Intersecting Histories: Transforming Identities, Places, and Beliefs

CGU’s History Department & Graduate Student History Association

Call for Papers A 250 word abstract must be received by February 13, 2009 via email gsha@cgu.edu.

The eminent historian, Lawrence Levine, wrote:

Culture is not a fixed condition but a process: the product of interaction between past and present. Its toughness and resiliency are determined not by a culture’s ability to withstand change, which indeed may be a sign of stagnation not life, but by its ability to react creatively and responsively to the realities of a new situation. The question…is not one of survivals but of transformations.

This conference seeks to explore the broad spectrum of meeting points, crossings, (or “the event” as intersection), and transformations that may have occurred throughout history. What happens when paths cross? How are people, places and beliefs transformed? What are the contingencies or constrictions for this process? How does consideration of various power relations throw light upon this focal point?

We are seeking papers that spur an innovative discussion to our query and explore diverse interpretations. The intent of the conference is to provide a forum for graduate students in all disciplines to present research that is historically grounded yet creatively investigates these points of intersection—the nodes which connect and shape peoples, places or beliefs.

We conceive of identities broadly, which would include notions of gender, race, class, and nation, but many more as well. We think of places as the loci of one’s surroundings—from the very local to the global. A place could include a building or river (built or natural environments), a neighborhood or nation (real or imagined). A place might also include the internal spaces/places of the individual or group—their physical bodies and their mental and emotional universes. These elements surely lead to discussions of beliefs, which include religions and other systems of spiritual beliefs, as well as various mentalities and issues pertaining to social consciousness.

Papers may discuss one or more of these issues, and they may even demonstrate cultural continuities and strategies of adaptation or retrenchment. They may also discuss the intersection of disciplines and methodologies and are encouraged to utilize diverse approaches.

Program

Friday, April 24

8:00 – 9:00 a.m.

Registration
Location: Albrecht Auditorium, Stauffer Hall

9:00 – 9:15 a.m.

Welcome and Introduction to “Intersecting Histories: Transforming Identities, Places, and Beliefs”
by Janet Farrell Brodie, History Department Chair, Claremont Graduate University
Location: Albrecht Auditorium, Stauffer Hall

Friday Morning Session A (9:30 – 10:50 a.m.)

Panel 1: Taking it to the Streets: The Intersection of Public Space and Identity in Urban America
Chair: Hal S. Barron, Harvey Mudd College
Location: Albrecht Auditorium, Stauffer Hall

“’Both Books and Needles Thrown Aside’: The Feminine Social Environments of Colonial Charleston and Philadelphia” by Anne Longanbach, UC Riverside
annemlindsay@msn.com

“’The Day We Celebrate’: St. Patrick’s Day Parades in American Political Cartoons, 1880-1895” by Kathleen McGuire, UC Riverside
kmcgu001@student.ucr.edu

“Black Flight” by Vanessa Stout, UC Riverside
vstou001@student.ucr.edu

Panel 2: The Intersections of Christianity and Folk Culture
Chair: Anselm Min, Claremont Graduate University
Location: McManus Conference Room, McManus Hall

“Cyclical Negotiations of Hegemony and Counterhegemony: Religious Change in Indigenous Communities of Guatemala” by Kelly Anne Butler, University of Saskatchewan
kelly.butler@usask.ca

“Diaspora, Korean Christianity, and Tradition: Changing Attitudes toward Ethnic Difference among Christian Korean-Americans,” by Hyun Kyong Chang, UCLA
hc234ucla@gmail.com

Panel 3: Forging a Latin American Identity
Chair: Suyapa Gricelda Portillo, Pomona College
Location: Trustees’ Conference Room, Harper Hall

“Obscuring Race through Nationalism in Nineteenth-Century Spanish America” by David Ruiz, San Diego State University
ruizdavid@gmail.com

“Cantinflas, Cinema and Mexican National Consciousness” by Nancy Quinones, Claremont Graduate University
nancy.quinones@cgu.edu

“Diffusion of Cuban Revolutionary Idealism” by Alfredo Carlos, UC Irvine
alfredoc@uci.edu

Friday Morning Session B (11:00 a.m. – 12:20 p.m.)

