Highlights of the 2021 virtual 16th annual conference, sponsored by
Southern Connecticut State University
New Haven, CT
April 23–25, 2021
Conference Theme: Crossroads of Memory
Inquiry on the spatial properties of memory has traditionally energized a variety of disciplines as well as built bridges among them: from philosophy, theology, and geography, to history, sociology and anthropology, from neuroscience and psychology to computer science and environmental studies. Environments affect remembrances that, in turn, shape identity, in a loop of interactions that blur boundaries between what is past and present.
How do individuals and communities understand memory spaces, monuments, and borders? How do various kinds of environments—urban, rural, and virtual—retain or alter memory, while being shaped by it? How do historiographies, literary, and artistic narratives connect space, place, and the environment? How is memory processed, archived, accessed, and continually reshaped through environment?
What is the role of memory in the management of natural resources and environmental policy?
Reflections on IASESP presentations by Michele Whiting
Reflection comes in different forms, and I’m particularly interested in recording one’s thoughts/reflections in the midst of creative activity. Lstening is creative in the sense that it is an active space, and so recording what one is hearing and seeing in this space of a digital conference, with its broad international reach, seemed especially important in order to take time later to look back, soak up, and rediscover through looking and remembering.
The drawings are merely responses to the speakers’ presentations, an aide memoire for me if you like, and as such they are small, made with what was to hand and made at the time of the speakers speaking. They are drawn on paperback book pages taken out of C. P. Snow’s Time of Hope, bought in a thrift shop at the start of the pandemic. Somehow, it seemed appropriate.
— Michele Whiting
Click on any image to open a larger view.
Michele Whiting’s reflections on Jeff Webb’s presentation, “The Milligan Slave House: Public Memory and Civic Identity in Huntington, Indiana” 
Michele Whiting’s reflections on Kip Redick’s presentation, “It Happened Like This. Places of Poetic and Prosaic Enactment.” 
Michele Whiting’s reflections on Lorna Lueker Zukas’s presentation, “Imaginings, Myths, and Memories: Reframing Culture in Zimbabwe’s Museums” 
Michele Whiting’s reflections on Luke Eilderts’s presentation, “Borders, Memory, and Identity: The Fight to Preserve Regional Exceptionalism in Alsace” 
Michele Whiting’s reflections on Monai de Paula Antunes’s presentation, “Wild Design: Gambiarra, Complexity, and Ecology” 
Michele Whiting’s reflections on Raphael Hernandez’s presentation, “The ‘Invention’ of Mexican Cuisine: Food, Memory, and Identity in Modern Mexico” 
Michele Whiting’s reflections on Simon Hutchinson’s presentation, “Immersion and Hyperrealism in Recorded Sonic Space” 
Michele Whiting’s reflections on Sonja Pieck’s presentation, “From Restoration to Restorative Ecology: The Role of Memory in Protecting ‘Layered Landscapes’” 
Michele Whiting’s reflections on Billy Beswick’s presentation, “Hauntological Relations: Memory, Mourning, and the Outside Gaze in the Construction of Indigenous Identity in Taiwan” 
Michele Whiting’s reflections on Edgars Raginskis’s presentation, “’Grīnblats? Surely, he is not one of us!’ The Ostracism of the Jewish Composer Romualds Grīnblats from the Musical Landscape of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, and the Recent Attempts to Reclaim Him” 
Michele Whiting’s reflections on Martyna Miernecka’s presentation, “Writing Spaces: House of Creative Work in the Study of Geocriticism” 
Michele Whiting’s reflections on Michael Brown’s presentation, “The Death of Birth: Ecological Totalitarianism” 
Michele Whiting’s reflections on Nela Milic’s presentation, “Embodied Narrative” 
Michele Whiting’s reflections on Pina Palma’s presentation, “Memory, Pausilipon, and Echo: Pontano’s Reading? 
