Featured FLARE Member

(Each month we will feature a FLARE member who is making news

and educating the public about the lives and legacies of America’s first ladies.)

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Hillary Clinton: The Curtain Rises Again (and Again)

By Jeanne Ryan Wolfson in East Wing Magazine

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Heath Hardage Lee featured on News Nation

Commentary on Melania Trump's involvement in WH

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Colleen Shogun writes Grace Coolidge 'In Pursuit' Essay

Authenticity builds trust when public actions match private values

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Jennifer Taylor Contributes Florence Kling Harding 'In Pursuit' Essay

When people step into the frame, they step into their power

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Rebecca Boggs Roberts pens Edith Wilson 'In Pursuit' Essay

Power belongs to those who control access

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First Lady in First Person: FLARE Scholars Barbara Perry and Jody Natalle on the Power of First Ladies' Memoirs

East Wing Magazine article

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The surprising lesson of Abigail Adams' letters

By Colleen Shogan, senior fellow, Stand Together, and former archivist of the United States

In an age of information overload, curiosity is a civic responsibility.

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Michelle Gullion Contributes Ida McKinley 'In Pursuit' Essay

Being visible while vulnerable is a form of courage

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Nancy Kegan Smith Contributes 'In Pursuit' Essay

Caroline Harrison worked to preserve the nation’s cultural and institutional inheritance

Leadership sometimes means shaping the institutions others will inherit, not the headlines of the moment.

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Debra Scala Giokas Promoting First Ladies Around the Country

Her children's book focuses on the 18 first ladies who brought their needlework skills to the White House.

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Presidential Descendant Pushes to Establish a National First Ladies Day

Article featuring James Garfield III and FLARE member Michelle Gullion

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First Ladies Don't Get Enough Credit' in America's Ascendancy: Award-Winning Historian Heath Lee

There's a lot of talk leading up to July 4th about our founding fathers, but what about the founding mothers who also played important roles in our nation's history? From Abigail Adams and Dolly Madison to the modern era with Jacqueline Kennedy, NTD took a deep dive into the topic with Heath Lee.

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Maurine Beasley Would Not Be Dissuaded from Studying First Ladies

Eleanor Roosevelt scholar awarded FLARE 2026 Lewis L. Gould Award

Read Jennifer Taylor's East Wing Magazine article

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Lois Romano pens Mary Todd Lincoln 'In Pursuit' Essay

Public service demands loyalty, courage, and resilience—not perfection

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Diana Carlin contributes Jane Pierce 'In Pursuit' essay

Grief can narrow a life—or deepen moral resolve

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Conference Recap from East Wing Magazine

250 Years of First Ladies Making History

FLARE members, scholars, historians and book authors gathered at American University on May 15th for debate and discussion of presidential spouses.

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Mathew Costello Authors James K. Polk 'In Pursuit' Essay

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Phyllis Ross featured in latest Virtual Program

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Julia Dent Grant Embraced Change

The Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site commemorates the former first lady’s bicentennial with a yearlong series of events and an exhibit that tells her story.

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Launch of New Journal Is Dedicated to Boosting Scholarship of First Ladies

East Wing Magazine article

FLARE Members Sharon Williams Leahy and Teri Finneman contribute to the first-ever Journal of First Ladies Studies, edited by Dr. Christopher Leahy.

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Christopher Leahy Contributes 'In Pursuit' Essay on John Tyler

Ambiguity demands decisive leadership

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‘A Speech of Self-Defense’

Tammy Vigil comments on Melania Trump's recent speech

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NYT Essay: The Truth About Mary Todd Lincoln

Guest Opinion Piece by Lois Romano

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From dinner to diplomacy: How giant pandas first came to National Zoo

Bob Bostock & Heath Hardage Lee's recent interview

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East Wing Magazine Article: Conference to Celebrate 250 Years of First Ladies

In May, panelists will discuss how America’s presidential spouses have left their mark on history.

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Art Chadwick Featured on Richmond News

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Stewart McLaurin Contributes Essay on James Monroe

Read the latest In Pursuit Essay

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Dr. Colleen Shogan, FLARE Members Contribute to In Pursuit

FLARE member Dr. Colleen Shogan, former Archivist of the U.S., is leading the civics education program In Pursuit that premiered on Presidents’ Day, February 16, 2026.

