Paper Sessions
Friday, June 19, 9.30 am
Revisiting History I
Chair: Efrat Sadras-Ron
Efrat Sadras-Ron (PhD Candidate, Michigan State University) recently completed field work in Israel for her dissertation in anthropology. She has published in academic journals and presented her work at major conferences on the understanding of secularity beyond its negation of religion, and particularly the formation and composition of Jewish-Secular identities in Israel.
They Came Here to Fish: Early Massachusetts Fishermen in a Puritan Society
Serena L. Newman uses digital records to shed new light on old stereotypes, showing that, despite the assumptions of traditional scholarship, early New England fishermen did have a place in Puritan society, and that offences such as drunkenness, violence, or slander was within Puritan society as a whole, not just among its mariner population.
Serena L. Newman (MA, University of Massachusetts-Amherst) has taught as adjunct faculty and written monograph book reviews and a journal article. She is a Reader with the College Board AP History Exams and has worked for Pearson Evaluation Systems with Teacher Licensure Exams as well as a paraprofessional in public school Special Education.
Experience Versus History: A Story Told Through Gaps in a File from the FBI
Boria Sax discusses his discovery that his father had worked as a spy on the Manhattan Project, as recorded in a censored FBI file, and the role of this file as a forum in which experience has been altered by a combination of trauma, practical demands, and wishful thinking, to conform to our expectations of history.
Boria Sax (PhD, State University of New York-Buffalo) has taught for 30 years at colleges and universities as well as prison inmates at a New York correctional facility. He has published scholarly books, many widely translated, and articles on animal-human relations as well as designing and teaching techniques in online learning. He has a blog at The Huffington Post.
No One Remembers Alone: Digital Archives and the Restoration of Lost Histories
Patricia Klindienst draws from her experience as a curator to document the migration narrative of an entire family of Russian Jews who spread across three continents at a turning point in modern history, using materials stuffed in old suitcases, boxes and closets, and contextualized through the thousands of official documents in newly digitized archives
Patricia Klindienst (PhD, Stanford University) made the immigrant experience her subject for more than a decade. She taught at Yale as an award-winning scholar and teacher and is now an independent scholar. Her first book, The Earth Knows My Name, which tells the stories of ethnic Americans who transmit their cultural heritage through their gardens, won an American Book Award for 2007. Her traveling exhibition, “No One Remembers Alone: Memory, Migration, and the Making of an American Family,” was recently seen at the Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale.
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Friday, June 19, 1.30 pm
Traditions in Transition
Chair: Joan Cunningham
Joan Cunningham (PhD, University of Texas) is a breast cancer epidemiologist with numerous research grants awarded and papers published. Her current research areas are breast cancer epidemiology, complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) to reduce the side effects of cancer treatment, and the use of the botanical Neem for human health. She recently retired from the faculty of the Medical University of South Carolina where she conducted much of her research.
Reading and Watching Nordic Noir in the Shadow of Jacobean Tragedy: Generic Continuity and Change
Marla Harris considers the parallels between early 17th century Jacobean tragedy – synonymous today with blood and gore, corruption, and sexual deviancy – and later subgenres of crime fiction, and finds connections between Jacobean tragedy and late-20th century American rape/revenge, slasher, vigilante films.
Marla Harris (PhD, Brandeis University) is an independent scholar and tutor and for the past 15 years has been a field bibliographer for the Modern Language Association which named her its Distinguished Bibliographer in 2015. She has contributed book chapters and published in scholarly journals and reference works.
Death, the Ultimate Transition: Current Research on the Afterlife in Dialogue with Christian Traditions
Valerie A. Abrahamsen examines evidence from scientific experiments, near-death experiences, reputable psychics and mediums, and out-of-body experiences, to argue for the survival of the individual soul after death; she addresses sceptics’ concerns, and highlights three of the intersecting themes: love as the ultimate reality, the eternal nature of the universe, and reincarnation.
Valerie A. Abrahamsen (ThD, Harvard Divinity School) whose primary research interests are women in antiquity and New Testament archaeology is the author of Goddess and God: A Holy Tension in the First Christian Centuries (2006), Women and Worship at Philippi (1995), and numerous peer-reviewed articles. Her current project is Paranormal: A New Testament Scholar Looks at the Afterlife.
Traditions and Transitions: Changes in Perceptions of Female Circumcision among African Immigrant Girls and Women in the U.S.
Fuambai Sia Ahmadu discusses traditions and transitions in relation to female circumcision, in particular the ways in which dominant indigenous perceptions of female circumcision, once an untouchable tradition among practicing ethnic groups in some West African countries, have shifted among some first generation Americans and younger women within African immigrant communities.
Fuambai Sia Ahmadu (PhD, London School of Economics) is an anthropologist, public health consultant, independent scholar and community leader/activist. She was lead consultant for UNICEF and a principal investigator at the UK's MRC Laboratories in The Gambia. Winner of a notable writing fellowship, she is currently a public health adviser to the Vice President of Sierra Leone.
