The NEHA Spring 2019 Conference was held at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, Maine on Saturday, April 13, 2019

Location: 88 Bedford Street, Portland, Maine 04104

CONFERENCE PROGRAM

Last Updated: 4/8/19
Download Finalized Conference Program

Program Chair: NEHA Vice President Libby Bischof

All sessions held in the Abromson Community Center, 2nd floor, attached directly the Bedford Street Parking Garage.

8:00-8:30 REGISTRATION & CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST: Abromson Community Center, 2nd Floor Mezzanine

First Morning Sessions, 8:30-10:00

Session 1: Spatial History – Using Mapping to Interpret the Past (Abromson 213)
Chair/Comment: Matthew Edney, University of Southern Maine

“Mapping of Benedictine Monasteries in Sixteenth-Century Castile”
Sean T. Perrone, Saint Anselm College
“Recovering a Fragmented Past: Geospatial Technology in Mapping Black Thought, 1760-1860”
Jessica M. Parr, Simmons University
“Mapping Ghettoization during the Holocaust”
Anne Kelly Knowles, University of Maine

Session 2: World War I and the Interwar Years (Abromson 214)
Chair/Comment: Abraham Peck, University of Southern Maine

“’An Entente Frame of Mind’: Great Britain and the Great War”
Troy Paddock, Southern Connecticut State University
“Banking on Peace: Morgan Public Efforts to Promote the League of Nations, 1918-1920”
Olga Koulisis, University of Connecticut
“In a Pickle: Tackling Nutrition as a Global Problem in Interwar Europe”
Lacey Sparks, University of Southern Maine

Session 3: Before 1820: Mount Desert Island Before Statehood (Abromson 215)
Chair/Comment: Liam Riordan, University of Maine

“In Service to His Majesty: William Begg and Mount Desert Island, A New Voice Speaks”
Bill Horner, Mount Desert Island Historical Society
“Fontaine Leval: An Intended French Settlement on the Maine Coast”
Darcy Stevens, University of Maine
“Influential Women in Early 19th Century Mount Desert Island”
Brittany Goetting, University of Maine
“The Assault on Saint Sauveur, 1613: All Kinds of Mayhem”
Tim Garrity, Mount Desert Island Historical Society

Session 4: New Work from Independent Scholars (Abromson 217)
Chair/Comment: Erik Jensen, Salem State University

“Of Demons, Necromancers, and Alchemists: The Conceptualization of Gunpowder in Western Europe, ca. 1250-1500”
Robert Holmes
“Rights, Writs, and Remedies: English Constitutional History to Magna Carta”
Richard Gerber, Southern Connecticut State University (Emeritus)
“Object and Objectivity in the Archive: A Comparison of Historical Methodology in the Neoliberal University and the Antiquarian Trade”
Domenic Hutchins

10:00-10:30 BREAK FOR SOCIALIZING AND REFRESHMENTS: Abromson Community Center, 2nd Floor Mezzanine

Second Morning Sessions, 10:30-12:00

Session 5: The Civil War and its Legacies (Abromson 213)
Chair/Comment: Adam Tuchinsky, Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Southern Maine

“’We would most respectfully petition your excellency and honors’: The Shifting Meaning of Masculinity as Reflected in Pardon Petitions, Maine, 1845-1870”
Mazie Hough, University of Maine
“Abortion, Pornography, and the American Civil War”
Gavin Gilder, Portland High School and the University of Maine
“Erasing Alexander: Men of the Fifty-Fourth Massachusetts Infantry and Worcester’s Selective Civil War Memory”
Darren Barry, Montachusett Regional High School and Worcester State University
“’To Repose With Their Comrades’: African Americans, National Cemeteries, and the Post-Civil War South”
Ashley Towle, University of Southern Maine

Session 6: Pedagogy in the College History Classroom (Abromson 214)
Chair/Comment: Joe Schmidt, Social Studies Specialist, Maine Department of Education

“Transing U.S. History: Teaching Approaches and Materials for a More Trans-Inclusive U.S. History Classroom”
Rebecca White, University of Maine
“Community-Based Oral History with Undergraduates”
Ella Howard, Wentworth Institute of Technology
“Maine History as Civil War History: Engaging Students with Maine-Related Primary Sources from the Civil War Era”
Eben Miller, Southern Maine Community College

Session 7: Subaltern Anti-Imperialist Activists and Twentieth Century U.S. Foreign Policy (Abromson 215)
Chair/Comment: Tim Ruback, University of Southern Maine