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Scholars Consider the ‘Big Picture’ When It Comes to ‘Melania’

Mrs. Trump’s interpretation of the ‘first lady’ is what first ladies scholars will analyze for years to come.

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Edith Bolling Wilson Home Renovation Underway

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Michelle Obama Decodes Her First Lady Sartorial Messages in ‘The Look’

Scholars analyze the former first lady’s 'deliberate' and 'purposeful' wardrobe choices.

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FLARE Members in the News

Catherine Allgor

Maurine Beasley

Rebecca Boggs Roberts

Diana B. Carlin

Stacy Cordery

East Wing Magazine

Lewis Gould

Nichola D. Gutgold

Myra G. Gutin

Jill Hummer

Katherine Jellison

Michael LaRosa

Heath Hardage Lee

Anita B. McBride

Lisa McCubbin Hill

Elizabeth J. Natalle

Barbara Perry

Colleen Shogan

Katherine A. S. Sibley

Nancy Kegan Smith

Tammy Vigil

Molly Meijer Wertheimer

Jeanne Ryan Wolfson

Previously Featured FLARE Members

Rebecca Boggs Roberts

Catherine Allgor Contributes to In Pursuit

New FLARE President Diana Carlin Targets Growth in Milestone Fifth Year

White House Experts on the East Ballroom and Past White House Renovations: Interviews with Diana Carlin and Anita McBride

Former White House East Wing Staffers Shocked and Saddened By Demolition of Their Cherished Workplace

Jill Abraham Hummer Publishes New Book on Laura Bush

FLARE Member Jill Abraham Hummer has published a book entitled "Laura Bush: Texas Roots, Global Impact" with the University Press of Kansas. A complete, nuanced study of Laura Bush’s work as first lady, which blended the traditional feminine expectations of the role with the political agenda and global advocacy of the modern office. Jill Abraham Hummer, a leading expert on first ladies, adds to the highly acclaimed Modern First Ladies series. This is her second book published by the University Press of Kansas.

“The University Press of Kansas’s series of biographies on US First Ladies of the modern era are an invaluable resource for examining how these women impacted the US presidency while serving in this unique and constantly evolving role in American politics. Jill Hummer’s well-researched book on Laura Bush reveals her personal evolution over the course of her public life from reticent political spouse to active and popular First Lady who drew on her professional and personal interests and balanced the traditional and modern expectations of the role. Laura Bush was First Lady during one of the most tumultuous and consequential periods in American history. Hummer’s book helps readers understand the authenticity Bush brought to her role, and more fully appreciate the breadth of her impact and why she is remembered for serving our country with dignity and grace at home and abroad.”—Anita McBride, coauthor of Remember the First Ladies: The Legacies of America’s History-Making Women

“This study provides a fresh and exciting assessment of Laura Bush’s years as first lady. Engaging, balanced, insightful and well-researched, it effectively underlines her significance domestically and internationally, highlighting especially Bush’s evolution in the post. Presenting a fully dimensional and dynamic perspective on a first lady and former librarian whose passion for education, civil rights, and women’s rights stretched from Austin to Afghanistan, Hummer’s study will remain a go-to source for years to come.”—Katherine A. S. Sibley, author of Southern First Ladies: Culture and Place in White House History

Learn more about the book - Receive 30% off and free shipping* with code: LAURABUSH

Remember the First Ladies

January 2024 FLARE Members in the News

FLARE 2023 Election Results

FLARE ... Why Haven’t We Learned This Before?

Nancy Kegan Smith

Lisa McMcCubbin Hill

Colleen Shogan

Catherine Allgor

As the president of the Massachusetts Historical Society Catherine Allgor is a noted historian, non-profit leader, and public history innovator. Previously, she had been the Nadine and Robert Skotheim Director of Education at the Huntington Library in San Marino, CA, and a former Professor of History and UC Presidential Chair at the University of California, Riverside.

