About us:
Production Team
Chris Moser - Creator, Producer and Writer
"America's Other Irish" is the brainchild of Chris Moser, a former news writer for CNN-USA and an accomplished independent television producer, director, writer and educator. An American of Scotch-Irish descent, Moser was selected in 1994 by the British Council for participation along with nine American scholars in a "Scots-Irish Historians Tour of Northern Ireland." Shortly afterwards, Moser made the decison to form Redwine Productions with veteran BBC producer Tony McAuley of Belfast, Northern Ireland to develop programming that focuses on connections between that country and the United States.
Moser's contributions in the fields of film making and public broadcasting are significant. He is a 1994 recipient of the Governor's Awards in the Humanities for his career achievements using media in service to that field. His most recent public television documentary, Georgia Public Televisions 2001 production "The Day Atlanta Stood Still," won a 2002 Green Eyeshade Award in its category in the Southeastern Region and was widely seen throughout the United States via distribution by PBS-Plus. Moser holds a Master of Arts Degree from Lousiiance State University and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Speech and Theatre from the University of Tennessee. View Moser's award-winning film here: http://www.gpb.org/public/tv/programs.jsp?progid=116.
Patrick FitzSymons - Co-Producer
Patrick FitzSymons is the director of Borderline Productions Ltd. of Belfast and Dublin. He graduated from Queens University, Belfast in Archaeology and Ancient History in 1983. Fitzsymons worked in the music business, theatre, newspapers and radio until 1992 when he began his TV career. Over the next six years he produced over 20 hours of feature and documentary material for all the main UK and Irish networks, focusing mainly on historical and arts-related subjects. He formed Clanvisions in 1997 and through it began to develop and produce a variety of broadcast projects and a number of short dramas, including "Setanta, The Boy Cu Chulainn". In 2004 he became partner in Borderline, a company with a strong feature film slate as well as documentary. The company is in the process of producing its first feature film, "JOHNNY WAS." http://www.borderlineproductions.co.uk/
John H. Felton, Executive Producer
1.jpg)
John Felton holds a B.A. Degree in Television Broadcasting from the University of Central Florida. He has served as Executive Producer for numerous PBS production projects and is the recipient of multiple awards, including the 1st Place Award of National Distinction for the highest-rated locally scheduled programs from American Public Television, the largest and most-respected provider of ancillary programming for PBS member stations. John also has garnered 4 Emmy awards, 6 Telly awards, 3 Communicator awards for role as Executive Producer, Virginia Currents and 2 Communicator Awards for his role as Executive Producer, The Music Seen. In his current capacity as Vice President for Programming and Production at Commonwealth Public Broadcasting Corporation (CPBC) in Richmond, VA, he created Community Idea Stations Present, a local performing arts series. John's extensive expertise will be invaluable in both script and production framework advisement throughout pre-production and through the entire project. http://www.ideastations.org/wcve/index.html
M. Shannon Freels - Associate Producer, Writer and Webmaster
1.jpg)
Originally from East Tennessee, Melinda Shannon Freels is a former human resources executive with BellSouth Corporation and is presently working as a professional writer and career consultant for Execume Corporation in Atlanta. With extensive fund-raising experience, Freels has worked on several different historical and conservation projects, including John Anderson's lavish new musical "On Eagle's Wing." Freels is an expert genealogist with an award-winning website and has traveled extensively through Ireland and Scotland. She graduated from Maryville College with a Bachelor's Degree in History and is presently completing her first novel, The Last Seanchaidh. A 10th generation Scotch-Irish American, Freels is the Vice President of the Ulster-Scots Society of America and is the Treasurer of Ulster Project Atlanta. She is also a member of the Scotch-Irish Society of the United States, the East Tennessee Historical Society, the Morgan County Genealogical and Historical Society, the East Cobb Civic Association and the Upper Chattahoochee Riverkeeper. http://home.bellsouth.net/p/PWP-shannonfamily
Directors and Partners
Dr. James W. Flannery - Project Director
James Flannery, Director of the W.B. Yeats Foundation, conceived the concept for the revised format of this project and will continue to be strongly involved in shaping its content. Dr. Flannery is Professor of Performing Arts at Emory University and Director of the W.B. Yeats Foundation of Emory University. He is the Winship Professor of the Arts and Humanities at Emory. He holds a B.A. degree from Trinity College, Hartford; an M.F.A. from the Yale School of Drama; and a Ph.D. from TrinityCollege, Dublin. Because of his highly respected scholarship in the study of W.B. Yeats and poet Thomas Moore, he received an honorary professorship at Trinity in 1994. He was honored recently by inclusion in The Oxford Companion to Irish Literature. Flannery received an honorary doctorate of letters from the University of Ulster in Northern Ireland. In 2001 he was also named a Distinguished Fulbright Scholar. Flannery founded the W.B. Yeats Foundation in 1988 and is also the host and coordinator of the annual Atlanta Celtic Christmas Concert.
