TOWSON UNIVERSITY

PRESENTS

The Inaugural Annual International Conference

The International Association for the Study of

Environment, Space, and Place

Symbolic Meanings of Spaces/Places

Program Schedule

April 29 – May 1, 2005

Friday, April 29 Burkshire Conference Center

Room: Riderwood

8:10 am – 7:00 pm Registration and Refreshments

8:40 – 9:00 Welcoming Remarks: Rita Duarte Marinho, Dean, College of Liberal Arts, Towson Univ.

Co-Organizers: John Murungi, Chair, Dept. of Philosophy, Towson University

Gary Backhaus, Morgan State University

Session One: Symbolic Places: Memory and Ethics

Moderator: Jane Wolfson, Towson University

9:00 – 9:35 Symbols of the State and Nation:

Jerusalem under Ottomans and Hashemites

Kimberly Katz, Towson University

9:35 – 10:10 Crossing the Verge

Dennis Wood, Edith Cowan University, Australia

10:10 – 10:45 Reflecting Absence: The Idealization of September 11^th

Ethan Kosmider, Stony Brook University

10:45 – 10:55 Refreshment Break

10:55 – 11:30 Transgressed Space or Ruptured Space

Steve Sandbank, Independent Scholar

Session Two: Unusual Symbolic Spaces/Places

Moderator: Derek Shanahan, Millersville University

11:30 – 12:05 The Philadelphia Flower Show and its Symbolizations

Gary Backhaus, Morgan State University

12:15 – 1:30 LUNCH: Nathan Ts Restaurant, Burkshire Center

1:45 – 2:20 The Avenue at Whitemarsh

John Srygley, Architect

2:20 – 2:55 Race, Space and Place in Suburban Durban:

An Ethnographic Assessment of Gated Community

Matthew Durrington, Towson University

2:55 – 3:30 At Home on the Carnival Midway: Domestic Yard

as Spectacle

Charlie Hailey, University of Florida

3:30 – 4:05 Witnessing Trillium ovatum in Oneâ’s All too Human Flesh

James Hatley, Salisbury University

Session Three: Urban and Natural Journeys in Place

Moderator: Steve Sandbank, Independent Scholar

4:15 – 4:50 The Forest as a Place of Work and Freedom – How its Meanings have been Constituted in Historical Narratives

Ingar Kaldal, The Norwegian University for Technology and Science

4:50 – 5:25 Wilderness as Axis Mundi: Spiritual Journeys of the Appalachian Trail

Kip Redick, Christopher Newport University

5:25 – 5:50 Creating an American Athens: Vachel Lindsay, the Movies, and Public Space

Peter Catapano: New York City College of Technology

5:50 – 6:25 Africa as the New Ithaca of Odysseus: Niko Kazantzakis’ Poetic Geography

Christos C. Evangeliou, Towson University

7:30 Dinner: Purim Oak, York Road. We have group reservations.

Saturday, April 30 Towson University

Linthicum Hall, Rm 200: A Sessions

Linthicum Hall, Rm 014: B Sessions

Session Four A: Symbols of the State and Nation

Rm. 200 Moderator: Joseph Tatarewicz, UMBC

9:00 – 9:35 Combination of Church and State

Eric Thomas Weber, SIU at Carbondale

9:35 – 10:10 Symbols of Acquisition in Map Cartouches

Chris Petto, Southern Connecticut State University

10:10 – 10:45 Reading Space: The Symbolism of Newspapers

Troy Paddock, Southern Connecticut State University

10:45 – 10:55 Refreshment Break

Session Four B: Knowledge in Literary Symbolic Space/Place

Rm. 014 Moderator: Richard Wilson, Towson University

9:00 – 9:35 “I am Heathcliff”: On the Intertwining of Landscape, Language, and Desire

Geraldine Finn, Carleton University

9:35 – 10:10 Desert Islands and the Human Estate: Robinson, Friday, and Place as Existential Metaphor

Dennis Skocz, Independent Scholar

10:10 – 10:45

Session Five A: Techne and Place/Space Symbolism

Rm. 200 Moderator: Susan Allen, California Institute for the Arts

10:55 – 11:30 The Road to Indian Wells: Symbolic Landscapes in the California Desert

Alex Zukas, National University

11:30 – 12:05 The Scientific Language and the Significance of Place and Space

Charles Tucker, Cleveland Institute of Art

12:05 – 12:40 Gardening at a Japanese Garden

John Murungi, Towson University

12:40 – 2:15 Lunch: Newell Hall, Towson University

Session Five B: Mediating Symbolic Space

Rm. 014 Moderator: Linda Ardito, Dowling College

10:55 – 11:30 Environments of Intimacy: Symbols of Dwelling in the Culture of Hypermedia

