Vermont Movie Board of Advisors

Frank Bryan is John G. McCullough Professor of Political Science at the University of Vermont since 1976. He previously taught political science at St. Michael's College and Montana State College. He earned a BA from St. Michael's College, an MA in political science from UVM in 1965, and a Ph.D. from University of Connecticut in 1970.
Bryan is known throughout New England both as a both a humorist and a serious scholar. He authored Real Democracy: The New England Town Meeting and How It Works; The Vermont Papers ; and Politics in the Rural States . He was chosen "one of New England's leading humorists" by Yankee magazine; and credited by the Boston Globe with writing "one of the most original political analyses ever written about New England."
A sampling of other books he has authored include Yankee Politics in Rural Vermont, Readings in American Government; Real Vermonters Don't Milk Goats; Out! The Vermont Secession Book; Out of Order; and All Those in Favor: Rediscovering the Secrets of Town Meeting Democracy. His work has drawn the attention of such publications as the Washington Post, New York Times, Newsweek , and the Los Angeles Times . Bryan has appeared on CBS's Sunday Morning, the NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, and more recently with Brian Williams, Fox's The O'Reilly Factor, Bill Moyers' The Public Mind, and was featured in Ted Turner's Portrait of America film series.
Bryan is also a former Golden Gloves boxer (Vermont and Connecticut) and rodeo bull rider (Montana). Current interests include hunting, fishing, trapping, oxen, stamp collecting, and poker.

J. Kevin Graffagnino has been Executive Director of the Vermont Historical Society since April 2003. Born in New York, raised in Montpelier, Vermont, he earned a B.A. from the University of Vermont (1976), and an M.A. (1978) and Ph.D. (1993) from the University of Massachusetts, all in American history. He was the Curator of Vermont collections at the University of Vermont library, 1977-1995. He was director of the North American history research library, Wisconsin Historical Society, 1995-1999, and Executive Director of the Kentucky Historical Society, 1999-2003.
Graffagnino is editor or author of 15 books, including The Shaping of Vermont (1983); Vermont in the Victorian Age (1985); Only in Books: Writers, Readers, and Bibliophiles on Their Passion (1996); Ethan Allen and His Kin: Correspondence, 1772-1819 (1998); A Wisconsin Fifteen (1998); Vermont Voices, 1609 Through the 1990s (1999); The Quotable Ethan Allen (2005); and All the Good Books (2006).

Michael Sherman is Academic Dean of Burlington College. His previous professional positions include Professor in the Adult Degree Program of Vermont College, Union Institute & University (1996-2006); Director of the Vermont Historical Society (1985-1995); Assoc. Director of the Wisconsin Humanities Committee (1978-1985); and Assistant Professor of History and Humanities at Lawrence University (1974-1978).
Sherman received his B.A. in Humanities at the University of Chicago, his M.A. and Ph.D. in history at the University of Chicago, and training in museum studies at the Milwaukee Public Museum and University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
He is the co-author with Gene Sessions and P. Jeffrey Potash of Freedom and Unity: A History of Vermont, published inn 2004, and author of articles and reviews on Vermont history and the humanities in public life. He edited and contributed to a volume on Vermont State Government and Administration since 1965, four books of essays on Vermont history, a books of essays on productivity, and on the humanities and public life.
Sherman is currently editor of Vermont History, the journal of the Vermont Historical Society.

Madeleine Kunin was Vermont's first woman governor (1985-1991). She is a former Vermont state legislator (1972-1978) and Lieutenant Governor (1978-1982). Today Kunin has a dual appointment at the University of Vermont in Burlington and St. Michael's College, in the departments of Political Science, as Distinguished Visiting Professor. She teaches a seminar in "Women, Politics, and Leadership." she is a Fellow of the Institute of Politics, Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She is also a regular commentator on Vermont Public Radio. She served as U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland (1996-99) and as U.S. Deputy Secretary of Education in the Clinton Administration. She has received more than 20 honorary degrees. She is the author of two books, Living a Political Life, (Knopf, 1993) and The Big Green Book, (Barre Publishers, 1976).