Panel 1: Folk, Neo-Folk and the United States
Chair: Michael Steiner, CSU Fullerton
Location: Albrecht Auditorium, Stauffer Hall

“The American Culture of Interaction: One Nation, Under God” by Dennis Beesley, San Diego State University
dbeesley@rohan.sdsu.edu

“American Folk, Sense of Place and the Land” by Matt Nelson, CSU Fullerton
DOKKEN5@aol.com

“Neo Folk: A Return to Obscurity” by Michael Contreras, Claremont Graduate University
michael.contreras@cgu.edu

Panel 2: Cityscapes, Identities, and Images
Chair: Jim Gatewood, Antioch University
Location: Trustees’ Conference Room, Harper Hall

“Commemorating Local History and Celebrating Community Values: An Examination into the Rhetoric of the ‘Utility Box Gallery’ on El Cajon Boulevard,” by Christy L. Ball, San Diego State University
christylucilleball@gmail.com

“Does the Machine Make the Man? Dada Construction of Identity within the Urban Landscape” by Melinda Brocka, UC Riverside
melinda.brocka@email.ucr.edu

“Urban Rust: Image, Identity, and the Rise and Fall of an Industrial Midwest Metropolis” by Matthew Glassman, CSU Fullerton
bradley4toz@gmail.com

Panel 3: Memory, Reparations, and Resistance
Chair: Bradley Hale, Azusa Pacific University
Location: McManus Conference Room, McManus Hall

“Apology and Reparation in the Construction of Identity for the Modern Herero of Namibia” by Gerarda Costello, Claremont Graduate University
gerarda.costello@cgu.edu

“Remembering Hell: Memory and Totalitarianism in the Soviet Union” by Steven Wilson, University of San Diego
steven_wilson-10@sandiego.edu

“The Stalinallee: Site of the East German Construction of Socialism, an Uprising, and Cold War Psychological Warfare” by William Q.C. Chun, III, Sonoma State University
chunw3@gmail.com

Lunch provided for participants (12:30 – 1:20 p.m.)
Location: Harper Courtyard

Friday Afternoon Session A (1:30 – 2:50 p.m.)

Panel 1: Indians in the White Imagination
Chair: Joshua Paddison, Loyola Marymount University
Location: Albrecht Auditorium, Stauffer Hall

“Catlin/Curtis/Disney: Images of the ‘Historical Indian’” by Holly A. Hansen, CSU Northridge
holly.hansen@csun.edu

“The Problem of Stature on the Antebellum Frontier” by Sarah Keyes, University of Southern California
skeyes@usc.edu

“The Colonial American Landscape as Human Body: English Personifications of New World Geography” by Jason Sellers, UC Irvine
jsellers@uci.edu

Panel 2: Chinese Identities in the 20th and 21st Centuries
Chair: Angelina Chin, Pomona College
Location: Trustees’ Conference Room, Harper Hall

“Unforgettable Ghosts: Colonialism and Early Chinese Film” by Laurence Bush, CSU Long Beach
laurence.bush@gmail.com

“East Meets West at Tiananmen Square: Does Lin Zhaohua’s Post-Tiananmen HAMLET Catch the Conscience of Beijing?” by Yvonne Flack, Claremont Graduate University
yvonne.flack@cgu.edu

“Sharing Victory: Local Guerrillas and Mainland Regulars in the Chinese Communist Campaign to Take Hainan Island,” by Jeremy Murray, UC San Diego
jmurray@ucsd.edu

Panel 3: New World Identities
Chair: Miguel R. Tinker Salas, Pomona College
Location: McManus Conference Room, McManus Hall

“A Tale of Two Juans: The Emergence of Our Lady of Guadalupe as a National Symbol in Mexico” by Elisa Pulido, Claremont Graduate University
elisa.pulido@cgu.edu

“A Historiography of Foundational P’urépecha (Tarascan) History and Culture” by Daniel A. Vidrio, CSU Fullerton
danielvidrio@yahoo.com

Friday Afternoon Session B (3:00 – 4:20 p.m.)

Panel 1: Ports of Encounter
Chair: Jessica R. Stern, CSU Fullerton
Location: Albrecht Auditorium, Stauffer Hall

“Imperial and Colonial Intersections: The Dual Diplomatic Struggle for Fort King George,” by Alejandra Dubcovsky, UC Berkeley
adubcovsky@gmail.com

“St. Mary’s Street, Portsmouth: Its Effects on Education, Literature, Charity, World Peace, … and Old Shoes,” by John R. Harris, Claremont Graduate University
john.harris@cgu.edu

“The ‘Great Commercial Emporium’: The Production of Urban Landscapes and Social Hierarchies in San Francisco’s Commercial Spaces, 1869-1915” by Laura Ferguson, University of Michigan
leferg@umich.edu

Panel 2: From the Glamorous to the Unglamorous: Representations of Public Women
Chair: Rebecca Dolhinow, CSU Fullerton
Location: Trustees’ Conference Room, Harper Hall

“When Being Yourself Just Isn’t Enough: The Rhetorical Failings of Marie Antoinette and Imelda Marcos” by Erica Davis, CSU San Marcos
edavis@csusm.edu

