Image shows a three-quarter frame of five stripes. The stripes run along the top and left of the image border. The color order is as follows: 1) black; 2) light blue; 3) light green; 4) dark green; 5) light blue. The final square is a dark blue box with a picture of people watching another group of people present at the front room. The image is partially transparent to allow the viewer to read the text. The text reads: The Graduate History Association Presents the 2026 Milton Plesur Graduate Conference Breaking the Silo: A Celebration of Interdisciplinary Scholarship and Cross-Departmental Conversations. All text is white with a black outline to differentiate from dark blue background.

The 2026 Milton Plesur Graduate Conference

About the Conference

The 2026 Milton Plesur Graduate Conference is a forum for graduate students to share their scholarship with their colleagues, faculty, and interested members of the public. 

This year’s theme is “Breaking the Silo: A Celebration of Interdisciplinary Scholarship and Cross-Departmental Conversations.” The process of knowledge production is often isolating and can relegate us to particular silos of thought. “Breaking the Silo” is the intentional effort to provide graduate students the opportunity to share their intellectual and methodological strengths as scholars with colleagues from across the hall.

Registration Information

Registration for the Keynote Speaker Event: https://buffalo.campuslabs.com/engage/event/12259072.

Registration for the Graduate Panel Series: https://buffalo.campuslabs.com/engage/event/12259073

There are two registration links for this event. If you would like to attend both days, you may either register twice OR register for one event and send an email to Alyssa Martin (ajm223@buffalo.edu) to state that you’d like your single registration to count for both days.

Same-day registration is available for both conference days.

Please note that registering in advance guarantees meals ordered. For those registering same-day, food is first come, first serve.

The Plesur Conference is a two-day event:

Day 1 of the conference is our keynote speaker and reception. The Graduate History Association is proud to welcome Dr. Susan Burch as our keynote speaker. Dr. Burch is a professor of American Studies at Middlebury College in Vermont. Her research and teaching interests focus on histories of deaf, disability, Mad, race, ethnicity, Indigeneity, and gender and sexuality. Material culture, oral history, and inclusive design play an important role in her work. Burch has received numerous grants and awards for her work, including an American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship, National Archives regional residency fellowship, National Endowment for the Humanities and Mellon Foundation grants, and a Fulbright Scholars award.
Her latest book, Committed: Native Families, Institutionalization, and Remembering
(UNCP, 2021) centers on peoples’ lived experiences inside and outside the Canton
Asylum, a federal psychiatric institution created specifically to detain
American Indians

Dr. Burch will present her talk titled “Edge work: reflections on learning, unlearning, and reimagining,” in which she discusses the importance of interdisciplinary scholarship and cross-departmental collaboration as it relates to her own work.

The Jensen family quilt’s twelve squares hold blue plates within larger circles of bright calico fabrics. Handstitched names of family members surround each circle and are slightly bumpy to the touch. The quilt is wide and long enough to wrap around two people. This piecework was made by Prairie Band Potawatomi healer O-Zoush-Quah, and her daughter, Pah-Kish-Ko-Quah, while O-Zoush-Quah was incarcerated at Canton Asylum, ca. 1910–30.
 Jensen family quilt. Photograph by Alexanderportraits.com, courtesy of Jack Jensen

Day 2 is a day-long series of moderated panels featuring UB graduate student speakers representing ten different departments at UB, including history, English, gender studies, Africana and American studies and more! Panels will focus on a wide range of themes, including but not limited to theoretical interventions in current scholarship, sovereignty and statehood, writing as praxis, resistances in film and visual archives, and local studies of Western New York’s past and present. Breakfast and lunch will be provided.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact Alyssa Martin at ajm223@buffalo.edu.

All participants must review the GSA’s Safety Acknowledgement and Participant Disclaimer before attending. 

Milton Plesur Graduate Conference Schedule

Friday, March 27th, 2026

UB North Campus Davis Hall, Rm 101

3:00-3:30 PM Registration & Welcome                               

3:30-4:00 PM Opening Remarks

Alyssa Martin (History) “A (Re)Introduction to the Plesur Conference & Introducing Dr. Burch”

4:00 PM-5:30 PM Keynote Speech & Moderated Discussion

Dr. Susan Burch (Dept. of American Studies, Middlebury College) “Edge work: reflections on learning, unlearning, and reimagining”

Discussion facilitated by Alyssa Martin.

5:30-7:30 PM Reception

Saturday, March 28th, 2026

UB North Campus Natural Sciences Complex
Panel A Series: NSC, Rm. 218
Panel B Series: NSC, Rm. 222
Breakfast/Lunch: NSC, Rm. 228

9:00-10:00 AM Registration Check-In & Continental Breakfast

10:00-11:15 AM Panels 1A & 1B

Panel 1A “Disciplinary Interventions: New Approaches to Academic Pedagogy and Method”

Panelists consider new approaches to method of study in their respective fields as well as how we communicate our scholarly endeavors not only with colleagues but with the broader public.

