Elise Lemire

Professor of Literature

Author of three books about race and memory in the United States.

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Black Walden: Slavery and Its Aftermath in Concord, Massachusetts is now available on Audible.

Battle Green Vietnam: The 1971 March on Concord, Lexington, and Boston, was featured on C-SPAN:

 

These and Miscegenation: Making Race in America were published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

More About Me

Dr. Lemire’s work on the Black enclave in Concord’s Walden Woods was covered by the Washington Post and is featured in Concord’s Secret History, a documentary film on PBS available for streaming here.

She appears onscreen in the Ken Burns-produced film on Henry David Thoreau.  Watch a clip here.

Dr. Lemire is also an advisor on the NEH-funded film One More Mission: The Story of Vietnam Veterans Against the War which is in the final stages of production. 

Publications

Books

Battle Green Vietnam: The 1971 March on Concord, Lexington, and Boston. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021.

Black Walden: Slavery and Its Aftermath in Concord, Massachusetts.  University of Pennsylvania Press, hardback 2009; paperback, 2019. 

“Miscegenation:” Making Race in America.  University of Pennsylvania Press, hardback 2002; paperback, 2009.

Recent Articles and Editorials 

“B CUMING a FREEMAN: Sharon Chandler’s Memorial Quilt and the Former Inhabitants of Walden Woods.”  The Thoreau Society Bulletin.  Summer 2026.

Myth, Memory, and the Question of the Minute Man Statue | The Dial

Seeing Slavery in Eighteenth-Century American Salt-Glazed Stoneware: Richard Williams’ Savings Bank | Commonplace: The Journal of Early American Life