“First Day on the Job: Leslie McKellar and the Penthouse’s Change of Fortune” by Mary Shearman, Simon Fraser University
mshearma@sfu.ca

Panel 3: Hybridity and Assimilation in the Ancient World
Chair: Shane Bjornlie, Claremont McKenna College
Location: McManus Conference Room, McManus Hall

“Evolution of an Indigenous Sangha during the Southern and Northern Dynasties in China” by Jue Wei Shi, University of the West
juewei@uwest.edu

“Crossing the Line: Restructuring Identity in the Late Roman Empire” by Ryan Abrecht, UC Santa Barbara
ryanabrecht@umail.ucsb.edu

“Religious Borderlands: Christianity and Paganism in Celtic Britain,” by Christine A. Parker, Sonoma State University
parkechr@sonoma.edu

Informal Reception (4:30 – 5:00 p.m.)
Location: DesCombes Quad

Keynote Speaker (5:00 – 5:45 p.m.)
Location: Albrecht Auditorium
Professor David Lloyd, University of Southern California
“Feargus O’Connor’s Chartist Land Plan: The End of the Irish Clachan?”

Description: This paper considers the space of the clachan, the communal form of landholding customary in rural Ireland, and its destruction across the period of the Famine of 1845-51. It argues that its destruction amounted to the eradication of ways of living that were understood to be deeply antithetical to a still emerging industrial capitalism in Britain. Its destruction in the Famine years was counterpointed by O’Connor’s Land Plan which sought to offer an alternative to capitalist wage labor for the English working classes and drew its forms from his experience with Irish agriculture: spade husbandry, the emphasis on the potato as a principal crop, the reduction of labor time, and the very small farm with clay houses. Though the Chartist Land Plan was systematically undermined by state actions, it represented a brief utopian projection of the dying clachan under conditions of abundance rather than scarcity. The disastrous and unanticipated failure of the potato crop may have been its death knell, but the memory of this afterlife of the clachan in other places reminds us that history is open-ended and that utopian possibility is projected from the damaged conditions of the present, not in the perfection of the promised land.

Reception (6:00 – 7:00 p.m.)
Location: DesCombes Quad
Hors d’oeuvres, and cocktails provided
Live music by David Scott Stone

Saturday, April 25

8:15 – 8:50 a.m.

Registration
Location: Atkins Lobby, Harper Hall

Saturday Morning Session A (9:00 – 10:50 a.m.)

Panel 1: Transforming the Mexican American Ethos
Chair: Denise Sandoval, CSU Northridge
Location: Trustees’ Conference Room, Harper Hall

“In the Shadow of a Spanish Mission: Mexicans and the Spanish Fantasy Heritage” by John Macias, Claremont Graduate University
john.macias@cgu.edu

“Good-Bye Revolution—Hello Slum: Quinto Sol Publications and the Forging of a Chicano Movement Cultural Ethos” by Dennis López, UC Irvine
dlopez1@uci.edu

Panel 2: Love, Marriage, and Feminism
Chair: Beverly Wilson Palmer, Pomona College
Location: McManus Conference Room, McManus Hall

“Character Incarnates and Love Triangles in Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights,” by Jasmine Saeidi, Cal Poly, Pomona
jasminem@csupomona.edu

“Reassessing the Divergence of ‘books and stockings’” by Melinda Truelson, Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo
mtruelse@calpoly.edu

“A Star is Born as a Marriage Died” by Rosanne Welch, Claremont Graduate University
rosanne@welchwrite.com

Panel 3: Democracy and American Exceptionalism
Chair: Robert Dawidoff, Claremont Graduate University
Location: Humanities Resource Center

“John Dickinson on Unity” by Guy Burnett, Claremont Graduate University
guyfburnett@gmail.com

“The Tractatus Theologico-Politicus and the Received View of Spinoza on Democracy” by Wouter F. Kalf, University of Leiden, Netherlands and UC Irvine
wkalf@uci.edu

“The Apostate in American Culture: T.S. Eliot’s Quiet Revolt against Exceptionalism” by Bryan Price, Claremont Graduate University
bryan.price@cgu.edu

Saturday Morning Session B (10:30 – 11:50 a.m.)

