Building the Outer Boroughs: Architecture and Urbanism beyond Manhattan

Venue and Dates: Brooklyn College, March 23, 2017

Organizers: Anna Jozefacka (Fellow, Leonard A. Lauder Research Center for Modern Art, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2015-17) and Malka Simon (Brooklyn College)

Co-sponsored by the Wolfe Institute for the Humanities and the Art Department at Brooklyn College

CALL FOR PAPERS:

Before they were the “outer boroughs,” the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island developed as cities, towns, and villages in their own right, independent of New York City. Though these so-called outer boroughs comprise most of today’s New York and are part of its architectural identity, the bulk of existing scholarship in architecture is persistently Manhattan-centric. However, there remains much to be said about New York City’s outer boroughs and their neighborhoods. The different pace of growth and initial political independence of these parts of the city have yielded architecturally varied urban landscapes well worth examining.

This symposium seeks to highlight the study of New York City’s architecture and urban development outside of Manhattan. We invite papers that expand beyond the existing field of scholarship on the city’s built environment. We aim to discuss the variety of building types, styles, and urban patterns evident in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island and to consider their roles in shaping the city. We welcome interdisciplinary papers that address architecture within the context of other fields. Papers might examine topics that include but are not limited to the following:

Early colonial settlements
Urban archeological sites
Industrial architecture and infrastructure
Civic, cultural, and religious centers past and present
Housing typologies across the outer boroughs
Gentrification and architectural style
Intersections of the natural and built environments
The skyscraper outside of Manhattan
Adaptive reuse of buildings and sites
Preservation in the face of real estate development
Building with the “The Other”: voices of immigrants, women, and architects of color

In recent years, native and new residents alike have “discovered” the richness of life outside Manhattan, leading to a wave of fast-paced development and neighborhood

transformations. The time is right for a closer scholarly examination of the places and spaces of New York City’s outer boroughs.

Please send a 500-word paper proposal and an academic CV to: outerborougharchitecture@gmail.com

Deadline for submissions is September 12, 2016. Successful applicants will be notified by September 30, 2016.

The nominating committee of the Vernacular Architecture Forum (VAF) is seeking nominations for individuals to serve as members of the organization’s Board of Directors. Board members serve three-year terms. Individuals nominated this year, and subsequently elected, will begin service in June 2017.

The VAF is administered by a volunteer board composed of dedicated professionals, students, and scholars from diverse disciplines who live and work in all parts of the United States and Canada. Nominations are sought for energetic, insightful, and responsible individuals at all stages of their careers. The Board meets twice a year; once immediately preceding our Annual Conference in the Spring and again in the Fall. Board members are expected to attend these day-long meetings and participate in committee work throughout the year.

The committee also seeks nominations for the position of First Vice President to start in June 2017. The First Vice President assists the President, chairs the forum’s Nominating Committee, works with Chapters, and oversees the day of papers at the annual conference. Candidates for the position of First Vice President should be familiar with the organization’s disparate programs and possess significant leadership skills.

Nominations should be sent to William D. Moore at moorewd@bu.edu, preferably before October 1, 2016. Nominees must be members of the Vernacular Architecture Forum. Please include a short letter (not exceeding one page) indicating the position for which the person is being nominated and describing their qualifications as well as a short vita/resume (not exceeding two pages). Self-nominations are actively encouraged.

Preliminary Call for Participation

2017 Appalachian Studies Association Conference

Appalachia!

March 9-12, 2017, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, Virginia

“Extreme Appalachia” is the theme for the 40th annual Appalachian Studies Conference. By "extreme" we mean the impassioned commitments people have to the region, the land, and Appalachian communities, ways of life, and livelihoods. We mean the ways extreme economics—excessive resource extraction and use, underfunding of public education and services, and dismal job opportunities—have sparked community resilience and activism that advance a sustainable future for the region. “Extreme Appalachia” also references exploitative pop culture products like reality television programming—as well as the countering power of the region’s visual, performance, and literary arts to nurture, provoke, and inspire. In the face of extremity, regionalist scholarship continues to augment ongoing struggles for racial, social, economic, and environmental justice.

The 2017 Program Committee invites proposals for panels, papers, posters, roundtables, performances, workshops, or organizing sessions. Papers and posters should feature original unpublished work in progress.

The full call for participation with details for online submission will go out August 15. Scholarships are available.

Deadline for proposals is October 1, 2016, with the preliminary program announced in December 2016.

Conference highlights 

    ♦ Keynote by Dr. James Hansen, director, Program on Climate Science, Awareness and Solutions, Columbia Univ.