Michele Whiting’s reflections on Stephanie Brocklehurst’s presentation, “Nostalgia and the Role of Altered Memory in Fostering A White Settler Aesthetic of Place” 
Michele Whiting’s reflections on Sujata Gadkar-Wilcox’s presentation, “Ambedkar at the Interstices of Center and Periphery”
Program
Friday 23 April 2021
8:45-9:00 Welcoming remarks
9:00-10:30
Panel 1
Chair: Troy Paddock, Southern Connecticut State University
Deconstruction of Indigenous Knowledge Systems in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Case Study of Human Rights Violations
Olivia B. Amabo
University of Dschang, Cameroon
Sustainability and Authentic Dwelling: Why Safeguarding Sundarbans Needs to Invoke the Memory of Fluidity
Kalpita Bhar Paul
Krea University, India
Memory, Visuality, and Sustained Precapitalist Ecological Commoning in the U.S. Southwest
David E. Toohey
Institute for Liberal Arts and Sciences, Nagoya University, Japan
10:30-10:45 Break
10:45-12:15
Panel 2
Chair: Kip Redick, Christopher Newport University
Embodied Narrative
Nela Milic
University of the Arts London
Landandmybody . . . my body from the stillness drinking in . . .
Michele Whiting
Bath School of Art and Design
Knowing Nature, Knowing Self: A Look at the Benefits of Nature for the Psyche
Stacey L. Mascia-Susice
North Country Community College
12:15-1:00 Lunch break
1:00-2:30
Panel 3
Chair: Pina Palma, Southern Connecticut State University
Borders, Memory, and Identity: The Fight to Preserve Regional Exceptionalism in Alsace
Luke L. Eilderts
Southern Connecticut State University
The “Invention” of Mexican Cuisine: Food, Memory, and Identity in Modern Mexico
Rafael Hernandez
Southern Connecticut State University
Coping with a First Language Loss: A Case Of Memory Re-Encoding in Russian-Speaking International Adoptees
Anastasia Sorokina
Southern Connecticut State University
2:30-2:45 Break
2:45-4:15
Panel 4
Chair: Jeffery Debies-Carl, University of New Haven
Vessel of Memory: Mystic Seaport Museum, the Whaleship Charles W. Morgan, and the Presence of the American Maritime Past
Jason W. Smith
Southern Connecticut State University
The New Deal and the Old Frontier: Environmental Design and the Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933-42
James J. Fortuna
University of St. Andrews
False Flag Operation?: Symbolism and Nostalgia for the Republic of Vietnam
Wynn Gadkar-Wilcox
Western Connecticut State University
4:15-4:30 Break
4:30-6:00
Panel 5
Chair: Jeffrey B. Webb, Huntington University
Magical Memory at the Crossroads and in the Labyrinth
George Sieg
Southwestern Indian Polytechnic Institute
Imaginings, Myths, and Memories: Reframing Culture in Zimbabwe’s Museums
Lorna Lueker Zukas
National University
“Click Here” to Post a Comment: Interrogating Legend Discussion and Transformation through Memorate Narration in Online Forums
Jeffrey S. Debies-Carl
University of New Haven
6:15-7:30 Virtual happy hour (BYOB)
Saturday 24 April 2021
8:30-9:00 Open time
9:00-10:30
Panel 6
Chair; Troy Paddock, Southern Connecticut State University
Voices of the Dead
Ken Cormier
Quinnipiac University
Immersion and Hyperrealism in Recorded Sonic Space
Simon Hutchinson
University of New Haven
“Grīnblats? Surely, he is not one of us!” The Ostracism of the Jewish Composer Romualds Grīnblats from the Musical Landscape of the Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, and the Recent Attempts to Reclaim Him
Edgars Raginskis
Hong Kong Baptist University
10:30-10:45 Break
10:45-12:15
Panel 7
Chair: Jodie Hayob-Matzke, University of Mary Washington
