The College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences held its 38th Annual Research Conference on Friday, March 10 at the Humanities and Social Sciences Building. The theme for this year’s conference was “Science & Art: Convergence in Oceania.”
The participants represented a wide range of scholarly disciplines, and discussed various topics related to art, communication, culture, language, science, and Pacific Island Studies.
This year, there were over 60 presentations. Fifteen of the presenters were from other countries such as the Philippines Japan, and others.
The conference’s key note speaker was Vincente Diaz, Ph.D., a faculty member of American Indian Studies and History at the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, and the author of “Repositioning the Missionary: Rewriting the Histories of Colonialism, Native Catholicism, and Indigeneity in Guam.”
The key note address was held at the UOG Lecture Hall, where Diaz presented his topic on “Stepping In It: Decolonizing and Indigenous Nation Rebuilding through Olfaction and Multi-sensory Analyses.”
Diaz spoke to a standing-room-only crowd of about 300 attendees. His presentation discussed the possibility of retracing and acquiring indigenous knowledge through an olfactory approach, which refer to using the sense of smell.
“I talked about an article I wrote recently that called people to learn how to smell our histories,” Diaz said.
“This presentation continued that by asking exactly how do you do it and I used that as an example to open up more complexities about smelling.”
Irena Keckes, Ph.D., assistant professor of art, and chairperson of this year’s CLASS Conference said she was very satisfied with the conference’s outcomes.
“The novelty was also to engage students and teaching assistants to chair and time keep the sessions,” Keckes said.
“It was the first time for the event to take place on a separate date from the Charter Day, which enabled the UOG community to more actively take part in the conference.”