Friday, September 27, 2019
The conference location is Petterutti Lounge (Room 201) of the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center at Brown University / 75 Waterman Street. The closest paid public parking lot is located at 111 Power Street ($15/day).
8:30 – 9 am: Conference Registration
9 – 9:10 am: Welcome Remarks
Susan Smulyan, Director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, and Professor of American Studies, Brown University.
9:10 – 10:05 am: Keynote Address
Shannon Mattern, Mapwashing: Co-Opting Civic Design
For decades, as some federal agencies and municipal governments have sought to encourage public participation in urban planning, they’ve turned to maps, models, games, and other playful, designerly means of soliciting and validating public spatial knowledge, and using that insight to inform design and planning processes. But as cities increasingly turn to private technology contractors to manage urban infrastructure and development projects, their proprietary platforms and processes are often obscured. Can civic design tools, like participatory maps and community engagement apps, meaningfully inform these often obfuscatory processes? Or are these methods susceptible to co-optation — “map-washing” — by design-savvy tech developers? This talk will examine how participatory planning methods stand up to algorithmic planning.
Shannon Mattern is a Professor of Anthropology at the New School for Social Research. She is the author of The New Downtown Library: Designing with Communities (2006); Deep Mapping the Media City (2015; and Code and Clay, Data and Dirt (2017).
Format: The keynote address will be followed by 15 minutes for audience questions and discussion. Speaker introduction and moderator: Parker VanValkenburgh, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, Brown University.
10:05 – 10:20 am: Coffee Break
10:20 am – 12:20 pm: Mapping Racial Violence
Mapping Violence. Presenters: Monica Muñoz Martinez, Assistant Professor of American Studies, Brown University and Jim McGrath, Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Digital Humanities, John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Brown University.
The Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project. Presenters: Margaret Burnham, Founder and Director of the Civil Rights and Restorative Justice Project and University Distinguished Professor of Law, Northeastern University School of Law; Melissa Nobles, Kenan Sahin Dean of the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences and Professor of Political Science, MIT.
Mapping Incidents and Ecologies of Racist Repression. Presenters: Geoff Ward, Founder and Director of the Racial Violence Archive and Associate Professor of African and African-American Studies, Sociology, and American Culture Studies, Washington University; David Cunningham, Professor and Chair of Sociology, Washington University.
Million Dollar Hoods: Mapping the Fiscal and Human Impact of Mass Incarceration. Presenter: Mariah Tso, GIS Specialist, Ralph J. Bunche Center for African American Studies, UCLA.
Format: Each presentation will run 20-30 minutes; presentations will be followed by 20 minutes for audience questions and discussion. Speaker introductions and moderator: Monica Muñoz Martinez, Assistant Professor of American Studies, Brown University.
12:20 – 1:30 pm: Lunch Break (the Stephen Robert ’62 Campus Center has a public café on its ground floor)
1:30 – 3:30 pm: Participatory Mapping in Social Practice Art and Design
Low Visibility. Presenter: Rosten Woo, Artist, Designer and Co-founder, The Center for Urban Pedagogy.
Performing Infrastructure: Embodied Geographies of the NYC Watershed. Presenter: Lize Mogel, Artist/Counter-Cartagropher.
This is Not a Map. Presenters: Gwen MacGregor, Artist and Ph.D. candidate, Department of Geography, University of Toronto; Sandra Rechico, Artist and Associate Professor and Graduate Coordinator, School of Fine Art and Music, University of Guelph, Guelph.
Community Mapping through Sound. Presenter: Elisa H. Hamilton, Multimedia Artist.
Format: Each presentation will run 25 minutes; the presentations will be followed by 20 minutes for audience questions and discussion. Speaker introductions and moderator: Susan Smulyan, Director, John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, and Professor of American Studies, Brown University.
3:30 – 3:45 pm: Coffee Break
3:45 – 5:25 pm: Counter-mapping Providence (and Tulsa)
Divide & Conquer: Are the Neighborhood Map Distinctions Creating Silos & Competition between our Neighbors? Presenter: Dwayne Keys, Chairperson, South Providence Neighborhood Association.
Place Based Mapping and Cultural Preservation. Presenter: Marta Martinez, Executive Director, RI Latino Arts.
Vacant Providence. Presenter: Aaron Forrest, Associate Professor, RISD Architecture and Principal, Ultramoderne.
Corridor Communities. Presenter: Pegah Rahmanian, Director of the Unity Center, Rhode Island College.
Mapping Historical Trauma in Tulsa, 1921-2021. Presenter: Alicia Odewale, Assistant Professor of Anthropology, University of Tulsa.
Format: Each presentation will run 15 minutes; the presentations will be followed by 20 minutes for audience questions and discussion. Speaker introductions and moderator: Marisa Angell Brown, Assistant Director for Programs, John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Brown University.
5:25 – 5:30 pm: Closing Remarks
Susan Smulyan, Director of the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, and Professor of American Studies, Brown University.
5:30 – 7 pm: Closing Reception
The reception will be held at the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage at 357 Benefit Street. All conference speakers and attendees are welcome.
Questions? Contact Marisa Angell Brown, Assistant Director of Programs at the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage, Brown University at [email protected] or 401-863-6277.