Conference Schedule at a Glance

Friday, May 21, 2021

All times are Central Daylight Time

Scholars' Choice Virtual Book Fair will be open throughout the conference.

2:00 pm Welcome and Annual Meeting

2:30 pm Awards Ceremony

3:30 pm Plenary Panel hosted by Jim Buckley and Brent Fortenberry: Fieldwork Futures

4:45 pm San Antonio Preview by Ken Hafertepe

5:00 pm Breakout Rooms

Further discussion after the Plenary: Fieldwork Futures - Jim Buckley and Brent Fortenberry

New Books - Kim Hoagland

Buildings & Landscapes - Michael Chiarappa and Lydia Mattice Brandt, co-editors 

The VAF’s Special Series: Present and Future - Thomas Carter, editor

VAF’s African American Field Schools - Louis Nelson, University of Virginia

Tidewater Chapter for VAF - Marcia Miller and Jeff Klee

New England Chapter - Nicole Benjamin-Ma and Peter Michaud

Saturday, May 22, 2021

VAF 2021 Virtual Conference Papers and Posters

All presentations are twenty minutes unless otherwise noted.  All times are Central Daylight Time.

Most papers presentations will be posted on the Paper Recordings page from Sunday May 23, 2021 until June 22, 2021.

Papers marked with   will not be posted after the session.

Paper Session One: 10:00-11:30 am

1.1. West Coast Vernaculars

Chair, Ken Breisch - University of Southern California

Elizabeth Sexton - Independent Researcher - Peddling Mud: Victor Girard and Adobe Revival in Los Angeles, c. 1920 

Amanda Roth Clark - Whitworth University - Industrial Oregon: Cultural Impressions of Rural Historic Structures (ten  minute Work in Progress) 

Alec Stewart - Dumbarton Oaks - "Meet me at the Swap Meet": Immigrant Entrepreneurs and West Coast Hip Hop's  Interethnic Origins  

Meredith Drake Reitan - University of Southern California - Bunker Hill Refrain: Exploring New Digital Tools for Public History (ten minute Work in Progress) 

1.2. Jim Crow and Its Legacies

Chair, Tara Dudley - University of Texas-Austin

Ethan Bottone - Northwest Missouri State University - "Your Home Away from Home": Tourist Homes and Examples of Hospitality as Resistance from the Green Book  

Rebekah Dobrasko - Texas Department of Transportation - The Cultural Landscape of Segregated Sport: Austin's Anderson Stadium  

Nihal Elvanoglu - University of Florida - Unearthing the Impact of St. Augustine's African American Community's  Contribution to the Historic Preservation Plan 

1.3. Indigenous Tropes and Democratic Ideals: Native Americans Seen from Outside and  In

Chair, Chris Wilson - University of New Mexico

Larissa Juip - Michigan Technical University - The "Noble Savage," Hiawatha, and the Plains Indian in an early 20th Century Tourism Landscape 

Lillian Makeda - Independent Scholar - The Community Center Movement: From Urban Progressives to Navajo  Chapter Houses 

Maureen McCoy and Alexandra Tarantino - Delaware Department of Transportation - Reevaluating Sites and Districts with a Native  American context

1.4. Vernacular Evolutions in the Atlantic World

Chair, Carl Lounsbury - College of William and Mary

Roger Leech - University of Southhampton - St. Nicholas Abbey, The Renaming of Nicholas Plantation Unravelled  

Marcia Miller - Maryland Historical Trust - "For all these Reasons we have opted for wings": Understanding the Phenomenon  of the Five-Part House in Maryland 

Edward Nilsson - Nilsson + Siden Associates, Inc. - The Evolution of a Working Church's Trans-Atlantic Symbolism, 1714-2014:  St. Michael’s, Marblehead 

Poster Sessions: 12.00-1.00 pm

Chair, Phil Gruen - Washington State University

Anjelyque Easley - University of Texas at Arlington - “Cemeteries, Construction, Complicity: Black Burial Grounds Under Distress”

Jeremy Ebersole - University of Oregon Portland / Milwaukee Preservation Alliance - “A Sight to Dwell Upon and Never Forget: Illuminating Strategies for Saving Neon Signs”

