Symposium: Towards a Charlottesville Cultural Landscape Atlas, hosted by the Center for Cultural Landscapes
The Center for Cultural Landscapes hosts the Sara Shallenberger Brown Colloquium + Workshops: Towards a Charlottesville Cultural Landscape Atlas at UVA School of Architecture. This series of events asks: Could a community atlas be a prompt for new conversations amongst neighbors and fellow city residents? How might an atlas become a source of discovery, revealing new socio-cultural insights about the people, events and places that constitute our town, Charlottesville? Is there value in connecting events and stories to the spatial patterns and experiences of the physical urban landscape?
Through our 2019-20 colloquium, lectures and workshops, we seek to conceptualize an atlas that is multi-media, accessible and useful to the community we call home. We strive for it to spark the curiosity and imaginations of those who use it in their pursuit of the serious and the consequential.
To kick off a series of events, keynote speaker, Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, co-editor of Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas, will lecture on Friday, September 13th at 5pm. The following day, September 14, includes the first of a series of panel discussions and conversations about the ways that digital atlases can support communities in the documentation, interpretation and re-imagination of their cultural landscapes. Saturday’s events are moderated by Elizabeth Meyer, Merrill D. Peterson Professor of Landscape Architecture and Garnette Cadogan, editor-at-large of Nonstop Metropolis, with Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro.
COLLOQUIUM SCHEDULE
Friday September 13
Keynote Lecture: Urban cultural landscape atlases as storytelling
Joshua Jelly-Schapiro,
Co-editor with Rebecca Solnit, Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas and Infinite Cities: Complete Atlas Trilogy
5pm
Campbell Hall 158
(including a book-signing, prior to and after the lecture; the Infinite Cities trilogy of atlases will be available for purchase as well as the individual publications in this series.)
Saturday September 14
Panel Discussions
Moderaters:
Garnette Cadogan, Fellow, UVA Center for Cultural Landscapes and
Beth Meyer, Merrill D. Peterson Professor of Landscape Architecture and Co-Director, UVA Center for Cultural Landscapes
10am – 12.30pm
Campbell 158
Panel #1: Digital Atlases as tools of communication and discovery
10am - 11 am
Discussion of existing digital atlas projects, their goals, spatial and visual format/ innovations, impacts, collaborators, funding sources and lessons learned
Panelists:
Rob Nelson, Director, University of Richmond Digital Scholarship Lab
External Adviser, UVA Landscape Studies Initiative
Andrea Hansen-Phillips, Assistant Professor, UVA Dept of Landscape Architecture
Principal, Visualizing Systems
Author, Composite Landscape: Photomontage and Landscape Architecture
Consultant, UVA Landscape Studies Initiative ISLAND and other atlas projects
Andrea Roberts, Assistant Professor, Texas A+M University — via video conference
Texas Freedom Colonies project
Panel #2: Spatializing Charlottesville’s Racial History. Inequity, agency and urban landscape patterns
11am - 12:15pm
Discussion of several ongoing geospatial research projects examining the racialized topography of Charlottesville and its surroundings from the 18th through the 21st century. Including project goals, audience, progress to date, potential collaborators
Panelists:
Niya Bates, Public Historian
Director of Giving Word, Monticello’s Enslaved descendent community oral histories
Barbara Brown Wilson, Assistant Professor, UVA Dept of Urban and Environmental Planning
Co-PI, The Charlottesville Regional Equity Atlas, UVA Equity Center/Democracy Institute
Lyle Solla-Yates, Staff, The Nature Conservancy; Charlottesville City Planning Commission
Jordy Yager, Digital Humanities Archivist, Jefferson School African American Heritage Center
Freelance journalist, Charlottesville
Wrap up comments and next steps
12:15pm - 12:30pm
The colloquium will be the first event in a series of community collaborations throughout 2019-2020 that will explore methods, perspectives, and best practices for a Charlottesville Cultural Landscape Atlas. Through the medium of an atlas, we aim to create a tool that can amplify existing research, support critical interpretation and pro-active research of sites, and reveal the relational nature of spatial practices, biophysical systems, and cultural history. The first of a series of Listening Sessions will be held on Saturday November 2 (more details to come).
All events are free and open to the public.
These events are funded by the UVA Sara Shallenberger Brown Cultural Landscapes Endowment.