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2013 Conference Schedule

All events on Thursday occur at the Hampton Roads Convention Center in Hampton, VA
All events on Friday occur at the Norfolk State Student Center in Norfolk, VA

Thursday, September 26th Friday, September 27th
8:30 a.m. Bus transportation begins from parking areas and Norfolk State University to the Hampton Roads Convention Center in Hampton
9:00 a.m. Registration
9:45 a.m. Opening Session
  • Greetings and Welcome
    • Cassandra Newby-Alexander, Conference Chair and Director of the Joseph Jenkins Roberts Center for African Diaspora Studies, Norfolk State University
    • Luci Cochran, Executive Director, Hampton History Museum
  • The Honorable Mamie Locke, Honorary Co-Chair
  • The Honorable Algie T. Howell, Jr., Honorary Co-Chair
  • "Why do we Remember 1619?"
    Calvin Pearson, Founder Project 1619
  • "The First African Family: Birth of a Nation" by the William Tucker 1624 Society
    Brenda D. Tucker-Doswell and William T. Harper III
10:35 a.m. Morning Presentation (20 min)
  • Dr. Ben Vinson
    "The African Diaspora: Questions and Considerations drawn from an Afro-Latin American View"
11:00 a.m.
Panel A1: Dimensions of the African Diaspora (Ben Vinson and William Alexander, moderators)

William Alexander, Professor of History
"Patterns in the Francophone Black Atlantic"

Neal D. Polhemus, Ph.D. Student, University of South Carolina
"West Central Africans and African Ethnicity in the South Carolina Lowcountry"

Ywone Edwards-Ingram and James Ingram, Jr. The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
"The Significance of Agency and Agitation in the Spirituality of Early African America"		 Panel A2: Authorship and Understanding of Past (Jody Allen, moderator)

Judah-Micah Lamar, Old Dominion University
"(Re)Presenting Elleanor: The Dynamics of Race, Class, Power and Authorship in The Memoirs of Elleanor Eldridge"

Deborah Beckel, Lynchburg College
"The Devil Can Quote Scripture But Not Always Correctly": The Subtexts and Contexts of Edward A. Johnson's A School History of the Negro Race in America, from 1619 to 1890."
12:30 p.m. Lunch Break
1:30 p.m. Afternoon Presentation (20 min)
  • Dr. Linda Heywood
    "The Atlantic World and the African Diaspora"
2:00 p.m. Panel B1: Negotiating Leadership Through Diaspora Networks (Patrick Mbajekwe, moderator)

Joseph J. James, President, Agri-Tech Producers, LLC (ATP)
"Liberian Quilt Project"

Rosalie Kiah, Professor of English and Foreign Languages, Norfolk State University
"Joseph Jenkins Roberts: Son of Norfolk, Virginia"

Amelia Ross-Hammond, Professor of Music and Director of Service Learning, Norfolk State University
"Understanding Diaspora Network Connections"		 Panel B2: Representing Native Peoples (Drew Lopenzina, moderator)

Lynette Allston, Chief, Nottoway Indian Tribe of Virginia
"Native America on the Hit List: Traditions, Culture, and Identity"

Andrew Lopenzina, Assistant Professor of Early American Literature, Old Dominion University
"Red Ink: Native Americans Picking up the Pen in the Colonial Period"

Dr. Simon J. Ortiz, Regents Professor of English and American Indian Studies, Arizona State University
"The Future Is Not A Long Time Ago"		 Panel B3: 1619 in Literature and Popular Culture (Timothy Robinson, moderator)

William Hart, Assistant Professor, Norfolk State University
"The Ghost in the Machine: Africanist and Indigenous Presence in Popular Video Games Set in Colonial America."

Kelly Watson, Professor of History, Avilla University
"Cannibalism in Jamestown: Fascination, Fantasy, Fiction, and Fact."

Carole Watterson Troxler, Professor Emerita of History, Elon University
"Le Trans-Atlantic Nouvelle Danse américaine, a.k.a. 'The Cakewalk:' Observations on its History and Discourse"
3:15 p.m. Break
3:30 p.m. Panel C1: What It Means to Be American (Robert Watson, moderator)

Jason Hall, Undergraduate Student, Norfolk State University
"American Nativism: An Historical Comparison of Racism, Classism, and bias in Early Irish and Modern Hispanic Immigration"

Rachel Love Monroy, Ph.D. Candidate, University of South Carolina
"The Bennett Family: Puritan Faith, Commerce, and African Slavery in Early Virginia"