Panel 1: Space and Place: Battlefields in American Memory
Chair: Stuart McConnell, Pitzer College
Location: Trustees’ Conference Room, Harper Hall

“Convergence Points: Mountain Carvings and Memorial Politics” by Brooke Neely, UC Santa Barbara
neelybe@umail.ucsb.edu

“Race, Space, and National Memory: Reexamining a Racialized American Past through Civil War and Native American Battlefields,” Susan C. Hall, UC Riverside
shall004@student.ucr.edu

“Rednecks on Parade? Civil War Reenactment and the Confederacy” by Christopher Bates, UCLA
cbates@media.ucla.edu

Panel 2: Education and the Imaginary Nation
Chair: Laurie Richlin, Charles Drew University of Medicine and Science
Location: McManus Conference Room, McManus Hall

“The French School System as a Site of Linguistic Integration” by Elyse Ritchey, CSU Los Angeles
elyseritchey@gmail.com

“Evidence of Transformation of the Identity of Childhood Tracked in Juvenile Periodicals Published in Times of National Tragedy” by Katia Ravins, CSU San Diego
katiagrazh@yahoo.com

Lunch provided for participants (12:00 – 1:20 p.m.)
Location: Harper Courtyard
Keynote Speaker: Professor Tomás Summers Sandoval, Pomona College
“I have seen my ‘temple’ beginning to crumble”: Race, Power, & Education Equity in the Salinas Valley

Description: Professor Summers Sandoval will tell the story behind Diana v. State Board of Education, a California court case which disrupted the practice of administering English-exclusive, placement-IQ tests to Spanish-speaking students. Detailing the broader context of race and power in the Salinas Valley, where the case originated, he hopes to challenge us to think critically about the role of the historian in creating a more just world.

Saturday Afternoon Session A (1:30 – 2:50 p.m.)

Panel 1: Witches and Tricksters
Chair: Ali Mossaver-Rahmani, Chaffey College

Location: McManus Conference Room, McManus Hall

“From Oral Tradition to Literary Word: The Trickster as Cross-Cultural Agent in Early 20th Century Literature, with Focus on the Writings of Mourning Dove and Zitkala Sa” by Julie Ann Hicks, CSU San Francisco
jahmsp@aol.com

“Discrepancies and Contradictions: Faulkner’s ‘Mule in the Yard’ and the Economics of Revision” by Dan Pecchenino, UC Santa Barbara
danpecchenino@umail.ucsb.edu

“The Wicked Witch is Dead: The Transformation of the Witch in Children’s and Young Adult Novels,” by Marie Soriano, CSU San Diego
marietutors@yahoo.com

Panel 2: Early Modern Studies
Chair: Lori Anne Ferrell, Claremont Graduate University
Location: Trustees’ Conference Room, Harper Hall

“‘By harmonical proportion maintained’: Jean Bodin, Absolute Sovereignty, and the Problem of Religion” by Davina Padgett, Claremont Graduate University
davina.padgett@cgu.edu

“‘Honest Plainesse’: Popularity, Patronage, and the Readers of George Wither’s A Collection of Emblemes” by Seth Anderson, Claremont Graduate University
seth.anderson@cgu.edu

“Regicide, Revenge, and Sir Ralph Clare’s League of Imaginary Monarchs” by Marcella Stockstill, Claremont Graduate University
marcella.stockstill@cgu.edu

Panel 3: Claremont Freudian Group “History as the Individual’s History of Signifiers”
Chair: Charles Merward, Claremont Graduate University,
Location: Humanities Resource Center

“Reflections on Freud’s Critique of Religion” by James Bartels, Claremont Graduate University

“Politics of Organ Shortage Discourse” by Aya Nakagoshi, Claremont Graduate University

“Big Window=Big Other: Surplus Enjoyment in Alfred Hitchcock’s Rope” by Thomas Connelly, Claremont Graduate University

Saturday Afternoon Session B (3:00 – 4:20 p.m.)

Panel 1: Religious and Racial Agency in Antebellum America
Chair: Linda Perkins, Claremont Graduate University
Location: McManus Conference Room, McManus Hall

“Was Not Christ Crucified? The Religious Implications of Nat Turner’s Rebellion” by Jesse Davis, CSU San Francisco
jesdavis@sfsu.edu

“Christian and Consumer: The Christian Union Newspaper, Henry Ward Beecher and the Development of Christian Consumer Culture” by Link Clark, Graduate Theological Union
lclark@ses.gtu.edu

“Doubly Disaffected: Evangelicals and the Invention of Media” by John MacWillie UC Berkeley
jmacwillie@cal.berkeley.edu

Panel 2: Interwar Struggles: Immigration, Foreign Policy, and the Great Depression
Chair: John A. Moore, California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
Location: Trustees’ Conference Room, Harper Hall

“Arab American Political Activism in the 1940s” by Colin Rutherford, CSU Long Beach
rutherford.c@gmail.com

“The Evian Conference: Causes for Lack of Coverage by the Anglo and American Press” by Jeremy Wolf, UC Riverside
jeremywolf@mac.com

“A New Deal for the Land of Plenty: The Plow that Broke the Plains by Pare Lorentz” by Kaycee Olson, UC Riverside
kolse002@ucr.edu