    ♦ Dori Freeman, southwest Virginia singer/songwriter inspired by bluegrass, rhythm & blues, and old country

    ♦ Pre-conference grassroots activism training and intergenerational organizing workshop by Virginia Organizing

    ♦ “Extreme Appalachia! Rage and Renewal” plenary designed by Barbara Ellen Smith and Steve Fisher

    Virginia Tech– For the first time since 1994, the conference will be held on the Blacksburg campus of Virginia Tech. Blacksburg is located in the Ridge and Valley province of Appalachia, close to the Appalachian Trail, and 40 miles from the Blue Ridge escarpment and Roanoke, Virginia. Within easy day trips are the bituminous coalfields of southern West Virginia and far southwest Virginia, the Blue Ridge Parkway, Natural Bridge, the New River Gorge, and Mountain Lake nature preserve. Virginia Tech was created as Virginia’s land grant college in 1872. In the 1970s and 1980s it became a co-ed university supporting regional activism alongside Blacksburg local B. Lloyd, director of the Appalachian Peoples’ Service Organization. Jean Haskell and Betty Fine founded the Appalachian Studies minor at VT in 1985, and nearly all units on campus engage in regional research. 

For further information:

Appalachian Studies Association, www.appalachianstudies.org

• Conference Chair: Anita Puckett, , apuckett@vt.edu, (540) 231-9526
• Program Chair: Emily Satterwhite, satterwhite@vt.edu, (540) 231-8779
• Local Arrangements Chair: Serena Frost
  
• Community Liaison: Andy Morikawa

Program Committee: Beth Bingman, Theresa Burriss, Susan Clark, Joy Gritton, Tony Harkins, Karen Hudson, Bob Hutton, Jennifer Herald Koster, Doug Reichert Powell, and Barbara Ellen Smith

The mission of the Appalachian Studies Association is to promote and engage dialogue, research, scholarship, education, creative expression, and action among a diverse and inclusive group of scholars, educators, practitioners, grassroots activists, students, individuals, groups and institutions. Our mission is driven by our commitment to foster quality of life, democratic participation and appreciation of Appalachian experiences regionally, nationally and internationally.

VAF member Barbara Miller Lane is the 2016 recipient of the University of Mary Washington's Center for Historic Preservation book prize for her new work Houses for a New World: Builders and Buyers in American Suburbs 1945-1965.   

VAF member Jen Masengard named UVA Distinguished Alumni for 2015 and delivered the keynote lecture at the A-School Graduate Open House in April 2016. For more on her work and contributions to the field, see the UVA Architecture School web site.

VAF member Stella Nair has been awarded the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship for 2016-2017 and The Charles K Williams II Rome Prize, the American Academy of Rome, 2016-2017.

The Patina of Place: The "Cultural Weathering" of a New England Industrial Landscape by VAF member Kingston Heath (Cummings Award recipient, 2002) is now available in paperback from the University of Tennessee Press.

VAF member Paul Groth is quoted in the article "Happy Together: Why Give Up Dorm Life?" by Lizzie Widdicombe in the May 16, 2016 issues of The New Yorker magazine.

The forthcoming double issue of IA (Industrial Archeology) entitled: "Industry, Change, and Cultural Identity in New Bedford, Massachusetts" provides a multidisciplinary look into the transformation of this important New England port city and features both a forward and article by VAF member Kingston Heath. 

Table of Contents for IA 40, nos. 1 and 2

EDITORIAL

FOREWORD: Kingston Wm. Heath and Randall May Heath

ARTICLES ON THE THEME “INDUSTRY, CHANGE, AND CULTURAL IDENTITY IN NEW BEDFORD, MASSACHUSETTS”

“From Whalers to Weavers: New Bedford’s Urban Transformation and Contested Identities” by Kingston Wm. Heath

“A Peculiarly Valuable Oil: Energy and the Ecology of Production on an Early American Whale Ship” by Bob Johnson

“New Bedford: Whale Oil Refining Capital” by Mark Foster

“The River and the Rail: The Industrial Evolution of the Port of New Bedford” by Michael Dyer

“Water Wealth: The Quest for Economic Revival and a Public Water Supply in Nineteenth-Century New Bedford, Massachusetts” by Arthur Motta

“Steam Mills in a Seaport: Power for the New Bedford Textile Industry” by Patrick M. Malone

“The Weave Sheds of New Bedford and their Place in American Industrial Architecture” by Charles Parrott

William Rhoads is writing a study of Charles S. Keefe (1876-1946), an architect with offices in Kingston, NY, and New York City.  He was best known as a designer of small Colonial Revival houses and publishing THE AMERICAN HOUSE (1922) and editing a revised edition of THE GEORGIAN PERIOD (1923).  Many of his drawings and some correspondence are preserved by the Friends of Historic Kingston. Leading architectural journals published his houses as well as his letters complaining about the editor's preference for modern designs. Rhoads would be grateful for information about Keefe's life and work, including unpublished or obscurely published works.

Bill Rhoads
Professor Emeritus of Art History
SUNY New Paltz
rhoadsw@hawkmail.newpaltz.edu