COMMUNITIES – Saturday, Sept. 23

by Annette Daniels Taylor – In 1818, Rose Butler was the last person hung for arson in New York State. She was nineteen years old. She was born and died a slave.

by Terry Jones – Editing to the soundscape of shaking Iroquois white corn and tapping, Seneca filmmaker Terry Jones uses personal and historical still images to link his family and the American Indian Boarding School experience.

Director/Writer/Actor Edreys Wajed – Life from the perspective of a sidewalk.

by Annette Daniels Taylor – They say you want to work uptown.

by Kaitlyn Lowe – A love letter in the form of a visual poem dedicated to the radical artists from the Harlem Renaissance.

by Lukia Costello & Tilke Hill – A brief history of women’s self-defense based on the work of Wendy Rouse. Narrated by Wendy Rouse, Associate Professor of History, San Jose State University.

Elizabeth Mazzolini is Associate Professor of English at the University at Buffalo. She previously served as Director of the Academic and Professional Writing Program at UB. Her recently published work is about climate change and storytelling (in the Cambridge Companion to Literature and Climate), and drug addiction and geographical spaces (in the minnesota review). She is currently researching and writing about toxicity in American life in the late 1970s, with an article forthcoming about the tobacco industry and English departments (in College Composition and Communication). She is the author of The Everest Effect: Nature, Culture, Ideology (U of Alabama Press, 2015) and co-editor of Histories of the Dustheap: Waste, Material Cultures, Social Justice (MIT Press, 2012).

Kathleen Contrino’s research interests center around criminal theory, legal processes, sociology of law and drug courts. Contrino’s publications include a book entitled Judicial Orientation: The Black Box of Drug Court as well as articles related to drug court and domestic violence.

Jesse Miller is Site Director for the Bard Prison Initiative program at Albion Correctional Facility. He received is PhD from the University at Buffalo Department of English

Christina Corfield Christina is a British-born multi-disciplinary artist and media schola. Her work focuses on media history and the relationships between analog and digital media. She has had solo shows at Johansson Projects in Oakland, CA and the Western New York Book Arts Center and has been part of group shows at the Bluecoat, Liverpool UK, MOCA North Miami, the Exploratorium in San Francisco and Telematic Gallery also in San Francisco, among others. She has also taken part in several residencies, including at the Kala Institute, Berkeley, CA, and Western New York Book Arts Center in Buffalo. Her writing has been published online and in scholarly journals including articles about her creative practice and research in Media Fields Journal, the Journal of Early Visual Media, Media, Culture and Society, and a book chapter on peep boxes in Provenance and Early Cinema published by University of Indiana Press

Dr. Chirantana Mathkari is a veterinarian-turned-anthrozoologist, whose academic interests lie in examining human-animal interactions through the interdisciplinary lens of One Wellbeing. Dr. Mathkari graduated as a veterinarian in India, earned her Master’s in clinical animal behavior from the University of Lincoln, UK and her Ph.D. in animal wellbeing from the University of Maryland, College Park. Throughout her career, she has worked with an array of animals including red footed tortoises, white tigers, Asian elephants, dogs, cats, guinea pigs, Japanese quail, cows, sheep, pigs and humans! Human’s treatment of an animal impacts not only the human’s wellbeing, but also that of the animal and the environment. Dr. Mathkari studies the human, animal and environmental aspects of conventional and non-conventional human-animal interactions. She utilizes behavioral, physiological, psychological, sociological, and pedagogical measures to analyze, evaluate and re-evaluate wellbeing scientifically. An ecofeminist at heart, Dr. Mathkari enjoys penning animal-centric short fiction and cooking healthy food for the homeless.

