The daily program schedules for the 137 concurrent sessions can be downloaded / viewed in PDF format here.
The abstracts for the concurrents, posters, computer demos, and exhibits can be downloaded / viewed in PDF format here.
From this point on, all changes to the program will be detailed on a “Late Changes” handout that will be distributed at the conference.
For an overview of plenary sessions, see below.
Monday, March 14 • 8:00–9:30 am
Why the Division Between Natural and Cultural Resources in the National Parks Serves Neither Well: A Plea for Integration
William Cronon, Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies, University of Wisconsin
Professor Cronon offers insights from the field of American environmental history to argue that the national parks should adopt a more fully integrated approach to the protection and interpretation of natural and cultural resources, and that doing so will better serve the overall mission of the National Park Service.
William Cronon’s research seeks to understand the history of human interactions with the natural world: how we depend on the ecosystems around us to sustain our material lives, how we modify the landscapes in which we live and work, and how our ideas of nature shape our relationships with the world around us. His first book, Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England (1983), was a study of how the New England landscape changed as control of the region shifted from Indians to European colonists. In 1984, the work was awarded the Francis Parkman Prize of the Society of American Historians. In 1991, Cronon completed a book entitled Nature’s Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, which examines Chicago’s relationship to its rural hinterland during the second half of the nineteenth century; it was awarded several prizes. In 1992, he co-edited Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America’s Western Past, a collection of essays on the prospects of western and frontier history in American historiography. He then edited an influential collection of essays entitled Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, examining the implication of different cultural ideas of nature for modern environmental problems. He is currently at work on a history of Portage, Wisconsin, that will explore how people’s sense of place is shaped by the stories they tell about their homes, their lives, and the landscapes they inhabit. He is also completing a book entitled Saving Nature in Time: The Past and the Future of Environmentalism on the evolving relationship between environmental history and environmentalism, and what the two might learn from each other.
In July 1992, Cronon became the Frederick Jackson Turner Professor of History, Geography, and Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison after having served for more than a decade as a member of the Yale History Department. In 2003, he was also named Vilas Research Professor at UW-Madison, the university’s most distinguished chaired professorship. He has been President of the American Society for Environmental History, and serves as general editor of the Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books Series for the University of Washington Press.
A native of New Haven, Connecticut, Cronon received his B.A. (1976) from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He holds an M.A. (1979), M.Phil. (1980), and Ph.D. (1990) from Yale, and a D.Phil. (1981) from Oxford University. Cronon has been a Rhodes Scholar, Danforth Fellow, Guggenheim Fellow, and MacArthur Fellow; has won prizes for his teaching at both Yale and Wisconsin; and in 1999 was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society.
Tuesday, March 15 • 8:00–9:30 am
Environmental Justice: What? So What? Now What?
Panelists:
Robert D. Bullard, Ware Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Director of the Environmental Justice Resource Center, Clark Atlanta University
Zenaida Mendez, Director of Racial Diversity Programs, National Organization for Women, Washington, D.C.
Charles Jordan, Chairman, The Conservation Fund, Arlington, Virginia
Moderator:
Robert G. Stanton, senior fellow, Texas A&m University / formerly director, National Park Service
Robert G. Stanton, former director of the National Park Service, is now a senior fellow at Texas A&M University in the Department of Recreation, Park, and Tourism Sciences. He recently served as a consultant for the Natural Resource Council of America, and from 2001 through 2003, he served as the IUCN’s World Commission on Protected Areas ambassador for the Fifth World Parks Congress held in September 2003 in Durban, South Africa. Stanton also was a Professor of the Practice of Conservation (McCluskey Visiting Fellow) in the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. A native of Fort Worth, Texas, Stanton grew up in Mosier Valley, one of the oldest communities in Texas founded by African Americans shortly after the Civil War. He earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Huston-Tillotson College, Austin, Texas, and completed graduate work at Boston University. He has been awarded three honorary doctorate degrees. A lifelong conservationist and experienced public administrator, Stanton was unanimously confirmed as the 15th director of the National Park Service in 1997, and served in that post until the end of the Clinton Administration in January 2001. He was the first director to undergo confirmation hearings before the United States Senate, and the first African American to serve in this position since the National Park Service was established in 1916. As director of the National Park Service, he had policy, management, and administrative responsibility for the National Park System’s 384 natural, cultural, and recreational areas. He also had responsibility for 20 trails in the National Trail System and oversaw the National Register of Historic Places, Youth in Conservation Corps programs and the Service’s international affairs. He was responsible for providing assistance to American Indian Tribal Governments, state and local governments, colleges and universities, and communities with respect to conservation, recreation, and cultural resource partnership programs.
Robert D. Bullard is the nation’s leading expert on race and the environment. He is the author of thirteen books that address environmental justice, urban land use, facility permitting, community reinvestment, housing, transportation, suburban sprawl, and smart growth. His award winning book, Dumping in Dixie: Race, Class and Environmental Quality (Westview Press, 2000), is a standard text in the environmental justice field. A few of his other books include Confronting Environmental Racism: Voices from the Grassroots (South End Press, 1993), People of Color Environmental Groups Directory 2000 (Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, Spring, 2000), and Unequal Protection: Environmental Justice and Communities of Color (Sierra Club Books, 1996). He co-edited with Charles Lee (Commission for Racial Justice) and J. Eugene Grigsby (UCLA) Residential Apartheid: The American Legacy (UCLA Center for African American Studies Publications, 1994). He also co-edited with Glenn S. Johnson Just Transportation: Dismantling Race and Class Barriers to Mobility (New Society Publishers, 1997) and, with Glenn S. Johnson and Angel O. Torres, Sprawl City: Race, Politics and Planning in Atlanta (Island Press, 2000). His most recent books are entitled Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World (Earthscan/MIT Press, 2003) and Highway Robbery: Transportation Racism and New Routes to Equity (South End Press, 2004). He is completing work on a new book entitled Racialized Place: The Black Metropolis in the 21st Century (Rowman & Littlefield, forthcoming 2005).