Amie Edwards - University of Florida - “African Architecture and Identity: The 19^th-century Asante Palace in Kumasi, Ghana”

Christina Frasier - University of Texas at San Antonio - “Placekeeping and Cultural Sustainability amidst Gentrification in San Antonio”

James Juip - Michigan Technological University - “Stone masonry and its role in the development of the tourist industry within the constructed wilderness of the Keweenaw County”

Shikha Patidar - VINYAS (a group of artists, architects, and engineers), Bhopal, M.P., India - “Understanding integration of Art and Architecture: Rajwar community, Central India”

Paper Session Two: 1:15-2:45 pm

2.1. Housing in the U.S. Post World War II Era

Chair, Matthew Lasner - Hunter College 

Anna Andrzejewski - University of Wisconsin-Madison - Building Paradise: Shaping the Architecture of Retirement in South Florida,  1945-1965

Elaine Brown Stiles - Roger Williams University - Trade Secrets and Research Houses: Knowledge Production and Exchange  in the Postwar American Home Building Industry 

Kathleen Tunnell Handel - Photographer and Housing Advocate and Eduard Krakhmalnikov - Trust for the National Mall - No Traces to Save: The Vulnerability and Overlooked Richness of Trailer, Mobile Home, and Manufactured Housing Communities 

2.2 Cultural Dynamics in the U. S. South 

Chair, Susan Kern - College of William and Mary

Laura Kilcer - Oak Alley Foundation - A Critical Study of Oak Alley Plantation's Eponymous Allée  

2.3 Marketing Vernacularity 

Chair, Howard Davis - University of Oregon

Windy Zhao - Louisiana Tech University - Living in the Margin: Lives in the New Socialist Countryside 

Ian Stevenson - Independent Scholar - Developing "Magic Town": Capitalism, Corporate Branding, and the Trackside  Architecture of the Portland &. Rumford Falls Railway, 1890-1897 

Paper Session Three: 3:00-5:00 pm

3.1. Constructing Class in the United States, 1850-1940 

Chair, Elizabeth Cromley - Northeastern University, Professor Emeritus

Tom Hubka - University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Professor Emeritus - Unprecedented Improvement: Change in the Domestic Conditions of Working Class Housing in the early 20th Century (1900-1940)

Mary Fesak - University of Delaware - The Development of Thoroughbred Training Barns at the Saratoga Race Course as  a Tool to Construct Class  

Astrid Tvetenstrand - Boston University - Perfecting the View: Mount Desert Island and the Quest for the Ideal  Landscape 

3.2 Envisioning Vernacularity 

Chair, Gerald Pocius - Memorial University of Newfoundland

Yehotal Shapira - Technion-Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning, Haifa, Israel - Interweaving of Vernacular Architecture and Landscape as a Non Exceptionalist Ecological and Social Choice (ten minute Work in Progress) 

Stamatina Kousidi - Politecnico di Milano, Italy - Casting a Modern Gaze on the Aegean Vernacular 

Emanuel Jannasch - Dalhousie University - Continuity and Erasure of a Building Tradition  

Rachel Leibowitz - Syracuse University - The Rise of the Japanese Vogue in the Postwar US: Searching in Suburbia  (ten minute Work in Progress) 

3.3 Beyond the Building: Materials and Messages

Chair, Janet Ore - Montana State University

Madeline Webster - Boston University - Painted Party Walls, Ghost Signs, and Preservation by Neglect (ten minute Work in Progress) 

Chad Randl - University of Oregon - Texture One-Eleven: the Vernacularization of an Engineered Wood Product  

Alexander Wood - Massachusetts College of Art and Design - Who Built New York? The Case of the Structural Ironworkers, 1870-1895 

3.4 Cultural Landscapes 

Chair, Carolyn Torma - American Planning Association, retired

Cynthia Anderson - University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee  - Solid-State Physics and the City: Urban Agriculture's Cultural Landscapes  through the Eyes of a Crystallographer 

Laura Ruberto - Berkeley City College - Capturing Reactions of the Vernacular Architecture and Cultural Landscapes of  Italian POWs in the United States during World War II 

Melinda Creech - Independent Scholar - The Vernacular Architecture and Cultural Landscape of the Polley Mansion, Whitehall