Speakers

Topic: Tensions in Appalachia: The Not-So-Uniqueness of a Unique Region

Theresa L. Burriss is the Director of the Radford University Appalachian Studies Program and Appalachian Regional & Rural Studies Center. Born and raised in the Appalachian Mountains, she has dedicated her life to serving the region and fostering national and international collaborations. Theresa embraces multidisciplinary approaches in her work and strives to bring recognition to the great diversity of Appalachia.

Topic: Land Acknowledgement and Native American culture in Appalachia: Honoring the land and the original stewards of the Appalachians

Dr. Melissa Faircloth serves as the director for the American Indian and Indigenous Community Center at Virginia Tech as well as the Senior Advisor on Native Affairs. Along with supporting the Indigenous student community, she plans and coordinates programs which promote awareness and engagement.  Her role as Senior Advisor entails the coordination of outreach efforts to the eleven tribes within the Commonwealth and providing expert knowledge to internal and external stakeholders in the area of Native post-secondary education. Originally from North Carolina, she is an enrolled member of the Coharie tribal community. She earned a Bachelors in Business and a Masters in Sociology from East Carolina University before completing her Ph.D. at Virginia Tech. Her research focused on examining the impacts and challenges of Indigenous student centers.

Topic: Taming the Wilderness: Urban Ecology in Appalachia

Sarah Foltz is an Assistant Professor in the Biology Department at Radford University and an ecologist who specializes in animals that inhabit human-dominated spaces. She has worked on projects exploring how human activities and alterations to the landscape impact wildlife in a variety of contexts and environments around the world, and has been conducting studies related to these issues in Appalachia since 2010.

Topic: RARE: From Appalachia to the Amazon

Cassady Urista is a biological anthropologist in the Department of Anthropological Sciences at Radford University, and has worked with the RARE program since 2016. She believes in the RARE program because it mentors students into the research process and opens them to greater discovery of their world, their abilities and their discipline.

Topic: RARE: From Appalachia to the Amazon

Jason Davis is an ecophysiologist working in Radford University’s Department of Biology as well as the Associate Director of the Honors College. Dr. Davis worked with others to found the Radford Amazonian Research (RARE) in 2015 and has worked closely with the program ever since, including its new expansion into the RARE: Appalachia. He is excited to discuss how courses embodied in landscapes, like RARE, can expand students’ perspectives and insights into both themselves and the world around them.

Topic: The Landscape of Our Tongues

Angie Dribben is an autistic artist and writer creating in the Appalachian region of Virginia. Her debut collection, Everygirl, finalist for the 2020 Broadkill Review Dogfish Head Prize, was released with Main Street Rag. Over the years, she has been in service to the literary arts and her community as an advisory panelist, adjudicator, editor, workshop leader, peer reviewer, and friend.

Topic: Understanding Arnheim: Religio-Racial Place-Making in the New River Valley of Virginia, 1838–1887

This presentation explores the role of religious and racial forms of identity as influential components in shaping the settlements around Arnheim, home of John Blair Radford, his family, and the people of African descent whom he enslaved there. It explores the emergence of Christian congregations and considers their impact on relationships that existed between the area’s residents. And it traces some of the effects that flowed from the formation of various Christian groups, their diversification, and the location of their buildings throughout the area’s geography. Dr. Pollick argues that religio-racial understandings of identity informed the place-making dynamics of building a city on the edges of Appalachia.

Topic: Selu Archaeology: Early 20th Century Tenant Farming in Southern Appalachia

Preliminary archaeological surveys at Selu, Virginia, have found a rich material records of the lives of tenant farmers living off the land in Southern Appalachia. These materials offer us a glimpse of the daily lives of people often not considered to be the “history makers,” but whose lives nevertheless shaped the world we live in today. 

Topic: Walking Contradictions: Thriving Queerness in Unexpected Places

Luc White is a nonbinary, queer studio artist, ecological and social researcher; born and raised in Southwest Virginia. After exploring the unrecognized queer stories within the Medieval Christian Church, they have turned their efforts to excavate what it means to be a queer Appalachian native, and what it means to exist in a space and at a time when you simply “do not exist.”

Topic: The Old Witch of Snowville

Dr. Paul Thomas is Professor of Religious Studies at Radford University. His eclectic interests bridge the gaps between biblical studies, new religious movements, and monsters in religion.

Topic: Race and Place: Prison Gerrymandering and its Consequences

Gabriella V. Smith holds a Ph.D. in sociology from UVA, where she specialized in the intersections of gender, race, and culture. A lifelong gardener and enthusiastic teacher, she divides her time between teaching sociology classes, research, and educating clients through her nursery and consulting business, Gabriella the Garden Sage.

Topic: Two African-American guitarists in Appalachia, an case of musical-cultural juxtaposition

Regularly performing on four continents, Dr. Robert S. Trent is Radford University Professor of Music and an award-winning recording artist.” Of his performances the NYT has written: “His interpretations are dignified, formal, and carefully thought out, with a sense of structural integrity that informs every passing tone.” Of his recordings Fanfare has written: “Trent exploits that vibratory potency in performances of impeccable timing, liquid phrasing, and sophisticated timbral diversity. He’s assembled a program that gives full play to his coloristic gifts, variety of articulations, and skill”.  His foci are modern and ancient Music of the Americas, and performance practice of historical instrument on which he performs and records. He is Radford University’s “Distinguished Creative Scholar” (2020) and “Dalton Eminent Scholar” (2021).