Zenaida Mendez, the National Organization for Women’s Director of Racial Diversity Programs, has over 20 years of experience working on issues affecting women, including equal pay for equal work, reproductive freedom, education, daycare, housing, and economic, racial and environmental justice. Mendez’s national and international activism on behalf of issues affecting people of African descent has earned her recognition in the Latina/o and African American communities as well as many awards and commendations from local, national and international organizations. She served most recently as the Project Director for the Second National People of Color Environmental Leadership Summit. In 2001, Mendez was one of the Women of Color Resource Center’s Delegates to the World Conference Against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerances in Durban, South Africa. In 2002, she was invited to address the forum of the Puerto Rico and United States International Dominican Leadership Conference in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Mendez is president and founder of the National Dominican Women's Caucus, founder of the New York City Dominican Women’s Caucus and a member of the Board of Directors of the Dominican American National Roundtable. Born in the Dominican Republic, Mendez moved with her parents and two sisters to the U.S. when she was a teenager. She became active in social justice as an advocate for children in New York City. In 1990, Mayor David Dinkins appointed Mendez to his office of Latino Affairs. From 1992–1994 she served as Special Assistant to the New York City Commissioner of Human Rights Dennis de Leon, and for five years she was legislative assistant to Representative Charles B. Rangel. Mendez has earned a BA in Government and Public Administration from John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a Masters degree in Public Administration from the City University of New York, Graduate School of Public Affairs.
Charles Jordan is the Chairman of The Conservation Fund, a leading national environmental nonprofit. One of the most influential voices in conservation today, Jordan is an outspoken proponent of our nation’s parks, Mr. Jordan is nationally recognized both for his leadership and responsiveness to the diverse publics he serves. He has initiated and implemented successful programs in the areas of parks and recreation, human resources, public safety, neighborhood organizations, and the environment. After a career in public service that spans 30 years, Mr. Jordan retired in April as the Director of the Portland (Oregon) Bureau of Parks and Recreation – a position he held for 14 years. In that role, he was responsible for managing almost 12,600 acres of parks and open space in the city. He announced his retirement shortly after city voters approved a $49 million levy for parks projects and improvements. A Portland City Commissioner for ten years (1974-84), Mr. Jordan had also served as the Director of Parks and Recreation in Austin, Texas (1984-1989). Prior to that, he served as an Assistant to the City Manager, Assistant Director of Recreation and Special Events, and Recreation Supervisor, all in Palm Springs, California. Jordan was appointed by President Ronald Reagan to serve on the President’s Commission on Americans Outdoors and was later appointed by President Bill Clinton to serve on the American Heritage River Program. He also serves on both the National Park System Advisory Board and National Forest Foundation Board and is a Trustee of the African American Experience Fund of the National Park Foundation. He continues to work closely with the Natural Resource Leadership Council of the States.
Thursday, March 17 • 8:00–9:30 am
“Science and History on the Landscape: Yellowstone in Fact and Fiction”
Diane Smith, author
Diane Smith is a novelist and science writer who lives in Livingston, Montana. Her first novel, Letters from Yellowstone, follows a scientific field study in Yellowstone Park in the 1890s. It won the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association award for fiction, and was selected for the “campus-wide read” at Northern Arizona University in 2003. Her latest novel, Pictures from an Expedition, chronicles the history of paleontologists, artists, and Civil War veterans along the Missouri River, right after the Battle of the Little Big Horn. It won the first-ever Montana Book Award, which recognizes one book of any genre for its literary and artistic excellence, and was featured on the National Public Radio program, “Theme and Variation.” Both books are part of the permanent collection at the Smithsonian Institution.
Friday, March 18 • 8:00–9:30 am
“Fire in the Parks: A Case Study in Change Management”
Norman L. Christensen, Jr.
Professor of Ecology and Founding Dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment and Earth Sciences, Duke University
Norman Christensen came directly to Duke in 1973 from his doctoral studies on chaparral fire at the University of California, Santa Barbara. In addition to continuing studies on the ecology of fire, Norm’s research interests include connections between land use history and ecosystem dynamics, biodiversity consequences of forest management activities and the application of basic ecological principles to ecosystem management. Over the past decade, Norm has served on the Sierra Nevada Ecosystem Project. He was co-chair of California Spotted Owl Federal Advisory Committee, and Chair of the National Academy of Sciences Committee on the Ecological Consequences of Forest Management in the Pacific Northwest and the National Commission on Science for Sustainable Forestry. Norm was launched on his career of advisory committee gadfly in the late 1980s, when he chaired a review of the fire management programs of National Parks in the Sierra Nevada and the Interagency Panel on the Ecological Consequences of the 1988 Yellowstone Fires. His plenary presentation will reflect in part on lessons learned from these experiences.