Moderated by Dr. Cari Casteel (Dept of History).

Panelists

Teya Juarez (Theater & Performance) “Modes of Dissemination: The Dramaturgical Zine”

Isaac Kolding (English) “Asking Big Questions in Humanities Scholarship Outreach”

Rachael Ojeleye (Linguistics) “Discourse, Fragment Answers, and Focus Marking In Yorùbá”

Hawa Saleh (English) “The Desire to Be Right in Perpetuity: Detecting the Hidden Insecurities in Said’s Orientalism” 

Tiffany Nhan (School of Social Work)“‘Where Are You From?…’ A Qualitative Study on Asian Americans’ Perspectives of Discrimination & Oppression”

Panel 1B “Resistances and Resonances: Approaching the Past, Present, and Future through Visual Analysis”

Panelists discuss various themes and modes of resistance through visual analysis, film theory, and material & visual archives.

Moderated by Dr. Robin Mitchell (Dept. of History).

Panelists:

Damilola Fagite (History) “Out in the Darkness: Postpartum Depression and Motherhood in Colonial Nigeria”

Sam King-Shaw (Global Gender & Sexuality Studies) “Claiming and Creating Ancestors: Black Queer Archives and Cross-Temporal Desire in The Watermelon Woman and Looking for Langston”

Molly Dunfield (Indigenous Studies) “Beyond Picasso: Eurocentric Modernism and Indigenous Collage”

Jessica Sullivan (History) “The Question of Agency: The Spatial Creation of Inclusion and Exclusion in Zion City”

11:30 AM-12:45 PM Panels 2A & 2B

Panel 2A “Sovereignty and Statehood: Imperialism and the Boundaries of Personhood”

Panelists discuss the tensions between citizens and subjects as state actors define and (re)define the boundaries of personhood through methods of waste disposal and environmental regulation, state policies on caregiving, and defining citizenship through state-drawn borders.

Moderated by Dr. Robert Caldwell (Dept. of Indigenous Studies).

Panelists

Kailey McDonald (Global Gender & Sexuality Studies) “Clear the Land: Wastelands, Land Use, and Relationality in Narratives of Colonial Nation-Building”

Oluwafisayo Ogundoro (Africana & American Studies) “Working Mothers and Unsustainable Childcare Policy in the Time of Crisis: A Social History of COVID-19 in NY and Georgia”

Delaney O’Connell (Indigenous Studies) “‘Former’ to Future: Reinscribing Indian Territory on the Map of Oklahoma”

Alyssa Warrior (Indigenous Studies) “An Analysis of the Cattaraugus Creek”

Juan Basallo (Romance Languages & Literatures) “‘Las voces del estrecho’ a graveyard in the sea”

Panel 2B “Local Studies, Local Impacts: Interdisciplinary Approaches to the History and Culture of Western New York”

Panelists consider the historical impacts and current social significance of the stories, people, and places of the Greater Buffalo Area and Western New York.

Moderated by Dr. Sarah Handley-Cousins (Dept. of History).

Panelists

Josh Allen (Global Gender and Sexuality Studies) “Racial empires of sensation: Sense and sentimentality at the 1901 Pan-American Expo in Buffalo, New York”

Kyle Weinsheimer (History) “Nobody Dead, Everybody Dying: A Critical Retelling of the Buffalo Uprising of 1967”

Jonas Adams (Sociology & Criminology) “Future Projections of City and Nature in the Making of a Rust Belt Road”

Rachel Pitonyak (Africana & American Studies) “Film Distribution and Exhibition: How the COVID-19 Pandemic Challenged Small and Independent Theatres in the Buffalo-Niagara Region”

1:00-2:00 PM Catered Lunch

2:15-3:30 PM Panel 3A

Panel 3A “Writing as Praxis: Exploring Trauma, Relationship Building, and Identity Making through Narrative”

Panelists discuss the varying uses of writing as a form of praxis in academic scholarship. Topics include exploring identity-making through interpersonal relationships, the production of liminal spaces and identities through writing, and understanding the texts which define a collective international/transnational trauma.

Moderated by Dr. Michael Rembis (Dept. of History).

Panelists

Gagne (English) “Gal Pals: Romantic Friendship, Best of Friends, and Lesbianism in Twentieth-Century United States”

Hannah Gordon (Global Gender & Sexuality Studies) “Tidal Spills: Trauma, Temporality, and the Sticky Matter of Intra-Activity”

Kamla Persaud (English) “Truth-telling in Foucauldian Genealogy as Psychoanalytic Cure”

Chijioke Ngobili (History) “Of African Pains: A Critical Review of the Study of African Traumas from Mid-Twentieth Century to Present”