Jay is a father, conservation and community activist, writer, photographer, media producer, and organizer. He is the executive director of the Pollinator Conservation Association; Founder and International Chair of Birds on the Niagara which promotes conservation, birds, and social inclusion; Advocacy Chair of Western New York Environmental Alliance; Co-founder Buffalo Our Outer Harbor Coalition; Founder and Chair Friends of Times Beach Nature Preserve; and Co-founder WNY Native Plants Collaborative. He is a long time activist promoting public access to places like Buffalo’s Outer Harbor. He is the founder of Greenwatch, the Learning Sustainability Campaign and recipient of awards including the Sierra Club Conservationist of the Year (2014). He has worked in government, the private sector and the not-for-profit sector.

Bio forthcoming.

Dr. Ruth Goldman (all pronouns) is an Associate Professor of Communication and the interim coordinator for the new Center for Social Justice at Buffalo State. Ruth is an award-winning, internationally exhibited filmmaker, educator, community activist, film programmer, and media scholar and combines these passions whenever possible. Dr. Goldman’s scholarly and artistic interests include humanitarian storytelling, social justice, media activism, and community media. They co-founded and co-curates Buffalo State’s award-winning film screening and discussion series, Beyond Boundaries, currently in its 10th season. Ruth is on the steering committee for Birds on the Niagara, a binational winter birding festival promoting the intersections between birds, conservation, and social justice. Dr. Goldman is also an active member of the Feminist Bird Club. In their spare time Ruth enjoys hiking with their dog and photographing birds.

John Torrey is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and a contributing professor in the Africana Studies unit at SUNY Buffalo State. He holds a BA in Philosophy from Morehouse College and a Ph. D in Philosophy from the University of Memphis. His research is primarily on reparations for Black people in America. He’s a member of Buffalo’s Board of Ethics and a member of the New York State Commission on African-American History.

Margaret is a watershed planner and writer on issues and wonders related to water in its natural habitat. She was a founding member of the Friends of the Buffalo River, now Buffalo Niagara Waterkeeper, and served from 1996 to 2003 as Executive Director of Great Lakes United, a bi-national coalition dedicated to conserving the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River ecosystem. She has worked with local governments on stream and groundwater protection and is currently involved in a new bi-national NGO start-up: the Great Lakes Ecoregion Network.

Margaret is the author of two books: Living Waters: Reading the Rivers of the Lower Great Lakes, and Meander: Making Room for Rivers both published by SUNY Press.  

Rinaldo Walcott is Professor and Chair in the Department of Africana and American Studies at the University of Buffalo; there he is also the Carl V. Granger Chair in Africana and American Studies. Rinaldo’s research focuses on the cultural expression of Black life with an interest in the transnational, diasporic and the national crosscurrents of Black creativities. Rinaldo is the author of numerous single authored, co-authored, and co-edited books. His more recent work is The Long Emancipation: Moving Toward Black Freedom (Duke, 2021) and On Property: Policing, Prisons, and the Call for Abolition (Biblioasis, 2021) which was short-listed for the Toronto Book Award in 2021. Currently Rinaldo is working on two monographs, one on freedom and the sea, and another on Black queer expressive culture. A third work seeks to grapple with the possibilities of achieving utopia from the grips of the catastrophe that threatens to consume all of planetary life. Rinaldo was born in Barbados. He divides his time between the city of Buffalo and the city of Toronto

Roy W. Bakos earned his BA and MA in English from Buffalo State. He teaches and tries to practice hospitality every day. Roy likes to wander and experience bits of culture and living in a place with all four seasons is wonderful. He is a proud working-class Buffalonian who believes that service to our fellow humans is the pinnacle of existence. Cats, golf, skiing, hockey, seeing the world, sailing, cooking, eating, reading, experiencing sunsets, conversation, faith, playing music, hearing music, comedy, movies, walking around, bowling, talking with friends, talking with strangers, making new friends, the process, the theatre, looking up, and finding wonder are all really excellent. He is humbled and grateful to be here today.

