Part of our Future of Preservation webinar series | Click here to register for the Zoom
This panel will use the iconic Erie Canal as a starting point for a conversation about how organizations can be better about sharing complicated histories, touching on issues related to environmental justice, urban renewal, disinvestment, segregation, and displacement. The panelists will also talk about implementation, how we take steps to truly tell a more complete story through our preservation work.
Renee Barry, Erie Canal Research Fellow, Erie Canal Museum
Alyssa Mt. Pleasant, PhD, Historian and Scholar of Native American & Indigenous Studies, ATW Research + Consulting
Danielle Nagle, PhD, Postdoctoral Scholar in Landscape Architecture, SUNY ESF
Dana Olesch, PhD Candidate in Anthropology, Syracuse University
Lacey Wilson, Public Historian for Albany African American History Project, Albany Institute of History and Art
If having a sign language interpreter present for this webinar would facilitate your participation, please let us know at least one week in advance: kpeace@preservenys.org
Renée Barry is the 2021-2023 Erie Canal Research Fellow at the Erie Canal Museum. She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in the Environmental Humanities and a Master of Science degree in Environmental Studies. Renée recently published original research entitled “Visualizing Heritage: A critical discourse analysis of place, race, and nationhood along the Erie Canal” with Dr. Lemir Teron in Local Environment: The International Journal of Justice and Sustainability. Her work critically examines the ongoing environmental inequalities of the “Empire” State.
Alyssa Mt. Pleasant is a scholar whose research focuses on Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) history during the Revolutionary War era. She holds a PhD in History from Cornell University and has been a faculty member in History, American Studies, and interdisciplinary Ethnic Studies departments at Yale University and the University at Buffalo (SUNY). Dr. Mt. Pleasant served as founding Program Director of the Native American Scholars Initiative at the American Philosophical Society, connecting campus- and community-based Indigenous researchers with archival collections. In 2022, she was elected Secretary of the Native American and Indigenous Studies Association. That same year Dr. Mt. Pleasant established ATW Research + Consulting to focus on projects at the intersection of History and Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS) that include public-facing scholarship, archival research initiatives connecting Indigenous researchers with collections, and workshops for educators and other professionals that draw on the sources, methods, and scholarship of NAIS.
Danielle Nagle, Ph.D., is a Postdoctoral Associate in Landscape Architecture at SUNY-ESF where she studies complexities of (un)sustainability and (in)justice in outdoor recreation and tourism landscapes.
Danielle Nagle holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Science and works as a Postdoctoral Associate in the Department of Landscape Architecture at the SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry. Her current research utilizes sensory and arts-based approaches to help expand and deepen capacities for promoting more compassionate engagements with the interconnected material, discursive, political, relational, and affective complexities and contradictions of (un)sustainability and (in)justice in outdoor recreation and tourism landscapes. Her doctoral work on the outdoor and hunting industries has been published in the Journal of Sustainable Tourism and Geoforum.
Headshot of Dana Olesch, seen from the shoulders up. She is a white woman with dark blond hair and dark brown eyes. She is standing in front of a water feature.
Dana Olesch is a doctoral candidate in the Anthropology Department at Syracuse University. Trained as a historical archaeologist, she now researches cultural and structural violence that creates the palimpsest landscape of Syracuse, New York. Her research reveals how the identities of marginalized populations become historically and socially embedded and intertwined with water-saturated spaces such as swamps, open-air sewers, and the Erie Canal. She is currently visualizing the residential patterns and the spatial organization of the former Fifteenth Ward using GIS mapping, Sanborn Maps, and census schedules.
Beyond her academic research, Olesch has several ongoing community-based projects. Olesch regularly volunteers as a docent at the local Erie Canal Museum, allowing her to collaboratively develop her understanding of Syracuse and New York history with national and international visitors. She regularly contributes to exhibition design and research for small and large exhibits at the museum. Contributing to discussions of the implications of the creation of the I-81 Corridor, Olesch has given several academic and public lectures about the history of the former Fifteenth Ward. Continuing work that she began as an HNY Public Humanities Fellow, Olesch is creating an interactive online platform documenting the history of the Fifteenth Ward.
Lacey Wilson is the Public Historian of the Albany African American History Project at the Albany Institute of History and Art. Her area of focus is 20th and 21st century Albany Black history. She is currently working, in partnership with community stakeholders, to curate an exhibition on black creative performance in Albany. Recently, she spearheaded a project that brought middle-school and high school photography students, from Youth FX, to respond to Gordon Parks: I, too am America. In a previous role as a historic interpreter at the Owen-Thomas House and Slave Quarters, She was featured in the New York Times article “Enslaved People Lived Here: These Museums Want You to Know. “
She received her bachelor’s in history from the University of Maryland Baltimore County and her master’s in history with a concentration in museum studies from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. While at UNCG, she collaborated on “Etched in Stone? Governor Charles Aycock and the Power of Commemoration,” awarded the 2019 Award of Excellence and 2019 HIP (History in Progress) award winner by American Association for State and Local History ( AASLH). Additionally, she developed “Voices from the Cells,” an exhibit for GrowingChange from oral interviews on incarceration in North Carolina 1980s to 2000s.
Thank you to our sponsors, the Peggy N. & Roger G. Gerry Charitable Trust.