Allgor attended Mount Holyoke College as a Frances Perkins Scholar and received her Ph.D. with distinction from Yale University, where she also won the Yale Teaching Award. Her dissertation received a prize as the best dissertation in American History at Yale and The Lerner-Scott Prize for the Best Dissertation in U.S. Women's History. She began her teaching career at Simmons College and has been a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study and a Visiting Professor of History at Harvard University.

Her first book, Parlor Politics: In Which the Ladies of Washington Help Build a City and a Government (University Press of Virginia, 2000), won the James H. Broussard First Book Prize from the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic and the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association Annual Book Award. Her political biography, A Perfect Union: Dolley Madison and the Creation of the American Nation (Henry Holt, 2006), was a finalist for the George Washington Book Prize. In 2012, she published Dolley Madison: The Problem of National Unity (Westview Press) and The Queen of America: Mary Cutts's Life of Dolley Madison (University of Virginia Press).

President Obama has appointed Allgor to a presidential commission, The James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation. Catherine Allgor also serves on boards and committees for the National Women’s History Museum, the Organization of American Historians, Smithsonian American Women’s History Museum, and the Gilder Lehrman Institute, among others.

Dr. Allgor's first lady expertise is on Dolley Madison and Louisa Catherine Johnson Adams.

Stacy A. Cordery

As professor of History at Iowa State University, Stacy A. Cordery an award-winning teacher, respected author, and popular talking head. Before moving to Ames in 2016 she served as professor and chair of the History Department at Monmouth College, where she won the institution’s only teaching award a record four times. Last academic year, she was the Dennis and Vaune Johnson Endowed Chair in Theodore Roosevelt Studies and the director of the TR Honors Leadership Program at Dickinson State University in Dickinson, North Dakota.

Cordery earned her doctoral degree at the University of Texas at Austin, where she worked with Lewis L. Gould, the founder of the modern study of First Ladies. As an undergraduate she took the first university-level course on First Ladies, taught by Gould, and did research on Eleanor Roosevelt and Anna Pennybacker, locating previously unknown correspondence between the two in the American Research Center at UT. Her dissertation on the life of Alice Roosevelt Longworth formed the basis for her biography, Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth, from White House Princess to Washington Power Broker (Viking Books, 2007), a New York Times Notable Book.

She is also the author of Juliette Gordon Low: The Remarkable Founder of the Girl Scouts (Viking, 2012) and two books about Theodore Roosevelt. She has spoken at the White House Historical Association’s Presidential Sites Summit, the Wilson Center, the Jefferson Educational Forum, the National Constitution Center, the Miller Center, Printers Row Lit Fest, and the Savannah Book Festival. Her media appearances include C-SPAN, CNN, the Diane Rehm Show, and National Public Radio’s Weekend Edition. She was recently featured on the History Channel’s two-part miniseries on Theodore Roosevelt and on the Smithsonian Channel’s television series “First Ladies Revealed” speaking about Edith Roosevelt in the White House. She is currently under contract with Viking/Penguin for a biography of American entrepreneur Elizabeth Arden, whose clients included Mamie Eisenhower and Jacqueline Kennedy.

For eighteen years, Dr. Cordery served as the web bibliographer for the National First Ladies Library. Her first lady expertise is on First Ladies of the Progressive Era, especially Edith Kermit Roosevelt. For more information, please see www.stacycordery.com.

Lewis L. Gould

Lewis L. Gould, the Eugene Barker Centennial Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Texas-Austin, has been named the inaugural recipient of an award that recognizes distinguished contributions to research and education about America’s first ladies. The award, which will be named for Prof. Gould, was announced today by the First Ladies Association for Research and Education (FLARE).

FLARE’s founding president and first lady scholar, Myra Gutin, said this of Gould’s influence on the field: "Dr. Lewis L. Gould's pioneering work opened the door to the development of a new discipline, the study of the first lady. He encouraged and inspired a generation of scholars and others interested in the presidential spouse to research and then share what they had learned with the American public. He has been our guiding light."

The award was presented to Prof. Gould during a special virtual ceremony on June 10, 2021 (Lewis L. Gould Award Ceremony - YouTube). In receiving the award, Gould said: “The launching of FLARE is a welcome development to all of us who have followed the history of First Ladies over the past four decades. Intensive study of these important women can now go forward. I am deeply honored both in the name of the award and the choice of the first recipient.”

