Into the Woods: New England Forests in Fact and Imagination
The 2024 conference will be a hybrid event with both in-person and online access to the presentations. Unless otherwise stated, all events will take place at the Deerfield Community Center, 16 Memorial Street in Deerfield. This schedule will be updated as necessary.
Register for the 2024 conference either in person or through an online connection at this page. We look forward to seeing you!
Friday, June 28
Optional Morning Programs
9:30–10am — Library Group A (limit of 15 people) meets at the Memorial Libraries for “Into the Books: An Exploration of Library Resources.” Discover four centuries of library resources on the wonders of wood with librarian Jeanne Solensky. Examine treatises on deforestation and native trees of North America, technical manuals on the properties and uses of wood, design sources for carving and ornamentation, and veneer and inlay samples.
9:30–10am — Flynt Group A (limit of 15 people) meets in Flynt Center Lobby for “A Walk in the Woods: Crafting Early American Furniture.” Join assistant curator Dan Sousa on a tour of the museum’s furniture gallery to explore how early American cabinetmakers harvested and prepared wood to build furniture, and used its striking natural features for decoration and as inspiration for other ornamentation.
10:15–10:45am — Library Group B (limit of 15 people) meets at the Memorial Libraries for “Into the Books: An Exploration of Library Resources” with librarian Jeanne Solensky.
10:15–10:45am — Flynt Group B (limit of 15 people) meets in Flynt Center Lobby for “A Walk in the Woods: Crafting Early American Furniture” with assistant curator Dan Sousa.
11am–12:15pm — Walking Tour along the Channing Blake Footpath with naturalist Laurie Sanders, co-director of Historic Northampton (limit of 25 people; $10 registration fee). Park in Visitor Parking and meet at the sign for the Channing Blake Footpath north of the Deerfield Inn. Comfortable walking shoes recommended.
The Seminar at the Deerfield Community Center
12:30pm — Registration for in-person attendees opens at the Deerfield Community Center, with name badges and information packets available, along with refreshments
1:10pm — Virtual sign-in opens for online attendees
1:15–1:30pm — Welcomes
John Davis, President & CEO, Historic Deerfield
Marla Miller, President, Associate Dean for Strategic Initiatives, UMass Amherst, and President, Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife
1:30–3pm — Experiencing & Engaging with the Woods
Moderator: Erika Gasser, Director of Academic Programs, Historic Deerfield
Ann M. Little, Professor, Department of History, Colorado State University: “Forests, Trees, and Women’s Ecological Thinking at the Turn of the Nineteenth Century”
Jane E. Radcliffe, curatorial consultant, Vaughan Woods & Historic Homestead (Hallowell, Maine): “Boston Rusticators in the Maine Woods During the 1870s”
Jeffrey S. Debies-Carl, Professor, Psychology & Sociology Department, University of New Haven: “The Shadows Beneath the Trees: Transformative Effects of Contemporary Legends and Folklore on New England’s Forested Landscapes”
3–3:15pm — Break
3:15–4:45pm — Identity & Claiming the Forest
Moderator: Alice Nash, Associate Professor of History, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Daniel Bottino, Doctoral Candidate, Department of History, Rutgers University: “Ancient Landmarks, Ancient Inhabitation: The Marked Trees of Seventeenth-Century Maine”
Christopher J. Slaby, Ph.D. Candidate, American Studies Program, William & Mary: “Indigenous Homelands and Thomas Cole’s Cabins in the Woods; or, Putting the Settler in Settler Colonialism”
Benjamin Trumble, Doctoral Student, Department of Geography, University of Washington: “Losing the Trees for the Forest: Shifting Rural Character in Weare, New Hampshire”
4:45–7pm — Dinner on your own
7–8pm — Keynote Address: “The Lumber and the Trees: Fitz H. Lane, Winslow Homer, and the Nineteenth-Century Forest” by Margaretta Lovell, the Jay D. McEvoy, Jr. Chair of the History of American Art at the University of California, Berkeley
Saturday, June 29
8:30am — Deerfield Community Center opens with name badges and information packets available, along with refreshments
9–10:30am — Out from the Woods: Extraction & its Legacies
Moderator: Barbara Mathews, Independent Consultant/Public Historian
Peter A. Thomas, Department of Anthropology, University of Vermont (retired): “Turpentine Extraction & the Metamorphosis of the Local Woodlands, 1689–1713”
Tom Kelleher, Historian & Curator of Mechanical Arts, Old Sturbridge Village: “Maple Sugaring Before Syrup”
Sarah Skinner, Archaeologist, USDA Forest Service, Green Mountain & Finger Lakes National Forests: “Nineteenth-Century Logging & Charcoal Manufacturing at Mount Tabor, Vermont, and Landscape Changes that Influenced the Creation of the Green Mountain National Forest”
10:30–10:45am — Break
10:45am–12:15pm — Framing Stories in Buildings
Moderator: Michael Emmons, Jr., Associate Director, Center for Historic Architecture & Design (CHAD), University of Delaware
William A. Flynt, dendroarchaeologist: “Waney Edges: Dendroarchaeology, and What the Timbers Tell Us”
Philippe Halbert, Richard Koopman Associate Curator of American Decorative Arts, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art: “Woodwork: Labor, Lumber, and Luxury at Staddle Hill”
Nevan Carling, conservation timber framer & MSc student in Timber Building Conservation, University of York, UK, “Reconstructing the Landscape: The Hidden Ecology of New England’s Historic Houses”
12:15–1:45pm — Lunch (buffet at the Deerfield Inn or on your own)
1:45–3:15pm — Work in the Woods
Moderator: David Byers, Program Manager, Steamtown National Historic Site, National Park Service
Aaron Ahlstrom, Instructor, Preservation Studies Program, Boston University: “Timberlands and Tourist Cabins: The CCC’s Transformation of Massachusetts’s Mohawk Trail State Forest”
Pamela Snow Sweetser, Independent Historian & Retired Educator: “Horse Sweat: The Making of a Logging Empire”
Kaycie Haller, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, University at Albany: “‘Not Suited by Nature’: Democratic Imaginaries of the Environment and Citizenship in the Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933–1942”
3:15–3:30pm — Break
3:30–5pm — Complicating Narratives of Decline
Moderator: Anne Lanning, Senior Vice President, Historic Deerfield
Dona Brown, Professor Emerita, Department of History, University of Vermont: “Farming the Re-Forested Hills: The Case of Jamaica, Vermont, 1930”
Joseph Yauch, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, Brandeis University: “Take All the Pine and Spruce You Want: Industrial Lumbering Companies and Penobscot People in 19th-Century Northern Maine”
James S. Peters, Ph.D. (Forestry), JSP Associates & Visiting Scholar, Department of History, University of Massachusetts, Amherst: “A View from the Land: 400 Years of New England Forests, Lumber, and Dwellings”
5–5:05pm — Closing remarks
Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife 