The NEHA Fall 2019 Conference was held at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island on Saturday, October 26, 2019

CONFERENCE PROGRAM

Finalized: 11/6/19 Download as PDF

Program Chair: NEHA Vice President Sean Perrone

All sessions held in the Global Heritage Hall (GHH)

8:00-8:30 REGISTRATION & CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST

First Morning Sessions, 8:30-10:00

Session 1: Politics, War, and American Society (GHH 101)
Chair/Comment: Erik Christiansen, Rhode Island College

“’The Thing to Do Now’: The Four Pillars of American War Preparations, May – December 1940”
Alex Beckstrand, University of Connecticut
“The Congressional Career of Edmund S. Muskie of Maine”
Philip A. Grant, Pace University
“The Conflicted Soldier — The GI Antiwar Movement and Exploring the Narratives and Myths of the Vietnam Era Soldier that Morally Rejected Service in Vietnam”
Shawn Driscoll, University of Massachusetts-Lowell

Session 2: Religious Reform and the Common Good in Seventeenth and Eighteenth-Century New England (GHH 105)
Chair/Comment: Thomas Balcerski, Eastern Connecticut State University

“Like a Candlestick Forgotten: John Myles and Early Baptists in America”
Charles Kennedy Hartman II, Roger Williams University
“A Pox on their Blasphemous Houses: Isolating Disease and Religious Dissent in Colonial New London”
Dominic DeBrincat, Missouri Western State University
“’To Promote One Common Good’: African American Leaders in Providence in the 1790s”
Christopher J. Martin, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

Session 3: Women Educators and Associations in Nineteenth-Century Massachusetts (GHH 106)
Chair/Comment: Elizabeth DeWolfe, University of New England

“With Diligence and With Success: The Role of Women Caregivers at Schools for the Intellectually Disabled in 1850s Massachusetts”
Naomi Schoenfeld, Rivier University
“’Like the Pages of a Great Book’: Diaries of the Worcester Normal School”
Nicole O’Connell, University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth
“Democracy and the New England Women’s Auxiliary Association”
Kathryn Angelica, University of Connecticut

Session 4: England Through the Ages (GHH G01)
Chair/Comment: Troy Paddock, Southern Connecticut State University

“Context and Meaning in Bede’s Abbreviated Psalter”
Sally Shockro, Merrimack College
“Mary in the World: Finding the ‘New’ Catholic Women in Britain, 1880-1920”
Kathryn Lamontagne, Boston University
“Selling Bright Young Things: Advertising Aristocracy in Interwar Britain”
Thomas J. Sojka, Boston University

Second Morning Sessions, 10:30-12:00

Session 5: Teaching Slavery in The Public Square and in the Classroom: A Roundtable Discussion (GHH 101)
Chair: Erik Jensen, Salem State University

Roundtable Participants:
Bethany Jay, Salem State University
Jessica Parr, Simmons University
Johanna Obenda, Yale University Art Gallery

Session 6: U.S. Women’s Political Activism in the Early Twentieth Century (GHH 105)
Chair/Comment: Lauren Kozakiewicz, University of Albany

“’The Obligation of Opportunity’: Maud Wood Park and the Activism of the College Equal Suffrage League”
Kelly Marino, Sacred Heart University
“Mary Norton’s Revolution of ’28: From Jersey City to National Affairs”
Robert Chiles, University of Maryland – College Park
“Maryland Grassroots Suffragists, 1900-1930”
Hayley Crum, Birmingham City Schools

Session 7: Erasing / Finding Race and Identity in Nineteenth and Twentieth-Century America (GHH 106)
Chair/Comment: Eric C. Cimino, Molloy College

“From ‘Mulatto’ to ‘Negro’: The 1930 United States Census and the Erasure of Mixed-Race People”
Gabby C. Womack, Merrimack College
“Slavery Markers in the Big Easy: Historic Interventions in the Tourist Landscape of New Orleans”
Ella Howard, Wentworth Institute of Technology

Session 8: Commemorating and Remembering Tragedy in the United States (GHH 108)
Chair/Comment: Laura D’Amore, Roger Williams University

“Tragedy, Memory, and Horror: Revisiting the Cocoanut Grove Fire, November 28, 1942, in Boston Massachusetts and Its Significance in United States History”
Brian Peterson, Shasta College
“Historicizing Anthracite (Part Two): Commemorative Modes and Representational Forms”
Philip Mosely, Emeritus, Penn State University

Session 9: Using the Past to Understand the Present (GHH G01)
Chair/Comment: Miriam Reumann, University of Rhode Island and Thomas Carty, Springfield College