Gwendolyn Pharr, Assistant Professor, Norfolk State University
"Samuel Johnson: The Construction of Race and the Meaning of Freedom in Early Nineteenth Century Virginia"		 Panel C2: The 1619 Nexus: The Growing Influence of Natives and Africans on American Literature (Rebecca Hooker, moderator)

Rebecca Hooker, Assistant Professor of English, Virginia Wesleyan College
"David Cusick's Challenge to the Western Historical Timeline in "Sketches of Ancient History of the Six Nations'"

Page Laws, Norfolk State University
"Belle Sauvage Meets Sorcière Noire: Pocahontas Versus Tituba in the American Imagination."		 Panel C3: Haplotyping, Biodiseases, and Pandemics Since 1619 (Camellia Okpodu, moderator)

Dr. Malikah Abdullah,
"Emerging Diseases and 1619"

Joseph L. Graves Jr., Associate Dean for Research, Joint School of Nanoscience & Nanoengineering, NCATSU & UNC Greensboro
"It Started on Slave Ships...1619 and the Making of Racial Health Disparity"

Camellia Okpodu, Director, Intelligence Community Center for Academic Excellence and Director, Group for Microgravity and Environmental Biology, Norfolk State University
"Diabetes mellitus: Is it an epigenetic phenomenon that correlates with 1619 Foodways?"
5:00 p.m
Discussion on Race and Law with book signing following the discussion

"Deconstructing Race in the American Legal System; From 1619 to Trayvon Martin" (Eric Claville, moderator)
  • Henry L. Chambers, Jr., Professor of Law, University of Richmond School of Law
  • John Pierre, Vice Chancellor and Professor of Law, Southern University Law Center
  • Alex Johnson, James C. Slaughter Distinguished Professor of Law, Director, Center for the Study of Race and Law University of Virginia Law School
 Tour of Historic Sites in Hampton
Led by Calvin Pearson, the tour will begin at Hampton University Museum and then proceed to Emancipation Oak and Fort Monroe (Headquarters No. 1 and 1619 Landing site). The tour will conclude at the Hampton History Museum next to the historic cemeteries
6:30 p.m.

Reception at Hampton Roads Convention Center
7:00 p.m. Evening Presentation
Historical Portrayal: Anthony Johnson, a 17th century indentured African in Colonial Virginia
Jerome Bridges, Park Ranger, Colonial National Historical Park, Historic Jamestown

Main Speaker - Paul Finkelman
"From Freedom to Slavery: How British Colonists Remade the English Common Law to Create Slavery in Early America"
9:00 p.m. Return to hotel and parking areas



All events on Thursday occur at the Hampton Roads Convention Center in Hampton, VA
All events on Friday occur at the Norfolk State Student Center in Norfolk, VA

Thursday, September 26th Friday, September 27th
8:30 a.m. Bus transportation begins from hotels and parking areas to the Norfolk State Student Center in Norfolk
9:00 a.m. Registration
10:00 a.m. Opening
Greetings and Welcome
  • Dr. Cassandra Newby-Alexander, Conference Chair and Director of the Joseph Jenkins Roberts Center for African Diaspora Studies, Norfolk State University
  • Luci Cochran, Executive Director, Hampton History Museum
  • The Honorable Mamie Lock, Honorary Co-Chair
  • The Honorable Algie T. Howell, Jr., Honorary Co-Chair
10:30 a.m.

Morning Presentations:

  • James Sweet "The Twenty and NOT So Odd: Africans in the Atlantic World, 1441-1619"
  • John Thornton "The Twenty and Odd Negars"
11:00 a.m. Panel D1: From Slave to Contraband and Beyond (William Alexander, moderator)

J. Michael Cobb, Curator, Hampton History Museum
"Toward Freedom: 'God deliver me, let me be free'" (Frederick Douglass)

Emmanuel Dabney, Park Ranger, Petersburg National Battlefield
"Reflections on Interpreting Hidden Voices"

Robert Watson, Hampton University
"The Challenges of Documenting and Interpreting African Experiences in The Americas"		 Panel D2: Commemorating 1619 (Richard Bond, moderator)

Richard Bond, Associate Professor of History and Director of the General Studies Program, Virginia Wesleyan College
"The Politics of Commemoration"

Calvin Pearson, Founder Project 1619
"Commemorating 1619 through Project 1619"

Chadra Pittman-Walke, Founder & Director of The Sankofa Projects
"All Was Not Lost in the Belly of the Ship: Africanisms, Ancestor Reverence & the International Movement of Rememberance"		 Panel D3: Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow: Native Americans and the Mass Media (Cathy Jackson, moderator)

