Stephen Nissenbaum

Professor Emeritus Stephen Nissenbaum (Ph.D., University of Wisconsin, 1968) retired from the History Department, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, in 2004. In 1998-99 he was a Fulbright Distinguished Professor at the Humboldt University in Berlin. His major publications include The Battle for Christmas (1996), which was a Pulitzer Prize finalist; Sex, Diet, and Debility in Jacksonian America: Sylvester Graham and Health Reform (1980); and Salem Possessed: The Social Origins of Witchcraft (with Paul Boyer, 1974), which won the American Historical Association's John H. Dunning Prize. He has held major fellowships from the NEH, the ACLS, Harvard's Charles Warren Center, and the American Antiquarian Society. He has also been active in the public humanities, having served as member (and president) of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities (the state agency of the NEH) and as historical advisor to a number of films.