Kenai Peninsula history conference
150 Years:
April 21-22, 2017
150 Years: Kenai Peninsula History Conference
DRAFT CONFERENCE AGENDA (as of April 10, 2017)
FRIDAY, APRIL 21
8:30 a.m. Door opens - registration and snacks in the commons
Introductory remarks
9 Shana Loshbaugh – conference project director
KPB Mayor Mike Navarre
KPC Director Gary Turner
9:30 break
First session
9:40 Wayne Leman – Ninilchik Russian: Language Persistence on the Kenai Peninsula
10 Mira Bergelson – Ninilchik dictionary project
10:20 David Nordlander – Kenai Heritage within a Range of Web-based Primary Sources on Alaska History
10:40 break
Second session
11 Alan Boraas – The Battles of Kenai and the Fate of the Russian American Company
11:20 Tom Bundtzen – Mineral Resource Development in Alaska Prior to the 1867 Purchase
11:40 Shana Loshbaugh – Soft Gold: Sea Otters in Alaska and Kenai Peninsula History
Lunch across the road at the Alaska Christian College Conference Center
noon – 1:30 p.m. – live Russian folk music from trio “Moscow Nights”
Third session
1:30 James Kari – Stages in Dena'ina Place Names Research
1:50 Greg Weissenberg – What’s in a Name?
2:10 Roger Pearson – The Imprint of Imperial Russia on Alaska’s Landscape Today
2:30 Jeff Meyers – Russia’s Folly: The Reason for Russia’s Cession of Alaska
2:50 Mike Dunham – The Emancipators: Davis, Alexander, Koh’Klux, and Seward
3:10 break
Movies!
3: 30 p.m.
Highlights of the 1974 Kenai Area History Conference
Kenai’s Russian Heritage
Archaeology and Memory: Ancestral Alutiiq Villages of the Outer Kenai Coast, Alaska
The Wreck of the Torrent
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SATURDAY, APRIL 22
8:30 a.m. Door opens - registration and snacks in the commons
9 Book fair opens in the commons
Keynote talk
9 Andrei Znamenski – Cultural Brokers: A Story of People Who Shaped Popular Orthodoxy in the Kenai Area
9:50 break
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First Session
10 Janet Klein – The Fort Kenai Collection
10:20 Joel Isaak – Dena’ina history – overview
10:40 break
Second Session
11 Debra Corbett – Stu’tlinint (the Dena’ina village at the Skilak Lake outflow)
11:20 Dorothy Gray – Preservation of the Holy Assumption Russian Orthodox Church & National Historic Landmark
11:40 Daria Safronova-Simeonoff - Celebrations of Civil and Church Holidays in Kenai Deanery, Alaska after 1867
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lunch across the road at the Alaska Christian College Conference Center
noon – 1:30 p.m. “The Lure of Alaska” original poetry read by Kenai’s Dave Thompson
Third Session
1:30 Brent Johnson – Joshua Slocum’s Kasilof Misadventure
1:50 Jackie Pels – Mary Forgal Lowell
2:10 Aron Crowell – Sugpiaq (Alutiiq) History and Archaeology on the Kenai Peninsula
2:30 break
Wrap-up Session
3 Panel discussion
(panelists: Andrei Znamenski, McKibben Jackinsky, Tom Kizzia, Marge Mullen; moderator Colleen Kelly)
3:30 Panel Q&A
4 Audience discussion
4:30 Final remarks
6 p.m. – book fair closes
11:30AM
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12:00PM
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13:00PM
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14:30PM
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16:00PM
AGENDA
keynote sPEAKER
HOW TO GET THERE?
Main history conference:
Kenai Peninsula College, Kenai River Campus
156 College Rd, Soldotna AK 99669
Take the Sterling Highway to Kalifornsky Beach Road (just south of the Kenai River Bridge) and turn west. Go 1.7 miles, then turn right onto Community College Drive. Follow it 1.4 miles; the campus is on the right. http://www.kpc.alaska.edu/about/maps-directions/kpc_maps/
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Exhibits will be in the Commons of the McLane Building. Presentations, movies, and the panel discussion will be in the Ward Building, room 102.
Auxiliary events:
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Book Fair, to benefit ROSSIA, on Saturday, April 22, at KPC
Field trips on Sunday, April 23, details pending
see those links for updates
Andrei Znamenski
has studied history and anthropology both in Russia and the United States. His major interests include Native people and religions of Alaska and Siberia. His first book, Shamanism and Christianity (1999) explores indigenous responses to 19th-century Russian Orthodox missionaries. A follow-up project, Through Orthodox Eyes (2003), translates the journals of Kenai area missionaries who worked among the Dena’ina in south-central Alaska. His other books are The Beauty of the Primitive: Shamanism and Western Imagination (2007), Red Shambhala (2011), and two anthologies he edited. Znamenski has lived and traveled extensively in Siberia, Alaska, northern Europe, and Japan, and was the keynote speaker at the 2009 annual meeting of the Alaska Historical Society. Formerly a resident scholar at the Library of Congress, then a foreign visiting professor at Hokkaido University, Japan, he is currently Professor of History at the University of Memphis.