Nicholas Chase, California Institute of the Arts Center for Integrated Media

11:30 – 12:05 Artistic Production as Place-Making Imagination

Bruce B. Janz, University of Central Florida

12:05 – 12:40 Space and Media

Alberto Carillo, Universidad Autónoma de Pueblo, Mexico

12:40 – 2:15 Lunch: Newell Hall, Towson University

Session Six A: Traditions of Symbolic Space/Place

Rm. 200 Moderator: Troy Paddock, Southern Connecticut State University

2:20 – 2:55 The Kongo Cosmogram and the Meaning of Life

Zekeh Gbotokuma, Morgan State University

2:55 – 3:30 Great Zimbabwe: The Significance of Landscape in Cultural Perspective

Lorna Lueker Zukas, National University

3:30 – 4:05 Ho’okuikahi ai’ole Ho’oponono_(“unite or make right”: Reconciliation and Pu’u Kohola_heiau_

Doug Herman, Towson University

4:05 – 4:15 Refreshment Break

Session Six B: Therapeutic Symbolism

Rm. 014 Moderator: Jennifer Ballengee, Towson University

2:20 – 2:55 The Archiecture of Idiocy: From the Asylum to the Public School

David Roof, University of Illinois, Urbana/Champaign

2:55 – 3:30 Unfolding the Blanket of Understanding in the Listening Space

Mary T. Packard, Villa Julie College

3:30 – 4:05 Companion Animals as Teachers and Healers

Debra Goulden, Villa Julie College

4:05 – 4:15 Refreshment Break

Session Seven A: Urban Symbols of Space

Rm. 200 Moderator: Alex Zukas, National University

4:15 – 4:50 Symbolic Skies: On Earth as it is in Heaven

Susan Allen, California Institute for the Arts

4:50 – 5:25 Urban Public Parks: Class Division Reconciled and Represented in Frederick Law Olmstead’s Central Park and Elizabeth Gaskill’s Mary Barton

Heather Krebs, University of Nevada

5:25 – 5:50 Bridging Urban Boundaries: From Segregation to Symbiosis

Azucena Cruz, Stony Brook University

5:50 – 6:25 Chuang Tzu and Thoreau: Rethinking the Question of Human Flourishing from the Particular Places of Phusis

Shane Stroup, SIU at Carbondale

Session Seven B: Imagining Symbolic Landscapes

Rm. 014 Moderator: Doug Herman, Towson University

4:15 – 4:50 A Culture of Trees: Scenes of Pruning and Felling in the Late Eighteenth-Century French Imaginary

Giulia Pacini, College of William and Mary

4:50 – 5:25 Realism, Idealization and Allegory in Landscapes in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Graphic Art

Anat Gilboa, Queens University, Canada

5:25 – 5:50 Symbolizing the Midwest: The Horizon in the Photographs of Art Sinsabaugh

Nanette Esseck Brewer, Indiana University Art Museum

5:50 – 6:25 On the Spatiality of Rhetorics and Narrativity

Arndt Niebisch, Johns Hopkins University

6:30 – 7:30 IAESP BUSINESS MEETING

Rm. 200

Sunday, May 1 Towson University, Linthicum Hall Rm 200

Session Eight A: Symbolizing Enculturations of Political Tensions

Moderator: Gary Backhaus, Morgan State University

9:00 – 9:35 The Culture of Tension and Renewal

Eliot Tretter, Johns Hopkins University

9:35 – 10:10 Subcomandante Marcos, Militant Particularism, and the Symbolics of ‘Spatial Delerium’: Where David Harvey’s Critical Materialist Geography Falters

Herbert Reid, University of Kentucky

10:10 – 10:45 Googling for Moonscapes: Deathlessness and Lifelessness in the Space/Time of Corporate Globalization

Betsy Taylor, University of Kentucky

10:45 – 10:55 Refreshment Break

Session Nine A: Symbolic Architecture

Moderator: Peter Nekola, New School of Social Research

10:55 – 11:30 Not Symbols, But Things In Themselves

Bob Mugerauer, University of Washington

11:30 – 12:05 Not Being at Home: Shopping Malls, Being and Time

Kascha Semon, Stony Brook University

12:05 – 12:40 Wittgenstein, Architecture, and Philosophy

Roger Paden, George Mason University

12:40 – 1:15 The Mediate Space of the Delhi Zoo: Nation-Building and Animals

Deepti Sastry, Birbeck College, India

1:15 – 2:15 Lunch: Newell Hall, Towson University

Session Ten A: Spaces of Religious Symbolism

Moderator: Michael Wenisch, Morgan State University

2:20 – 2:55 Worm Symbolism in Dante’s Inferno

Linda Ardito, Dowling College

2:55 – 3:30 On the Symbolism of a Landscape of Closed Churches

Peter Nekola, New School for Social Research

3:30 – 4:05 Spatial Mariology: Symbolic Readings of Space in the Popular Cults of the Virgin (northeastern Spain, 1950-2000)

Anna Serra Salvi, University of Gerona, Spain

________________________________________________________________

NEXT YEAR’S CONFERENCE THEME:

GLOBALIZATION: RECONFIGURINGS OF WORLD SPACE

The call for papers will be posted on the website: http://wwwnew.towson.edu/iasesp

We shall include suggested/possible sub-topics.

WE LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU AT NEXT YEAR’S CONFERENCE!