Camilo Trumper is the author of Ephemeral Histories: Public Art, Politics and the Struggle for the Street in Chile (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 2016; a cultural history of political change in late twentieth-century Chile. His second project builds on research conducted with support from the National Endowment for the Humanities. It takes up one of Ephemeral Histories most compelling subplots regarding urban politics in democracy and dictatorship, but pivots to explore childhood, schooling, and activism in Pinochet’s Chile. 

Joe Baiz-Elm (he/they) is a PhD Student in Linguistics at the University at Buffalo, with an interest in the relationship between language, consciousness, and embodied experience. They are an enrolled citizen of the Comanche Nation, and a Haudenosaunee and Otoe-Missouria descendant. They enjoy reading and writing poetry, cooking, and wondering whether plants are self-aware.

Dr. Montgomery Hill is a recent alumnus of the Linguistics Department of SUNY University at Buffalo, receiving a PhD in linguistics for his dissertation, Tuscarora Morphology & Language Revitalization in 2020. He is active in all forms of cultural and linguistic revitalization across the Haudenosaunee (Six Nations, Iroquois) Confederacy. He is interested in all forms of indigenous knowledge and indigenous knowledge creation, as well as the enactment of the knowledge in the forms of the revitalization of traditional governance structures (including such things as tribal wellness courts, traditional counseling, and so on).

Karin Michelson is Professor Emerita of Linguistics at the University at Buffalo. She received her B.A. in Linguistics from McGill University (1975) and Ph.D. from Harvard University (1983). Her research has focused on the languages of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy (Iroquoian languages). She has co-authored a dictionary of Oneida (with the late Mercy Doxtator) and a volume of Oneida texts (with Norma Kennedy and Mercy Doxtator). She received the Exceptional Scholars Award for Sustained Achievement from the University at Buffalo in 2017, and in 2018 an official Recognition from the Oneida Nation of the Thames for continued linguistic service.

Holly Jean Buck is an Assistant Professor of Environment and Sustainability at the University at Buffalo. She is an environmental social scientist whose research focuses on public engagement with emerging climate technologies. She is the author of the books Ending Fossil Fuels: Why Net Zero Is Not Enough and After Geoengineering: Climate Tragedy, Repair, and Restoration. She holds a Ph.D in Development Sociology from Cornell University and a M.Sc. in Human Ecology from Lund University.

Jaume Franquesa is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Anthropology at the University at Buffalo. His research investigates the process of energy transition from an ethnographic and historical perspective. He has conducted long-term fieldwork on the effects of renewable energy development upon rural communities in Spain and on the political debates stemming from it. He is the author of the monograph Power Struggles: Dignity, value and the renewable energy transition in Spain (Indiana University Press, 2018; published in Spanish as Molinos y gigantes: La lucha por la dignidad, la soberanía energética y la transición ecológica, Errata naturae, 2023) and co-editor of two recent journal special issues: “Right-wing-populism in rural Europe” (Sociologia Ruralis, 2020) and “Producing capitalist natures” (Capitalism Nature Socialism, 2022). Franquesa is co-editor-in-chief of the journal Dialectical Anthropology.

Nicholas B. Rajkovich is an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture and Planning at the University at Buffalo (UB). His work at UB focuses on the intersection among climate change, energy efficiency, and community development. Nicholas is currently the buildings sector co-chair for the New York State Climate Impacts Assessment, examining how the built environment of the Northeastern U.S. will need to adapt to climate change. He has also supported organizations like the American Institute of Architects and the U.S. Green Building Council as they incorporate resilience into their programs. He is a licensed architect, has a PhD in Urban and Regional Planning from the University of Michigan, a Master of Architecture from the University of Oregon, and a Bachelor of Architecture from Cornell University.

