartmouth, York, Stogummor, Casco and Falmouth: Portland as a Contested Frontier” in Joseph Conforti, ed., Creating Portland: History and Place in Northern New England. Hanover: University Press of New England, 2005, 1-19.
“Is There a Historian in the House? History, Reality and Colonial House.” Common-Place, 4, no. 4 (2004).
“Salem as Frontier Outpost,” in Dane Morrison and Nancy Schultz, eds., Salem: Place, Myth and Memory. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004, 21-42.
“Finding the Almouchiquois: Native American Families, Territories and Land Sales in Southern Maine.” Ethnohistory, 51, no. 1 (2004): 73-100.
Emerson Baker and John Reid. “Imperialism, Colonialism, and Amerindian Power in the Early Modern Northeast: A Reappraisal.” William and Mary Quarterly, 61, no. 1 (2004): 77-106.
“A Historian Awakens 1628.” Colonial House Web Site (December, 2003) www.pbs.org/wnet/colonialhouse/behind/awakens.html
Emerson Baker and James Kences. “Maine, Indian Land Speculation, and the Essex County Witchcraft Outbreak of 1692,” Maine History, 40, no. 3 (2001): 159-189.
Emerson Baker and John Reid. "'Sir William Phips and the De-Centring of Empire in Northeastern North America, 1690-1694," in Germaine Warkentin & Carolyn Podruchny, ed., De-Centering the Renaissance: Canada and Europe in Multi-Disciplinary Perspective. University of Toronto Press, 2002, 287-302.
“The Great Works River,” in Jeffrey Bolster, ed., Cross-Grained and Wily Waters: A Guide to the Piscataqua Maritime Heritage Region. Portsmouth, Peter Randall Publishing, 2002, 176-77.
Emerson Baker and John Reid. The New England Knight: Enrichment, Advancement, and the Life of Sir William Phips, 1651-1695. University of Toronto Press, 1998.
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PUBLICATIONS, CONTINUED
Emerson Baker, et als, eds., American Beginnings: Exploration, Culture and Cartography in the Land of Norumbega. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1995.
"An Overview of the Lumber Industry of the Saco River," in Michael Chaney, White Pine on the Saco: An Oral History of River Driving in Southern Maine, Northeast Folklore, 29 (1990): 13-18.
"A Scratch with a Bear's Paw: Anglo-Indian Land Deeds in Early Maine," Ethnohistory, 36, no. 3 (1989): 235-256.
"New Evidence on the French Involvement in King Philip's War," Maine Historical Society Quarterly 28, no. 2 (1988): 85-91.
"A Guide to Sources on Maine in the Age of Discovery" in Maine Historical Society, Maine in the Age of Discovery. Portland: Maine Historical Society, 1988.
"John Howland's Howling Wilderness: Myth, Reality and Cushnoc," The Kennebec Proprietor 3, no. 2 (1986): 4-10.
The Clarke & Lake Company: The Historical Archaeology of a Seventeenth-Century Maine Settlement. Augusta: Maine Historic Preservation Commission, 1985.
"The History in the Ground Project: The Archaeology of Fort Western," (with Theodore E. Bradstreet and Jeffrey Zimmerman), The Kennebec Proprietor 1, no. 1 (1984): 2-9.
"Test Excavations at the Province Fort Site, Windham, Maine, 1981," Maine Archaeological Society Bulletin 22, no. 1 (1982): 8-16.
PUBLISHED REVIEWS
Review of Donald Linebaugh, The Man who Found Thoreau: Roland Robbins and the Rise of Historical Archaeology in America in the New England Quarterly, 71 (2006): 157-8.
Review of Evan Haefeli and Kevin Sweeney, Captors and Captives: The 1704 French and Indian Raid on Deerfield, in the Journal of British Studies, 44 (2005): 574-75.
Review of William H. Foster, The Captors’ Narrative: Catholic Women and their Puritan Men on the Early American Frontier, in the Journal of American History 91, no. 1 (2004): 215-16.
Review of Bruce Bourque, Twelve Thousand Years: American Indians in Maine, in Connecticut History 41, no. 2 (2002): 211-13.
Review of James Deetz and Patricia Scott Deetz, The Times of Their Lives: Life, Love, and Death in Plymouth Colony, in the Journal of American History 88 (2002): 1498-99.
Review of Lorinda Goodwin, An Archaeology of Manners: The Polite World of the Merchant Elite of Colonial Massachusetts, in Northeast Historical Archaeology 28 (1999): 104-5.