Samuel Hand is professor emeritus in American history at the University of Vermont, where he taught from 1961 until his retirement in 1994. Since then, he has authored several books on Vermont history, including The Essential Aiken (2004, with Stephen Terry); A Vermont Enclyclopedia (2003, with John Duffy & Harry Orth); The Star that Set, The Vermont Republian Party, 1854-1974 (2202); and Vermont Voices, A Documentary History of the Green Mountain State (1998, with Kevin Graffagnino & Gene Sessions). He is a former president of the Vermont Historical society, recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Center for Research on Vermont, a Founcers Circle Award from the Ethan Allen Homestead, and was designated Graduate Faculty Teacher of the Year in 1994.

Dona Brown is Associate Professor of History at the University of Vermont. She came to UVM in 1994 after having earned her Ph.D. at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Her book, Inventing New England: Regional Tourism in the Nineteenth Century (Smithsonian Institution Press, 1995), explores the significance of the tourist trade in creating an enduring image of New England. She has also published a number of articles on the history of tourism and regionalism, and is the editor of a collection of 19th century tourist stories: A Tourist's New England: Travel Fiction, 1820-1920. She teaches courses in United States cultural history, New England history, and Vermont history. Many of her courses are cross-listed with the Vermont Studies program, and she was director of the Center for Research on Vermont from 2003 to 2006. She is currently working on a book about American back-to-the-land movements in the 20th century.

Gregory Sanford has been Vermont State Archivist since 1982. Prior to then he served as assistant director of the George D. Aiken Project at the University of Vermont and as the oral history coordinator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He was written widely on the Vermont experience. He was the recipient of the 2002 New England Archivists Distinguished Service Award for sustained contributions to the profession.

Howard Coffin, a seventh generation Vermonter, has written three books on the Civil War: Full Duty, Vermonters in the Civil War; Nine Months to Gettysburg; and The Battered Stars. Five of his ancestors served in Vermont Civil War regiments. Long active in historic preservation, Coffin recently published Guns Over the Champlain Valley, a history of, and guide to, the military sites of the Lake Champlain corridor. He has also written An Inland Sea, a history of the Catholic Church in Vermont, and a book on the University of Vermont. He lectures extensively on military history, having given more than 200 talks in Vermont alone, and has for more than a decade led tours to battlefields throughout the eastern United States.
Coffin is a former press secretary to Senator Jim Jeffords and co-authored with Jeffords the book An Independent Man. For 12 years he was an environmental and political reporter for the Rutland Daily Herald and was for six years a correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor. He worked as news director for Dartmouth College and the University of Vermont, and has long been a public relations consultant, with the Vermont Bicentennial Commission and the Vermont Institute of Natural Science among his clients.
Coffin is a former trustee of the Vermont Historical Society, Friends of the Vermont State House, and The Mount Independence Coalition. He is a lifelong trustee, and former vice president, of the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation. He served in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam War as a member of the Second Armored Division. Among his many interests are collecting Vermont art and Civil War documents, classical music, fly fishing, hiking, and playing pool in league and tournament competition. He is a frequent commentator for Vermont Public Radio.
Coffin is now researching a book on Civil War sites in all of Vermont's 251 towns and cities, is completing a novel set in the 1960s, and is researching a book on Calvin Coolidge's writings. He recently researched and scripted for the Marsh Billings Rockefeller National Historical Park a walking tour of Civil War Woodstock, Vermont.

Deborah Clifford (in memorium) was an author and independent scholar living in New Haven, Vermont. She published three biographies of 19th-century New England women, including The Passion of Abby Hemenway: Memory, Spirit, and the Making of History, which was published by the Vermont Historical Society in 2001. Most recently she co-authored with her husband Nicholas (Professor Emeritus at Middlebury College, where he taught Chinese history) The Troubled Roar of the Waters: Vermont in Flood and Recovery, 1927-1931, published in 2007 by the University Press of New England.
Clifford was a graduate of Radcliffe College, and she received her M.A. in American history from UVM in 1974. At various times Clifford taught courses at Middlebury College, UVM, and Vermont College. She was also the Associate Editor of Historic Roots: a Magazine of Vermont History (1995-2000), intended for adults who read at the 4th - 5th grade level. She was also a member of the Vermont Commission on Women's Vermont Women's History Project.