Laura Marris is a writer and translator. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The
Believer, The Paris Review Daily, The Yale Review, The Point, and elsewhere. Her recent
translations include Albert Camus’s The Plague, Geraldine Schwarz’s Those Who Forget, and To Live Is to Resist, a biography of Antonio Gramsci. She is a MacDowell fellow and the recipient of Grant for Works in Progress from the Robert B. Silvers Foundation. Her first solo-authored book, The Age of Loneliness, is forthcoming from Graywolf in 2024. In this collection of essays, she focuses on landscapes where personal and ecological loneliness entangle and inform each other—like flooded airports, disappearing lakes, or a fake city for self-driving cars. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor of creative writing at the University at Buffalo.

Anita C. Butera is an associate professor and Director of Criminal Justice at Canisius University, Buffalo, NY (USA). She holds a PhD in sociology from The American University in Washington, DC (USA), and a JD from SUNY-Buffalo (USA), where she was the international law fellow. An active member of the New York State Bar, she has represented migrant workers, victims of domestic violence and human traffic. Anita has published in the fields of globalization, NAFTA, immigration, refugees’ crisis, human rights and bankruptcy reform. She has conducted field work in Saudi Arabia, Italy, Mexico and the US. Her most recent book, Saudi Arabia Through the Eyes of Saudi Women (Lexington, 2021), discusses changing gender relations in Saudi Arabia as prompted by the legal and economic changes of Saudi Vision 2030. Currently, she is working on the importance of developping a pedagogy of unity as an essential step in promoting social reforms.

Dr. Kelley’s current research focuses on the impact of Holocaust and Comparative Genocide research on the study of religion. He has published on the role of racial and imperial categories in formative New Testament scholarship.

Dr. Penny Messinger is associate professor of history at Daemen University, Amherst, NY. She teaches a wide range of courses in American history, women’s history, and women’s studies at Daemen. This summer, she taught a class on Appalachian history and culture at the University of Warsaw, Poland. Messinger’s scholarship addresses the history of the Progressive Era, the Appalachian South, and reform and radicalism. One current research project focuses on Dr. Ann Mogilova Reinstein and Boris Reinstein, transnational revolutionaries based in Buffalo. Her presentation for the Buffalo Humanities festival is drawn from a collaborative project (with Phillip Payne and Gabriel Swarts) entitled Explanatory Footnotes: Doing History in the 21st Century Classroom, which explores the teaching of history, the role of the “history wars,” and the relationship of popular and academic history. Messinger holds a MA and PhD from The Ohio State University and a BA from Marshall University.

Bio coming soon.

Carolyn Guzski is associate professor of musicology at SUNY, Buffalo State University. A recipient of the Adrienne Fried Block Fellowship of the Society for American Music and research fellowships from the Ransom Center, University of Texas-Austin and the American Philosophical Society, she has presented papers at annual meetings of the American Musicological Society and at McGill, Oxford, and Boston universities. Publications include contributions to The Grove Dictionary of American Music, American Music Review, and Les Cahiers de la Société québécoise de recherche en musique. She received the Ph.D. in musicology from the CUNY Graduate Center, where her dissertation on American opera at the Metropolitan was a winner of the Barry S. Brook Award, and holds performance degrees in piano from the Peabody Institute of The Johns Hopkins University and The Juilliard School. Research for her presentation was supported by the Buffalo State E.O. Smith Arts & Humanities Faculty Development Fund.

Melissa Meola Shanahan is an educator and theatermaker. She has worked at Lafayette International High School for over two decades, exploring language, identity, and agency with her students in the English Language Arts classroom. Melissa is dedicated to activating student’s potential and forming their place in the world. Melissa is the founder and advisor of two extracurricular clubs. The Future Teachers Club is a space to explore teaching and learning and assist students in transitioning from high school to higher education. The Cultural Awareness club explores culture through dance, fashion, music, and performance. Melissa serves as an adjunct professor at Buffalo State College and University at Buffalo, where she teaches courses to preservice English Teachers. Melissa is the co-founder and Associate Director of Torn Space Theater, a contemporary performance company. Torn Space has been recognized internationally and was featured at the Prague Quadrennial in June 2023.