VAF 2026 Paper & Poster Sessions

PAPER & POSTER SESSION SCHEDULE

9:00 am - 10:30 am: Paper session I

10:45 am - 12:15 pm: Paper session II  

10:45 am - 12:15 pm: Poster session (with presenters)   

2:15 pm - 4:00 pm: Paper session III

Below is the schedule for paper & poster sessions. To see the full abstracts submitted for each paper, please click here. To see the full abstracts submitted for each poster, please click here.

9:00-10:30 am: PAPER SESSION I

PANEL A: Rhetoric and Representation

Chair: Chris Wilson

Karlyn Allenbrand, The House That Scientists Built: Solar One and the Search for Vernacular Solar Architecture during the Energy Crisis, 1972-1980

Ernesto Bilbao, The Tiki Pop and South Florida’s Architecture of Escapism: Architect Charles F. McKirahan and the Mai Kai Restaurant, 1956-1959

Lydia Mattice Brandt, Picturing the Southern Plantation, 1850s-1880s

PANEL B: Ritual Architectures

Chair: Will Moore

Joseph Sciorra, “We try to make it look like a shrine”: Votive Offerings and Vernacular Philanthropy at Domestic St. Joseph Altars in Queens, New York

Clarisse Figueiredo de Queiroz, Unburied by Hand: Vernacular Reinscriptions, Indigenous Ritual, and the Moving Landscape of Almofala

Jessica Hernandez and Edgar Garcia, Beyond the Object: Yesáh Community House

PANEL C: Architectures of Authority and Autonomy

Chair: Louis Nelson

Joseph Godlewski, Materializing Authority: Architecture, Iron, and Political Order in Bonny and Old Calabar, c. 1850-1900 

Madeline Webster, Gretchen Jackson v. Boston Redevelopment Authority

PANEL D: Vernacular Architecture in the Pacific Northwest

Chair: Dianne Harris

Betsy H. Bradley, The Wheat Farmer’s Lifescape on the Columbia Plateau

Brian D. Rich, Fantastic Floods, Environmental Exploitation, and the Rehabilitation of the Basalt Buildings of LaCrosse, Washington

Laura E. Ruberto, Italian Vernacular in the Pacific Northwest: Romano Gabriel’s Wooden Sculpture Garden

10:45 am - 12:15 pm: PAPER SESSION II  

PANEL A: Settler Colonization and the Vernacular 

Chair: Kelema Lee Moses

Angelika Joseph, Constructing Alternative Political Relationships at Wounded Knee, 1973

Andrew Herscher, The Political Wigwam

Jennifer Chutter, The Vancouver Special: Tracing Settler-Colonial Legacies through a Residential Architectural Style

PANEL B: StoryMapping East Pasco, Washington (roundtable)

Chair: Robert (Bob) Bauman

Participants: Robert Franklin, Kyley Canion-Brewer, Allison Moon 

PANEL C: Material Histories

Chair: Jim Buckley

Janet Ore, “The Building is the Enemy”: Fire and the Petrochemical House

Thompson Teasdale, Painting Black Spaces: Uncovering Architectural Finishes at the Historic Whitfield Hotel

Andrea Bertassi, Rediscovered Interiors and Vertical Domesticity: Interpreting Bosa’s Vernacular Architecture through a Seventeenth-Century House

PANEL D: On the Water

Chair: Michael Chiarappa

Qingyun Lin, Purity, Hygiene, and Environmental Conflicts: Boat Communities during Guangzhou’s Modernization, 1930-1966

Casey Breen, The Water's Spell: Modernity and its Fringes along Chicago's Houseboat City

Kelsey Kuehn, Calumet Fisheries: Industry, Tourism, and Culture Shape Integrity of a Historic Fish Shack and Smokehouse along the Calumet River in South Chicago

10:45 am - 12:15 pm: POSTER SESSION

Sophie Applegate, The Not-So-Little House on the Prairie: The Bregant House’s Expression and Performance of (Dis)ability
Paula Arning, Vernacular Logics in Modernist Design: Eileen Gray and Margaret Leischner
Christopher Carlberg, Refining and Redefining Belonging through Adaptive Reuse in Tallahassee
Jackson Dent, Origins of a Southern Vernacular: A Study of the Carolina Rain Porch
Eliot Heath, Diners, Drive-Ins, and Documentation: Identifying and Evaluating Roadside Restaurant Chains
Reese Greenlee & Nitzan Farfel, County Fairgrounds as Vernacular Cultural Landscapes
Jayne Flynn, South Carolina Rice Culture and Winnowing Houses: A Typology
Ashley Dever, Pigeon Houses in North America: A Southeast Vernacular Study
Kade Kosarich, Coffee, Culture, and Community: La Tropicana Café’s Third-Space Legacy in Ybor City
Aidan MacKinlay, Architecture for All Ages: Nominating the Tallahassee Museum for the National Register of Historic Places
Lizzie MacWillie, Housing Catalogs as Cultural Texts
Marie Saldaña, Navigating Geographies of Kinship in a Borderlands Cultural Landscape
Samantha Threlkeld, Furnishing the Everyday: A Conservation-Centric Furniture Study at the Whitfield Hotel

2:15 - 4:00 pm: PAPER SESSION III

PANEL A: Domestic Landscapes, Ideal and Real

Chair: Matt Lasner 

Anna Andrzejewski, Florida Living Beyond Florida: A Domestic Ideal in Postwar America

Christopher Brian Pritchett, Sunset Village: The Architecture of War/The Architecture of Home

Diana J. Painter, The Hanford Engineer Works Village: Vernacular by Design

Travis Olson, Partitioning the Plains: The Speculative Landscape of Southwestern North Dakota 

PANEL B: Regional House Types 

Chair: Kim Hoagland

Amani Morrison, On Method: Researching Chicago’s Kitchenette Apartments

Anne Delano Steinert, Not Just Dumbbells: The Breezeway Tenements of Cincinnati, Ohio 

Maddison Wells, An Architecture of Liberation: The Evolution of Black Architects and the Shotgun House

Jiayue Hao and Hiroyuki Shinohara, More than Material: Cultural Identity in the Dai Dwellings

PANEL C: Gendered Architecture, Unseen Architecture

Chair: TBD

William Littmann, Hidden Spaces of Premarital Pregnancy: Maternity Homes in Postwar America 

Sylvia Faichney, Imagining the Military Family: Standardization and the 'Waiting Wives' of Schilling Manor 

Ipek Mehmetoglu, An Architectural Network of Women’s Labor: Turkish Charity Association

PANEL D: Revelatory Technologies

Chair: Jake Torkelson

Warren Hofstra, Architectural Space, Spatial Cognition, Virtual Reality, and “The Great Experiment”

Laken Sylvander, Mapping Memory: Toward a Methodology for Estimating Floor Plans of Inaccessible or Lost Vernacular Buildings

Kirk Ranzetta, When the Waters Recede: Cultural Succession in the Vernacular Landscape of K’uč’uxwárax

Bryan Clark Green, Jefferson’s Ruins, Read Anew: Descendant Consultation and Remote Sensing at Barboursville