“Transatlantic Subversive: Irish Nationalist and Feminist Hanna Sheehy Skeffington’s American Lecture Tours, 1917-1923”
Elizabeth McKillen, University of Maine
“A Fight for Justice: Dr. Khalil Totah, Palestinian Nationalist and Arab-American Activist, 1945-1950”
Amy M. Smith, University of Southern Maine
“Peace Combatant: Mrs. Ngô Bá Thành and the Quest for Vietnamese Independence and Women’s Liberation”
An T. Nguyen, University of Maine

Session 8: New England History (Abromson 216)
Chair/Comment: Elizabeth DeWolfe, University of New England

“The Rise of Third Parties: The Anti-Masons in Vermont”
Laura Ellyn Smith, University of Mississippi
“African Americans and Antislavery Politics in Maine”
Mary T. Freeman, University of Maine
“The Faintest Glimmer of Reasons: Children with Intellectual Disabilities in the Field Notes of Samuel Gridley Howe”
Naomi Schonfeld, Rivier University
“Favorite Recipes: Revisiting Maine Foodways of the Early Twentieth Century”
Rachel A. Snell, University of Maine

Session 9: Undergraduate Research Showcase (Abromson 217)
Chair/Comment: TBD

“Michael X. Mockus: Blasphemy and Incorporation in the Shadow of Gitlow v. New York”
Corey Martin, University of Maine Farmington*
“Myth, Metaphor, and Memorialization: A History of the Spanish Civil War through Pablo Picasso’s Guernica and Robert Capa’s Photography”
Emma Quinn, University of Southern Maine*
“Fascist Statues in the Rhode Island State House: Rhode Island’s World War II Memorial Statues”
Liam Quigley, Rhode Island College

12:15 – 1:35 pm – LUNCH AND BUSINESS MEETING: Abromson Community Center, 2nd Floor Mezzanine

Afternoon Sessions, 1:45-3:15

Session 10: Sex and the City (Abromson 213)
Chair: Elizabeth DeWolfe, University of New England
Comment: Cheryl Boots, Boston University College of General Studies

“A Prostitute’s Guide to Conception”
Jessica Olmeda, University of New England
“Mary S. Pepper-Vanderbilt: Spiritualism and Scandal”
Mary Holt, University of Maine
“Sex, Drugs, and Rock & Roll: A Guide to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury District, 1958-1969”
Mira D’Amato, University of New England

Session 11: Labor, Social Welfare, and Nongovernmental Organizations (Abromson 214)
Chair/Comment: Eileen Egan, University of Southern Maine (Emerita)

“Organic Intellectuals and the War of Position and War of Maneuver: Sarainne Loewe and Chicago Labor in the 1930s”
Nathan Godfried, University of Maine
“The New Old Deal: Colonial Social Welfare and Puerto Rican Poverty During the Great Depression, 1929-1941”
Darien Brahms, University of Maryland, College Park
“The Peace Corps and Nongovernmental Organizations Since the 1960s”
Thomas J. Carty, Springfield College

Session 12: New Perspectives on Jewish History (Abromson 215)
Chair/Comment: Amy E. Waterman, Maine State Museum

“Maine + Jewish: An Exhibition Story”
Amy E. Waterman, Friends of the Maine State Museum
“In the Land of Limitless Opportunities: Holocaust Survivors Meet the Jerusalem of the North”
Abraham Peck, University of Southern Maine
“German Jews in an Age of New Nationalism”
Robert Bernheim, University of Maine Augusta

Session 13: Maine Statehood and Bicentennial Commemoration: A Roundtable Discussion with the Audience (Abromson 217)

Discussion Leaders:
Liam Riordan, University of Maine
Jamie Kingman Rice, Maine Historical Society

This panel combines attention to original scholarship, public history and the need to collaborate effectively among educational, cultural, and state government institutions in order to most effectively engage the public in an assessment of the history of state formation and its legacies. Our hope is that the discussion will help the presenters and audience to explore opportunities and challenges of historical commemoration and to act more effectively to bridge the often-distant realms of the academy and public history.

Session 14: History, Communication, and Media Studies (Abromson 216)
Chair/Comment: Peter Holloran, Worcester State University

“A Chronology of Recovery: Representing Modern Mining Disasters in Northeastern Pennsylvania”
Philip Mosley, Penn State University (Emeritus)
“Bubbles and Resurrection: OETA, Public Television and the Rebroadcasting of The Lawrence Welk Show, 1986-2012”
Brian Peterson, Shasta College
“’Don’t Want the FCC Fiddlin’ with the Airwaves’: The Grand Ole Opry, WSM 650-AM, and the Fight to Preserve Clear Channel”
Katie Benoit, Clark University

*denotes undergraduate presenter