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Saturday, June 20, 1.00 pm
Digital Humanities Forum Introductory Paper Presentation
Codes Law Conscience in Digital Research
Lori Stokes recounts her direct experience with digital research in her study of the founding decades of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. She discusses the availability and accessibility of these new and underutilized resources in the context of researching for her book.
Lori Stokes (PhD, Stony Brook University-State University of New York) specializes in the founding decades of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. She is also a transcriber for The Church Records Transcription Project of newly discovered 18th- and 19th-century manuscripts for the Congregational Library & Archives in Boston.
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Saturday, June 20, 2.45 pm
Art & Heritage
Chair: Boria Sax
See bio above
The Painted Page: Books as Symbols in Renaissance Art
Barbara Williams Ellertson (history of printing) and Janet K. Seiz (art historian), both of the Basira project [Books as Symbols in Renaissance Art] address the significance of artistic representations of books, from the border between their respective disciplines, adding visual substance to studies of changing cultural expectations of power, literacy, class, and even knowledge during the European Renaissance.
Barbara Williams Ellertson (BA, Duke University) is a designer of scholarly books and an independent researcher in the history of printing as portrayed in Renaissance art. Her book production studio BWA Books provides services to university presses, art museums, regional historical organizations, and professional organizations.
Janet K. Seiz (MA, Case Western Reserve University) has taught on university faculties and researched and published articles on Venetian ceiling painting and Leonardo Da Vinci’s Workshop. Her most recent article is “A Love of Color,” Fiber Arts Now, March/April 2014. She now pursues her interest in digitization technology for slide libraries.
An Anonymous Victim of War: Christian Petersen’s Unknown Prisoner
Lea Rosson DeLong uses Petersen’s preparatory drawings for the powerful image in his Unknown Prisoner war memorial, to show that his intention was to mourn, caution against war, and arouse our sympathy for its victims, and to explore the figure as a symbol for all victims of war, and specifically of torture.
Lea Rosson DeLong (PhD, University of Kansas) is an art curator and has taught university-level art history focusing on Modern, American, and contemporary art. Her latest publication is N.C. Wyeth’s America in the Making (2011).
Sharing History: The Artist, the Historian, and the Tour Guide
Carol Roberts uses the work of pastel artist Greg Hansell and his collaboration with the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales and Hawkesbury Valley Heritage Tours; she discusses the artist as historian, and concludes with analysis of audience engagement, and the sense of place, connectivity and self-identity which are integral to Hansell’s paintings.
Carol Roberts (Master of History, University of New England-Armidale, NSW, Australia, plus four advanced diplomas) is currently researching the links between art and history. She has worked in government and contributed to community and arts organizations. She is the owner/operator of two businesses which offer oral history, research, local and social history and cultural heritage services. She has presented papers and published books and articles on local, family and oral history.
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Saturday, June 20, 4.15 pm
Revisiting History II
Chair: Marcus J. Freed
Marcus J. Freed (MA, University of London) is an actor, writer, radio broadcaster for the BBC, entrepreneur and yoga teacher. He writes for several newspapers and teaches and consults on the Jewish approach to yoga. He lives in Los Angeles and London.
Town-Gown Collaboration: The Example of Eighteenth-Century Scotland
Toni Vogel Carey introduces Scottish universities as models of town-gown cooperation. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson sent American young men there to complete their education, and she argues that they were the equal of those French Enlightenment establishments which formed Quesnay and Voltaire.
Toni Vogel Carey (PhD, Columbia) is an independent scholar writing and publishing in scholarly journals about philosophy and the history of ideas. She publishes on Adam Smith and the Scottish Enlightenment, as well as on ethics, scientific method, and the history of independent scholarship.
Transition from Mystery into History: How the Internet Revived my Faith in ‘Swinging London’
Piri Halasz discusses her controversial Time cover of April 1966, which dealt with youth, sexuality, and egalitarian trends in English society and politics, and created controversy in both the UK and the US. She revisits this through the lens of online resources, showing how perceptions of this chapter of British history have evolved over the last 50 years.
Piri Halasz (PhD, Columbia University) spent 13 years working for Time magazine. She taught at Columbia and other colleges in New York and beyond, and published the groundbreaking A Swinger’s Guide to London (1967), A Memoir of Creativity: Abstract Painting, Politics and the Media, 1956 to 2008 (2009) and numerous articles in newspapers and scholarly journals.
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Sunday, June 21, 2.15 pm
Adjunct Discussion: Introductory Presentation
A Future for Adjuncts
Yvonne Groseil speaks about adjuncts and the problems they face, the ever-increasing activism and successes of the adjunct organizing movement, and some successful strategies in dealing with the role of adjuncts in the world of digitized education.
Yvonne Groseil (PhD, New School for Social Research) has worked in retailing, community organization, and publishing. She has an MA/TESOL degree (Hunter College/City University of New York) and began teaching English as a second language ten years ago.