“Democratic National Chairman J. Howard McGrath and the ‘Jewish Vote’: The 1948 Election and the Recognition of Israel: A Case Study”
Debra A. Mulligan, Roger Williams University
“Shocking Remedies: A Historically-based Evaluation of Medical Electricity for Pain Management”
Lisa Nocks, IEEE History Center

Session 10: New Perspectives on Ireland and America during the Great Irish Potato Famine (GHH G05)
Chair/Comment: Kristen Petersen, MCPHS University

“Merchant Involvement in Irish Famine Relief Organizations”
Katherine Carper, Boston College*
“Transatlantic Abolitionism and the Great Irish Potato Famine”
Ian Delahunty, Springfield College
“’Rememember … You Promised to Take Me Out of Ireland’: Famine-Era Migration Chains in the United States”
James Zibro, Kent School

Lunch

Afternoon Sessions, 1:30 – 3:00

Session 11: Entrepreneurial Women and their Contributions to the Nineteenth-Century New England Economy (GHH 101)
Chair: Laura Prieto, Simmons University

“The Clockmaker’s Wife: Tila Oates Willard and the Economy of Household Weaving in Early Federal New England”
Mary Sherman Lycan, University of Connecticut*
“Carrie’s Hair: Customer Networks and Hair Work Jewelry in Mid-Nineteenth Century Maine”
Elizabeth DeWolfe, University of New England

Session 12: Ambiguous Agency: Slavery, Exile, and Mission in Asia (GHH 105)
Chair/Comment: Debra A. Mulligan, Roger Williams University

“Freedom in Bondage, Exploring the Subjectivity of Slaves in Southeast Asia”
Stephen Michael Brown, Southern Connecticut State University*
“Exile, Imprisonment, and Narratives of Territoriality in Colonial India, 1914-1924”
Sharmishtha Roy Chowdhury, Queens College CUNY
“Recreating the Legacy: The Story of the Huamei Hospital and the Wagner Family, 1886-2015”
Beth Shinn, Roger Williams University

Session 13: Historical Curiosities in Nineteenth-Century America (GHH 106)
Chair/Comment: Lukas Rieppel, Brown University

“Searching for the Woolly Mammoth: A Nineteenth-Century Endangered Species”
Edward Guimont, University of Connecticut
“Nellie Horsford: Forgotten Proponent of the Viking Theory of American Discovery”
Brian Regal, Kean University

Session 14: Contending Forces: Philosophy, Theology, and Politics of Empathy in Nineteenth-Century New England (GHH 108)
Chair/Comment: Elizabeth Francis, Rhode Island Council for the Humanities

“Weaving History: Rowland Hazard, Free Will, and the Politics of Empathy”
Todd S. Gernes, Stonehill College
“’An Indwelling Spirit’: Sophia Little’s Prison Reform and the Limits of Activism”
Sarah C. Holmes, New England Institute of Technology
“Wars of Religion: Adin Ballou’s Newspaper Polemics of 1828-1831”
Deborah Kisatsky, Assumption College

Session 15: Female Reformers in the Nineteenth Century: A Showcase of Student Research from AP US History at Portland High School (GHH 109)
Chair/Comment: Gavin Glider, Portland High School

“Elizabeth Cady Stanton: The Fight for Women’s Suffrage and Beyond”
Lucy Howe, Portland High School
“Harriet Tubman’s Unifying Effects on Abolitionism and Feminism”
Zoe Bertsch, Portland High School
“Dorothea Dix and Prison Reform in the 1800s”
Hannah Prue, Portland High School

Session 16: Teaching and Writing History in the Modern World: Challenges and Opportunities (GHH G01)
Chair/Comment: Dominic DeBrincat, Missouri Western State University

“Teaching Sexual Violence in Historical Context in the Era of Me Too”
Laura D’Amore, Roger Williams University
“Preventing, Recognizing, and Destigmatizing Vicarious Trauma in Historians”
Nicolas Hardisty, Rhode Island College
“’What we Did to Indians’: Why the Memory of Native Dispossession Matters”
Christian Gonzales, University of Rhode Island

Session 17: Designing Public History: Faculty, Student, and Community Perspectives (GHH G05)
Chair/Comment: Charlotte Carrington-Farmer, Roger Williams University

“Faculty Perspective: Connecting Historians and Designers through Community Partnerships Projects”
Charlotte Carrington-Farmer and John Farmer, Roger Williams University
“Student Perspective: Experiential Learning in the History Department”
Rebecca Farias, Daniel Perkins, Samantha DaRocha, and Carolyn Westgate*
“Community Partners Perspective: Creating a New Heritage Area in New England”
Dave Weed, Sowams Heritage Area Project Coordinator