Jack Frost - Director of Photography
Jack Frost has become nationally recognized over the past decade as a Director of Photography for Turner Broadcasting Services. Awards for his work include a national Emmy and an Addy as well as four Regional Emmys. Frost regularly shoots commercials for Turner Broadcasting and has one of the Southeast's most recognizable commercial demo reels. He also has worked on numerous documentary and entertainment specials including National Geographic Explorer.
Brian Cox - Editor
Brian Cox has been Atlanta Videos primary editor since 1993. He is one of the few editors in the SoutheasternUnitedState proficient on the High Definition SGI/Jaleo Digital Editing System. He is also experienced on Adobe AfterEFX, Final Cut Pro, Adobe Photoshop and Avid Xpress. Recent projects include programs for IBM, The Coca-Cola Company, American Cancer Society, Elekta, Toshiba (Music Video), Unicoil, Chairworks, The Atlanta Regional Council, The Carter Center, the U.S. Department of Energy, NAPA and Flo Healthcare Systems. Programs edited by Cox include educational documentaries, marketing programs, television commercials, and PBS-style programs for the Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta.
Dr. Katharine Brown - Research Director
Dr. Katharine Brown has for 20 years been a professor of history at Mary Baldwin College and is the former Director of Research and Collections for the Museum of American Frontier Culture in Staunton, Virginia. Brown has also taught history at Radford University and Hollins College. Her Ph.D. in history is from Johns Hopkins University. She has earned various awards, fellowships and grants from sources such as the National Endowment for the Humanities. Under a museum attachment fellowship from the British Council in 1991-92, she worked on the emigration database at the Centre for Migration Studies in Omagh. She is the author of a doctoral dissertation and two books on the Scotch-Irish, a subject central to her collection of research papers, Presbyterian Pathways to Power. She will continue to guide research, act as major consultant on the project and insure intellectual accuracy and coherence.
http://www.lotswifepublishing.com
The Center for Irish Studies at Georgia Southern University
Under the leadership of Dr. Howard Keeley, The Center for Irish Studies and its home college, the College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, at Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA, will produce ancillary educational materials for the documentary. These materials will primarily consist of a deep educational website with homepage links to a range of audience-specific sub-sites: an elementary-school matrix; a middle- and high school matrix; a tertiary educational matrix; and a general-audience matrix. The Georgia Southern parties bring to the project state-of-the-art digitizing technologies that allow the presentation of digitized oral interviews and commentaries on the web. With its strong links to educational and broadcasting institutions in Ireland and Northern Ireland, as well as to the Irish Studies community throughout the United States, the Center for Irish Studies is well positioned to promote the "Americas Other Irish" project to important constituencies. Founded in 1995, the Center for Irish Studies at Georgia Southern University is the only Irish Studies unit in the University System of Georgia. It offers an interdisciplinary minor in Irish Studies and facilitates a broad range of scholarly and cultural activities that reflect Irish, Scots-Irish, and Scottish heritages. The Center is well integrated into the life of its university, with especially strong links to four Colleges: Liberal Arts and Social Sciences, Information Technology, Education, and Health and Human Sciences. http://www.georgiasouthern.edu/%7Eirish
The Irish Connection - Travel Partner
Annabella Fitch Hutton, Director of Marketing with this Atlanta-based travel firm, will be working with us to develop unique, Scotch-Irish heritage and genealogy tour programs in both the U.S. and in Northern Ireland in conjunction with the television production. http://www.theirishconnection.net:80/
Consultants
Dr. Kerby Miller (Principal Consultant) is Professor of History at the University of Missouri-Columbia. His two decades of extensive research on Irish immigration formed the basis of his co-authorship with Paul Wagner of the book and PBS documentary film Out of Ireland. He earned his doctorate at the University of California-Berkeley and has been Senior Research Fellow at Queens University-Belfast. Miller's book Emigrants and Exiles: Ireland and the Irish Exodus to North America has won numerous awards. He is lead writer and editor of Irish Immigrants in the Land of Canaan, a recently published collection of letters and memoirs, published by Oxford University Press. Miller will share his vast knowledge of and perspectives on Ulster immigrant history in America. He will be a key on-camera interviewee, generally challenging traditional, stereotypical, and ancestor-worshipping conceptions of the Scotch-Irish.
