Alyssa Manansala is a PhD student in the department of American Studies at Brown University. Her research interests include Asian American poetry and hybrid literary forms, Filipinx studies, postcolonial theory, performance theory, and visual/media culture. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing from the California Institute of the Arts, where she was awarded the 2018/2019 Teaching Fellowship and the 2019 REEF Artist Residency.

Sarah Bell is a 3^rd year PhD student at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown.  Her research focuses on architecture, memory, and the visitation of abandoned spaces in both the ancient and the contemporary worlds. 

Steven Lubar is the Faculty Director of the Center for Digital Scholarship, Professor of American Studies, and Professor of History. He teaches in the master’s program in Public Humanities at Brown.

This post is a synopsis of a talk, part of the Center’s summer series, given by Dr. De Quintal earlier this year. We are grateful for her willingness to adapt it for publication here. – Ed.

Denene De Quintal, Ph.D. is currently the Assistant Curator for Native American Art at the Detroit Institute of Arts.  She is formerly the Denver Art Museum's inaugural Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow in American Indian Art; during her fellowship she conducted part of the research for this project.

At a time when so much of our focus is on national events and crises here, it is also important to recognize that there are those in our community who also are dealing with the impact of violence, loss, and upheavals that, while occurring beyond our borders, have profound and personal impact. The Center’s Administrative Manager, Sabina Sarkisyan Griffin, is among them. – Ed.