Review of Gordon Sayre, Les Sauvages Américains: Representations of Native Americans in French and English Colonial Literature, in Historical New Hampshire 53 (1998): 115-16.
Review of Daniel Vickers, Farmers and Fishermen: Two Centuries of Work in Essex County Massachusetts, 1630-1850, in Journal of the Early Republic, 15 (1995): 661-62.
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PUBLIC LECTURES
I am frequently asked to give public lectures. The following are a small sample of groups I have addressed: APVA Jamestown, Plimoth Plantation, Strawbery Banke Museum, Commonwealth Museum, Historic Salem, Inc. Maine Historical Society, Maine State Museum, Maine Maritime Museum, Penobscot Marine Museum, Abbe Museum, Hudson Museum, Maine Archaeological Society, Bates College, Gordon College, Boston University, Purchase College, Sargent Museum, Peabody-Essex Museum, Beverly Historical Society, Marblehead Historical Society, R.S. Peabody Museum, Brick Store Museum, Old York Historical Society, Old Berwick Historical Society, Yarmouth Historical Society, the Timber Framers Guild, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
RECENT CONFERENCE PAPERS
“The Archaeology of 1690: Material Culture on the Maine Frontier,” paper presented at the Colonial Society of Massachusetts and the American Antiquarian Society Conference, Fields of Vision: The Material and Visual Culture of New England, 1600-1830, Worcester, Massachusetts, November 2007.
“The Chadbourne Site (1643-1690): Gentrification on the Early Maine Frontier,” paper presented at the Society for Historical Archaeology Annual Meeting, Williamsburg, January 2007.
Panelist for “Assessing PBS’s Colonial House: A Roundtable Discussion” presented at the American Historical Association Annual Meeting in Philadelphia, January, 2006.
“Digging Colonial House: The History and Archaeology Behind the PBS-TV Series” paper presented at the New England Historical Association Fall Meeting, October 2004.
“Architecture in Early Maine: The View from the Chadbourne Archaeology Site,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the New England Chapter of the Vernacular Architecture Forum, Sturbridge, Massachusetts, March, 2004.
“Imperialism, Colonialism, and Amerindian Coercive Power in the Early Modern Northeast: A Reappraisal,” paper presented at the Omohundro Institute of Early American History’s Annual Conference, Glascow, July 2001 (co-author: John Reid).
“Indian Land Sales on the New England Frontier,” paper presented at the Colonial Society of Massachusetts Conference, Reinterpreting New England Indians and the Colonial Experience, Sturbridge, Massachusetts, April 2001.
“Lithobolia: Frontier Precursor to Witchcraft in Salem,” paper presented at the American Historical Association Annual Meeting in Boston, January 2001.
PRINICPLE MEDIA APPEARANCES AND MEDIA CONSULTING
2011 On-camera expert for documentary “Salem Witch Hunt: Examine the Evidence.”
2010-11 Consultant and on-camera expert for “Salem: Unmasking the Devil” on National Geographic Channel.
2010 Consultant for pilot for series “History on Tap,” on the History Channel.
2010 Interviewed for segment on “King William’s War” for the series “Bill Green’s Maine,” WCSH6, NBC affiliate, Portland.
2009-10 Consultant for Documentary “Language of America: Native Language Survival in a Global Age” (in production)
2008 Consultant for “We Shall Remain” on PBS-TV’s The American Experience.
2004-05 On camera expert for the VISION-TV (Canada) documentary “Captive: The Story of Esther.”
2004 Interviewed for a story on witchcraft on WCVB-TV Channel 5’s Chronicle.
2002-04 Lead consultant and on camera expert for the PBS-TV Series, “Colonial House.”
2003 Consultant and on camera expert for Maine PBS-TV Series, “Home: The Story of Maine.”
2003 Interviewed for segment on “The Oldest House in Maine?” on “Bill Green’s Maine,” WCSH6, NBC affiliate, Portland.
2001 Interviewed for the History Channel’s “This Week in History” on the Salem Witch Trials.
1995-96 Consultant and on camera expert for Maine PBS-TV documentary, “Mapping Maine.”
1995 Interviewed for Maine PBS-TV series “Quest: Investigating the World We Call Maine.”
Since 1983 I have also given numerous interviews for the local news on TV stations in Portland, Boston, and Chicago, principally for my archaeological work and my scholarship on witchcraft.