Dr. Warren R. Hostra (Principal Consultant) is a Stewart Bell Professor of History at Shenandoah University in Winchester, Virginia. He holds an M.A. degree from Boston University and the PhD. from the University of Virginia. In addition to teaching in the fields of American social and cultural history, he directs the Community History Project of Shenandoah University. His publications include The Planting of New Virginia: Settlement and Landscape in the Shenandoah Valley (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004); A Separate Place: The Formation of Clarke County, Virginia (Rowman & Littlefield, 1986, 1999); and the edited volumes, George Washington and the Virginia Backcountry (Madison House, 1998), After the Backcountry: Rural Life in the Great Valley of Virginia, 1800-1900 (University of Tennessee Press, 2000), and Virginia Reconsidered: New Histories of the Old Dominion (University of Virginia Press, 2003). Current work focuses on the Shenandoah Valley from the late eighteenth century to the 1950s when wheat farming and flour manufacturing created a distinctive landscape and way of life.
Richard K. MacMaster (Principal Consultant) is a retired Professor of History affiliated with the University of Florida. He is the former president of the Scotch-Irish Society of America and co-editor of the Journal of Scotch-Irish History. Considered an expert on 18th century American History, Dr. MacMaster has received research grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Government of Canada, and the American Philosophical Society. He was a consultant for God's Frontiersmen, Rory Fitzpatrick's Ulster Television series and companion book on the history of the Ulster Scots and more recently with filmmaker Moore Sinnerton. He was a consultant for the Ulster American Folkpark on Fulton House, an expansion of the American section. He current book project is Flaxseed and Emigrants: Scotch-Irish Merchants in Eighteenth Century America. MacMaster will continue to consult in the script redevelopment process. On camera he will generally defend more traditionalist views of the Scotch-Irish, in emphatic conflict with Miller and some others interviewees.
Dr. Michael Montgomery (Principal Consultant) is a recently retired Professor of English and Linguistics at the University of South Carolina. He is probably the world's leading authority on the relation of English in Ulster and the American South. A native of Knoxville, he has studied extensively in Northern Ireland since 1988 and has written numerous articles on the subject. Montgomery was presented the 2004 Wilma Dykeman Award by the East Tennessee Historical Society and the W.D. Weatherford Award by the Appalachian Studies Association for his recent book, the critically acclaimed Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English which focuses on the unique dialect of the Appalachian region. Montgomery also serves on the Council of the Scotch-Irish Society of the United States and on the Advisory Editorial Board of the Journal for Scotch-Irish Studies. He will be an eloquent on-camera interview on linguistics and other subjects.
Dr. William Roulston (Principal Consultant)
William Roulston is Research Officer with the Ulster Historical Foundation, specialising in genealogical and heritage consultancy. He holds a doctorate in Archaeology from Queens University, Belfast. He has written and edited a number of books including, (with Eileen Murphy) Fermanagh: History and Society (Dublin, 2004) and Researching Scots-Irish Ancestors (Belfast, 2005). He has also worked with the BBC on radio and television programmes relating to local and family history and has participated in numerous historical and genealogical conferences. He is currently writing a book on the archaeology of the early 17th-century Scottish settlements in Ulster.