Alan Berolzheimer is the project historian for the Flow of History, a history education network providing professional development services for teachers in Vermont and New Hampshire through funding from the federal Teaching American History grant program. He has directed the publications program of the Vermont Historical Society since 1998. He has taught U.S. History at Norwich University and Colby-Sawyer College. Alan has lived in Vermont since 1979.

Joe Bookchin is Vermont Film Commissioner. He grew up in Burlington, Vermont and received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in 1983 in Film Production from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts. He then joined CBS News, where he served as an assistant producer for the syndicated news program News Path and as an associate producer for CBS special events. In Hollywood for five years, Bookchin worked his way up through the studio system at Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. He worked for such producers as Bob Weiss (Crazy People) and Dan Kolsrud (Grumpy Old Men) and Directors Tony Bill and Dan Aykroyd. At Warner Bros. he worked in the Feature Production Department for four years as a contract administrator and assistant coordinator. He worked on such features as Demolition Man, Outbreak, and Richie Rich. Bookchin moved back to Vermont to start the film production program at Burlington College. As the director of the program Joe oversaw the growth of the department into the largest department at Burlington College, as well as one of the largest film programs in the State of Vermont. He has produced and directed documentaries and news segments for many organizations including a documentary for the Flynn Center for the Performing Arts and a segment for the Vermont Public Television series "Points North -- Arts in Vermont."

John Moody, Ethnohistorian, and Donna Roberts Moody are Abenaki Repatriation Coordinators. The Moodys work to preserve Abenaki burial sites, and rto epatriate and rebury Abenaki ancestral remains that have been disturbed in Vermont and New Hampshire, on behalf of a number of Western Abenaki tribal bands and families. They also offer public programs on local Native history, community responsibility, and the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.

Marilyn Blackwell, Ph.D. is a writer and historian. She has worked at the Vermont Historical Society and taught history at UVM, Norwich University, and Community College of Vermont. She co-authored a history of East Montpelier, Vermont, and has published numerous articles about Vermont and women's history in state and national history journals.

Cynthia Bittinger has been Executive Director of the Calvin Coolidge Memorial Foundation since 1990. She is an Instructor of Women in U.S. History and and Vermont history at the Community College of Vermont. She is author of Grace Coolidge, Sudden Star, a book in a series on first ladies, and she has written about history for The New England Journal of History and several other publications. Cynthia is a founding member of the Vermont Women's History Steering Committee of the Vermont Commission on Women, is a board member of the Vermont Alliance for the Social Studies, and a commentator for Vermont Public Radio and an op-ed writer for the Rutland Herald.

Greg Guma is an author, editor, manager, and progressive activist. He has edited a variety of publications, including the Vanguard Press, the state's first commercial alternative weekly; Toward Freedom, a Vermont-based international affairs newsletter founded in 1952; and Vermont Guardian. He is also the former Executive Director of the Pacifica Foundation, parent corporation of the Pacifica radio network, and the author of documentary scripts, plays and books, including "The People's Republic: Vermont and the Sanders Revolution," "Uneasy Empire: Repression, Globalization and What We Can Do,"and "Spirits of Desire," a historical novel set in Vermont. Greg has launched a blog, Maverick Media, covering media politics, the alternative press, and his life in Vermont.

Rick Winston owns and manages the Savoy Theater in Montpelier with his wife Andrea Serota. He grew up in Yonkers, New York and has a B.A. in English Literature from U.C. Berkeley. He got most of his film education at the various revival theaters in New York City and Berkeley, and shortly after arriving in Vermont in 1970, founded the weekly Lightning Ridge Film Society, which morphed into the Savoy Theater in 1981.
He has taught Film Appreciation at Goddard College, Community College of Vermont and most recently, the Osher Lifelong Learning Program. As well as programming the Savoy, he has been the programmer of the Green Mountain Film Festival from its inception in 1999 (see http://www.greenmountainfilmfestival.org/).