Laura Browder, Ph.D., is the Tyler and Alice Haynes professor in American Studies at the University of Richmond. A highly respected author/filmmaker, her recent projects include the book and traveling museum exhibition, When Janey Comes Marching Home: Portraits of Women Combat Veterans; the book Her Best Shot: Women and Guns in America, in which she traces the way the female soldier has been seen in American popular culture from Revolutionary War times to the present day; the oral history drama Sheep Hill Memories, Carver Dreams, a collaboration with residents of the working-class African American neighborhood in Richmond; and Rousing the Nation: Radical Culture in Depression America, which was named a Choice Outstanding Book of 1998. Browder served as executive producer on the ITVS and VFH-funded documentary film, The Reconstruction of Asa Carter, which was based on her book Slippery Characters: Ethnic Impersonators and American Identities and is slated to air on PBS in the spring of 2012. She and producer Douglas Newman are currently collaborating on a feature film about her grandfather, Earl Browder, the former General Secretary of the American Communist Party and Mothers at War, a documentary film and oral history project that explores the challenges of motherhood and the military.

A magna cum laude graduate of Brandeis University, Douglas Newman spent five years as a producer at ABC News Productions in New York where he worked on documentaries for the Discovery Channel, the A&E Network, the History Channel and The Learning Channel. Among his most recognized achievements were programs on the Human Genome Project, Alan Greenspan, and the Trans-Alaska oil pipeline. Since 2006, he’s been the Director of Creative Programming at Mouth Watering Media overseeing the development and production of non-fiction film and multi-media projects, including The Reconstruction of Asa Carter, a recently completed documentary feature that received funding from the Independent Television Service (ITVS) and will air on PBS in the spring of 2012, and Cai Guo-Qiang “Odyssey,” a short film that documented the creation of the acclaimed international artist’s large scale gunpowder drawing commissioned by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. Current projects include collaborations with Laura Browder on an untitled feature film about Earl Browder, the former General Secretary of the American Communist Party from 1934-1945, Mothers at War, a documentary film and interactive website that explores the unique challenges of motherhood and the military, and a documentary feature tracing the intertwined histories of Rice University and the city of Houston.