Topic: “Himalachia”- What can we learn about the ancient Appalachian

Dr. Ryan Sincavage focuses his research on the interactions of climate, tectonics, and fluvial system dynamics on river system behavior, and the extent to which surface processes are recorded in the stratigraphic record. He received a BS degree in Earth Science from Penn State University in 1996, a Master’s degree in geology from University of Colorado Boulder in 2003, and a PhD in Earth and Environmental Engineering at Vanderbilt University in 2017. He currently has active research projects in the Indo-Burman Ranges fold and thrust belt of eastern India, the Ganges-Brahmaputra delta in Bangladesh, and the eastern outlet valleys of the Northern Patagonian Ice Field. In addition to his position as an associate professor in the Department of Geology at Radford University, Dr. Sincavage also currently serves as the assistant director for STEM programming in West Virginia for the National Youth Science Foundation. When not occupied with his academic responsibilities, you will probably find him enjoying the outdoors in the Appalachians.

Topic: Why Thru-hike the Appalachian Trail

Dr. Whittington is a Professor of Recreation, Parks and Tourism at Radford University. She is also a section hiker of the Appalachian Trail having completed over 1600 miles with the goal of finishing in the next few years. Her research focused on the motivations, fears and personality types of thru-hikers.

Topic: Becoming Granny: Historical and Contemporary Appalachian Folk Magic Practices

Brandy Renee McCann's work on life in Appalachia has been published in Still: The Journal, Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, and other publications. She is a researcher at the Center for Gerontology at Virginia Tech. You can follow her on instagram @appalbrandy.

Topic: The Southwest Virginia Mindset: Diving into Appalachian Education, Culture, and Innovation

Katlin Wohlford Kazmi is the Executive Director of the Region VII Virtual Academy and Co-owner of The Pakalachian Food Truck. Katlin obtained her Masters in Education from the University of Virginia in 2012 and her Educational Specialist in Policy and Administration from Virginia Tech in 2014. Climbing the educational ladder from teacher to assistant principal, she now works collaboratively with 18 rural school divisions in Virginia's Region 7. Named as one of 2020's 40 under Forty in the Business Journal of the Tri-Cities, Katlin advocates for creating opportunities to keep hardworking people living and working in the mountains she calls home.

Topic: RARE: From Appalachia to the Amazon

Drew Myers is a Veterinary Student at the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine specializing in equines. She is an alumni of Radford University and participant in the 2019 RARE program, which worked to further her love of research and learning. 

Topic: Climate Change in Appalachia 

Stockton Maxwell is an associate professor of Geospatial Science. His research focuses on the use of tree rings to understand past climate and environmental conditions. He enjoys travelling and getting out on the trail or river with his kids.

Topic: Land Acknowledgement and Native American culture in Appalachia: Honoring the land and the original stewards of the Appalachians

Victoria Persinger Ferguson is an enrolled member of the Monacan Indian Nation of Virginia. She serves on the Monacan Historic Resource Committee and is a graduate of Marshall University.  She has 30 years background in researching science methodologies and historical documentation to help explain and support theories on the daily living habits of the Eastern Siouan populations up through the early European colonization period.  Victoria has been involved with public history as a historical interpreter for over 25 years and participated in many educational documentaries.  She currently serves as the Program Director for Historic Solitude/Fraction on the campus of Virginia Tech.

Topic: Biodiversity of Mountains and Rivers

Dr. Pelletier is broadly interested in the eco-evolutionary processes that shape current biodiversity patterns. Her research uses genetic, geographic, environmental, and morphological data to study species limits. Some of her current projects include data science approaches to uncover hidden species diversity and sequencing environmental DNA from streams in the southern Appalachian Mountains to estimate levels of biodiversity and assess stream health.

Topic: Hawks Nest and the Dries: Engineering Marvel and Industrial Disaster

Just outside of the community of Gauley Bridge, the New River virtually disappears. Most of the river is diverted into a three-mile-long tunnel, a tunnel hundreds of workers died to build. The tragedy doesn't end there. Tim Thornton teaches Appalachian studies at Radford University. He's paddled the New River from Boone, North Carolina, to Gauley Bridge, West Virginia, a few times. 

Topic: Panel Discussion: Appalachia and Academia

Ms. Offutt serves as the Director for the Center for Diversity and Inclusion at Radford University. As a first-generation college student from Louisville, Kentucky, she earned her Bachelor of Arts in Communications, with a minor in African and African American Studies, a Master of Arts in Student Personnel Services in Higher Education. Offutt has served as a compassionate and motivated diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging (DEIB) leader with extensive experience in student advocacy, safeguarding culture, and finding opportunities to build relationships with advocacy groups to drive educational, and cultural, diversity.  

Topic: Here We Are

Jennifer L. Hand lives in Dublin, VA in a small house on 7 acers in the woods with her husband and dog.  She coordinates the Foundations program for the School of Visual Arts at Virginia Tech where she is also an instructor. Jennifer spends a lot of time outdoors clearing, moving, stacking, trimming, gathering and walking.  The art that she makes is a direct result of the experience of forging a place for one’s self, both literally and metaphorically, physically and spiritually. She likes to think of herself as collaborating with nature to make pieces that reflect the delicate relationship between human beings and the land on which they live.  Her practice rotates through meditative observational drawing, the actual manipulation of natural materials gathered from the land, and sewing with repurposed fabric representing the history and narrative of community.

Topic: Panel Discussion: Appalachia and Academia

Dr. Lau is an aquatic ecologist who spends her time taking students on Appalachian collecting adventures. They are currently studying the effect of the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) construction process on a small stream ecosystem just south of Roanoke. This study is being conducted through an interdisciplinary lens by diving into the complex relationship among the physical stream structure, water chemistry, and biodiversity (insects and environmental DNA). Dr. Lau will be sharing her stories about engaging with landowners affected by the MVP.