From Restoration to Restorative Ecology: The Role of Memory in Protecting “Layered Landscapes”
Sonja Pieck
Bates College
Writing Spaces: House of Creative Work in the Study of Geocriticism
Martyna Miernecka
Institute of Polish Culture, University of Warsaw
Changing Topophilia and Loss of Place in Rural Hungary
Gábor Máté
University of Pécs, Hungary
12:15-1:00 Lunch
1:00-2:30
Panel 8
Chair: Jason Hayob-Matzke, University of Mary Washington
Wild Design: Gambiarra, Complexity, and Ecology
Monai de Paula Antunes
Universität der Künste Berlin / Universität Potsdam
Hauntological Relations: Memory, Mourning, and the Outside Gaze in the Construction of Indigenous Identity in Taiwan
Billy Beswick
University of Oxford
Nostalgia and the Role of Altered Memory in Fostering A White Settler Aesthetic of Place
Stephanie Brocklehurst
University of Western Ontario
2:30-2:45 Break
2:45-4:15
Panel 9
Chair: Rafael Hernandez, Southern Connecticut State University
Memory, Pausilipon, and Echo: Pontano’s Reading
Pina Palma
Southern Connecticut State University
Memory from Myth to Techné in the Mediterranean Tradition
Bernardo Piciché
Virginia Commonwealth University
A Connective Turn in Spanish Historical Memory
Miaowei Weng
Southern Connecticut State University
4:15-4:30 Break
4:30-5:30
Panel 10
Chair: James Fortuna, University of St Andrews (UK)
The “Memory Work” of Maps in the Early 18th Century
Alex Zukas
National University
‘Je t’écris de dessous la tente’: Epistolary Architecture from the Trenches of WWI
Nichole Gleisner
Southern Connecticut State University
5:40-6:30
Business meeting
Sunday 25 April 2021
8:30-9:00 Open time
9:00-10:30
Panel 11
Chair; Alex Zukas, National University
Near Shore and Distant Memory: Recalling and Narrating Architectures of the Littoral
Charlie Hailey
University of Florida
Flâneur’s Perception of the Urbanscape: Memory and Senses in the Phenomenal Field
Ke Sun
University of Florida
Photography at the Crossroads with Historical Remembrance
Silke Helmerdig
School of Design, Pforzheim University
10:30-10:45 Break
10:45-12:15
Panel 12
Chair: Troy Paddock, Southern Connecticut State University
It Happened Like This. Places of Poetic and Prosaic Enactment.
Kip Redick
Christopher Newport University
The Death of Birth: Ecological Totalitarianism
Michael Brown
Southern Connecticut State University
Glacier Lessons: John Muir, Glaciers, and Ourselves
Jason Hayob-Matzke and Jodie Hayob-Matzke
University of Mary Washington
12:15-1:00 Lunch
1:00-2:30
Panel 13
Chair: Lorna Lueker Zukas, National University
Subaltern Bodies and Voiceless Women: The Memorialization and Re-enforcing of Gendered and Racial Hierarchies on South Carolina’s State House Grounds
Carlie N. Todd
University of South Carolina
Analyzing Heritage-Making, Historical Preservation, Social Anxiety, and the Making of Symbolic Place at the Henry Whitfield State Museum, Guilford, Connecticut
William A. Farley
Southern Connecticut State University
The Milligan Slave House: Public Memory and Civic Identity in Huntington, Indiana
Jeffrey B. Webb
Huntington University
2:30-2:45 Break
2:45-4:15
Panel 14
Chair: Mary Paddock, Quinnipiac University
The Non-Place in New Haven: Homelessness, Memory, and the Search for Narrative Identity
Jacob Chamberlain
Southern Connecticut State University
“The Once and Future Audubon:” The History of the Audubon Ballroom and the Movement to Save It
W. Maclane Hull
University of South Carolina
Ambedkar at the Interstices of Center and Periphery
Sujata Gadkar-Wilcox
Quinnipiac University
4:15 Thanks and closing remarks
Please send questions to Troy Paddock, paddockt1@southernct.edu
IASESP 