Dr. William Kelly (Additional Consultant) is Research Projects Coordinator at the Institute for Ulster-Scots Studies, located at the University of Ulster at Magee in Derry, Northern Ireland. This institute was created under Northern Ireland's new coalition government to help foster study of the historical and cultural heritage of the ethic group from which came the people known in America as the Scotch-Irish. Under Billy Kelly's leadership, the brain trust of the IUSS has been and will continue to be used to the advantage of our project. Kelly's Ph.D. is from the University of Cambridge. He may be an on-camera interviewee.
Dr. Patrick Fitzgerald (Additional Consultant) is Lecturer and Development Officer of the Centre for Migration Studies at Ulster-American Folk Park, Omagh, Northern Ireland. He is a specialist in the field of Ulster emigration. Besides sharing his vast knowledge on the subject, he has been and will continue to be especially helpful for archival visuals research. He is also a noted authority on the culture of the Ulster-Scots and the American Scotch-Irish. He will offer on-camera commentary in these areas.
Dr. Tyler Blethen (Additional Consultant) is a professor of history at Western Carolina University and former director of its Mountain Heritage Center. He has an M.A. and a Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Blethen is a leading expert in Scotch-Irish history and culture in the Southern Highlands. His publications include From Ulster to Carolina: The Migration of the Scotch-Irish to Southwestern North Carolina,Ulster and North America: Transatlantic Perspectives on the Scotch-Irish, Diversity in Appalachia: Images and Realities, and his most recent publication, High Mountains Rising: Appalachia in Time and Space. He will continue to consult in script redevelopment from his areas of expertise, and we will likely interview him on-camera.
Dr. Raymond Gillespie (Additional Consultant) is Senior Lecturer at St. Patrick's College, National Institute of Ireland in Maynooth. He was elected a member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2001. Gillespie is a leading authority on early modern Irish history. He is a radio commentator and was historical advisor and interviewee for On This Rock, a recent six-part RTE/UTV documentary on history of religion in Ireland. He will consult in the areas of Irish history that provide context for Ulster immigration to America. We expect to interview him on-camera as well.
Dr. Patrick Griffin (Additional Consultant) is Assistant Professor of History at Ohio University. His 2002 book The People with No Name: Ireland's Ulster Scots, America's Scots Irish, and the Creation of a British Atlantic World, 1689-1764 explores the migration of Ulster Presbyterians to America and how their settlement contributed to colonial America. His forthcoming book will present a major reevaluation of the current historical understanding of the American Revolution. We plan to interview him on-camera as well.
Peter Gilmore (Additional Consultant) is a Ph.D. candidate in history at Carnegie-Mellon University. He has written scholarly papers on the American controversies of the Reverend Thomas Ledlie Birch and the Rev. Samuel Brown Wylie, Ulster-born Presbyterian ministers caught in Ireland's revolutionary politics in the 1790s, as episodes in the development of Scotch-Irish identity. He has also written on the adaptation of Ulster music on the Pennsylvanian frontier. He will consult mainly on Scotch-Irish religious and political conflicts addressed mainly in the segment on Thomas Ledlie Birch, and also on the Scotch-Irish cultural legacy. We will likely interview Gilmore on-camera on both subjects.
Prof. Dorothy Boyd-Rush (Additional Consultant) is Professor of History at James MadisonUniversity, Harrisonburg, Virginia. She is a leading authority on women in American frontier society.
Dr. Trevor Parkhill (Additional Consultant) is Keeper of History at the Ulster Museum in Belfast. He is a specialist in the emigrant Irish movement from 1700 to the middle of the 19th century. From 1978 to the present, Parkhill has lectured and given papers extensively at symposia on both sides of the Atlantic on the subject of emigration from Ireland, particularly Ulster, to America in the 18th and 19th centuries. His publications include "Emigration from Ireland in the 17th and 18th centuries" and the Encyclopedia of the Irish in America, 1999.
Dr. William S. (Bill) Brockington (Additional Consultant) is Professor of History at the University of South Carolina Aiken. Praeger Press published his most recent book, Monroe, His Expedition, about a Scottish professional soldier of the seventeenth century, in February 1999. He continues to research material pertaining to Scots in Ulster and Scots-Irish to the American South.
Sam Thomas (Additional Consultant) is Assistant Curator for the History and Cultural Heritage Commission of York County. He is working on his seventh book, which will deal with the Scotch-Irish in the American Revolution in the Carolinas.