For more than forty years, Prof. Gould has been a pioneer in the study of the wives of America’s Presidents. He was the first to develop a university-level course on the history and legacies of America’s first ladies at the University of Texas-Austin in 1982. Two years later he was the keynote speaker at the first national first ladies conference, convened by Mrs. Betty Ford. He has authored more than a dozen books, including The Presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, The Modern American Presidency, Lady Bird Johnson and the Environment, and American First Ladies: Their Lives and Their Legacies. His book that analyzed Lady Bird Johnson’s contribution to environmentalism was the first attempt to demonstrate a first lady’s impact on the American society. In 1998, Gould became the editor for the Modern First Ladies series published by the University Press of Kansas.

American University School of Public Affairs Inaugural Lifetime Institutional MemberLearn More	Rider University Learn More	The White House Historical Association Learn More	Massachusetts Historical Society Learn More
The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Foundation Learn More	National First Ladies' Library * Museum Learn More	Center for Presidential History, Southern Methodist University Learn More	George W. Bush Institute Learn More
Dole Institute of Politics Learn More	National Trust for Historic Preservation Learn More	National Archives Learn More	Ulysses S. Grant National Historic Site Learn More
Montpelier Foundation Learn More	Keuka College Learn More

Featured FLARE Member

(Each month we will feature a FLARE member who is making news

and educating the public about the lives and legacies of America’s first ladies.)

By Jeanne Ryan Wolfson in East Wing Magazine

Commentary on Melania Trump's involvement in WH

Authenticity builds trust when public actions match private values

When people step into the frame, they step into their power

Power belongs to those who control access

East Wing Magazine article

By Colleen Shogan, senior fellow, Stand Together, and former archivist of the United States

Being visible while vulnerable is a form of courage

Caroline Harrison worked to preserve the nation’s cultural and institutional inheritance

Eleanor Roosevelt scholar awarded FLARE 2026 Lewis L. Gould Award

Public service demands loyalty, courage, and resilience—not perfection

Grief can narrow a life—or deepen moral resolve

250 Years of First Ladies Making History

East Wing Magazine article

Ambiguity demands decisive leadership

Tammy Vigil comments on Melania Trump's recent speech

Guest Opinion Piece by Lois Romano

Bob Bostock & Heath Hardage Lee's recent interview

In May, panelists will discuss how America’s presidential spouses have left their mark on history.

Read the latest In Pursuit Essay

Scholars analyze the former first lady’s 'deliberate' and 'purposeful' wardrobe choices.

FLARE Members in the News

Catherine Allgor

Maurine Beasley

Rebecca Boggs Roberts

Diana B. Carlin

Stacy Cordery

East Wing Magazine

Lewis Gould

Nichola D. Gutgold

Myra G. Gutin

Jill Hummer

Katherine Jellison

Michael LaRosa

Heath Hardage Lee

Anita B. McBride

Lisa McCubbin Hill

Elizabeth J. Natalle

Barbara Perry

Colleen Shogan

Katherine A. S. Sibley

Nancy Kegan Smith

Tammy Vigil

Molly Meijer Wertheimer

Jeanne Ryan Wolfson

Previously Featured FLARE Members

Rebecca Boggs Roberts

Catherine Allgor Contributes to In Pursuit

New FLARE President Diana Carlin Targets Growth in Milestone Fifth Year

White House Experts on the East Ballroom and Past White House Renovations: Interviews with Diana Carlin and Anita McBride

Former White House East Wing Staffers Shocked and Saddened By Demolition of Their Cherished Workplace

Jill Abraham Hummer Publishes New Book on Laura Bush

Remember the First Ladies

January 2024 FLARE Members in the News

FLARE 2023 Election Results

FLARE ... Why Haven’t We Learned This Before?

Nancy Kegan Smith

Lisa McMcCubbin Hill

Colleen Shogan

Catherine Allgor

Stacy A. Cordery

Lewis L. Gould

Myra G. Gutin, Ph.D.

Elizabeth J. Natalle

Barbara Perry

Dr. Tammy R. Vigil

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