"Having Their Mass-Mediated Say: Native Americans and the Press"
Cathy Jackson, Associate Professor of Mass Communications and Journalism, Norfolk State University

"Beyond the Digital Divide: Native Americans and the Internet"
Wanda Brockington, Associate Professor of Mass Communications and Journalism, Norfolk State University

"The Role of Media in Overcoming Native American Stereotypes"
Vincent Schilling (Akwesasne Mohawk), award-Winning Native American journalist, book author and media corporation owner
12:15 p.m. Lunch Break
1:30 p.m. Afternoon Presentation (20 min.)
  • Michael Blakey
    "Are We So Different? Racial Ideology and the Political Economy of Health"
2:00 p.m. Panel E1: Slaveholding Institutions: Reconciling with the Past (James Sweet and Gwendolyn Pharr, moderators)

Jody Allen, Visiting Assistant Professor, College of William and Mary
"The Lemon Project: Virginia Institutions and Slavery"

Chris Bordelon, Ph.D. Candidate, Brandeis University
"Virginia and King James’s Tobacco Imposition of 1619"

Kay Wright Lewis, Independent Scholar
"'In the Hands of the Master': Ideas about the Possibility of a Race War and Black Extermination During the Virginia Debates"		 Panel E2: Historical Geography of the Past (E. Arnold Modlin, moderator)

Paul Emigholz, Hampton History Museum
"Mapping Historic Hampton"

Arnold Modlin, Instructor of Geography, Norfolk State University
"Touching the Historical Plantation"

Elsie Barnes, Professor of Political Science, Norfolk State University
"Alan Ehrenhalt's Demographic Inversion: African Americans and Shifting Migration and Settlement Patterns in Urban America."		 Panel E3: Native Americans at 1619 (Lynette Allston, moderator)

Buck Woodard, American Indian Initiative Colonial Williamsburg Foundation
"Nottoway Kinship, Marriage and Peoplehood in Southampton County, Virginia"

Arica L. Coleman, Assistant Professor, University of Delaware
"Black and Red Bodies on the Auction Block: The African American and Native American Slave Trade in Early Virginia"
3:15 p.m. Break
3:30 p.m. Panel F1: Race, Law, and Slavery in Early America (Paul Finkelman and John Pierre, moderators)

John Blanton, Doctoral Candidate, The Graduate Center, CUNY
"The Roots of Merchant Capital: The Law of Slavery and Subjecthood in Early English Colonization"

Thomas Brown, Virginia Wesleyan College
"Taken from a Negro": Extralegal Policing of Slaves and Property in the Eighteenth Century Low Country

Michael J Forte, Graduate student, Montclair State University
"The Ineffectiveness of the State and Federal Anti-slave Trade Laws in Rhode Island"		 Panel F2: Foodways and Emerging Diseases (Michael Blakey and Camellia Okpodu, moderators)

Keith Newby, Founder, President and Chief Cardiologist of Fort Norfolk Medical
"Cardiovascular Health Challenges and Race in the New Millennium"

Frederick Quarles, Founder, President and Dermatologist of Quarles Dermatology and former Chair of National Medical Association's Dermatology
"Internal and Skin Diseases in African Americans"

Myron Williams, Associate Professor of Chemistry, Clark Atlanta
"The Color Line and 21st Century Genomics a 1619 Connection"

Panel F3: Defining Freedom (William Wiggins and Andy Mink, moderators)
A SPECIAL PANEL FOR TEACHERS

Stephanie J. Richmond, Assistant Professor, Norfolk State University
"Ideology and Impressment: Virginia's Unfree Laborers during the American Revolution, 1776-1781"

Matthan C. Wilson, Social Studies Teacher, Woodside High School "Teaching Essential Knowledge of 1619: Supplementing the Text"

Andy Mink, Executive Director, LEARN NC, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
"Teaching 1619"
4:45 p.m. Reception at Student Center
5:30 p.m. Book signing
6:00 p.m. Educational Entertainment
  • Legacy of Weyanoke: A Cultural and Historic Journey
  • Historical Portrayal: Peter Churchwell, 23rd USCT
    Emmanuel Dabney, Park Ranger, Petersburg National Battlefield
7:00 p.m. Evening Presentation
  • "The First African Family: Birth of a Nation" by the William Tucker 1624 Society
    Brenda D. Tucker-Doswell and William T. Harper III
  • Main Speaker - Ervin Jordan
    "To Live in History: African-American Reflections on the Emancipation Proclamation, 1863-2013"