About
"Post-Helene: Remembering, Rebuilding, Reimagining" is a faculty-led, campus-wide, community-engaged symposium, funded by the NEH Professorship under the direction of Dr. William Bares (humanities/arts), with assistance from Dr. Megan Underhill (social sciences) and Dr. David Gillette (natural sciences). Spread across UNC Asheville's diverse academic environment and beyond, the three-day symposium offers a place for collective reflection on Helene's legacy.
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The one-year milestone is an opportunity for commemoration, examination, and visioning. Disaster researchers will be writing about Helene for years to come. We believe that UNC Asheville has an important role to play in coordinating research, teaching, outreach and creative work relating to recovery in in our area. The planned panels, presentations, screenings, workshops, excursions, concerts, installations and exhibitions highlight the expertise, interconnectedness and resilience of our community.
Organizers
Dr. William Bares​
NEH Distinguished Professor and Professor of Music William Bares received his Ph.D in ethnomusicology from Harvard University and taught at Harvard, Brown, Berklee College of Music and the New England Conservatory before moving to UNC Asheville in 2011. Bares's musical and academic interests lie in the fields of jazz studies, experimental music, and ecomusicology. He has published articles in American Music, Jazz Research Journal, and the Grove Dictionary of American Music, and his book, Jazz and the European Dream, is forthcoming on Routledge Press. An active pianist and music promoter in Asheville’s musical community, Bares has released several albums, leads acclaimed local groups, and hosted several series, including the weekly Sunday Jazz Showcase at Asheville’s Isis Music Hall, and “Ecomusicologies 2014: Dialogues”—a conference/festival that took place in Asheville in October 2014. .
Dr. Megan Underhill
Megan R. Underhill joined the Sociology and Anthropology Department at UNC Asheville in 2016 and now serves as department chair. Trained in both cultural anthropology and sociology, she describes herself as an inequality-oriented teacher and researcher. In the classroom, her courses focus on racial and class inequality in the United States and invite students to imagine how we might build a more just world. Megan began her research career as a disaster scholar examining issues of social vulnerability. Today, her work centers on how white parents teach their children about race and racism—a critical but often overlooked dimension of racial socialization. Her book manuscript, A Movement or a Moment: Antiracist White Parenting in the Time of Black Lives Matter, is forthcoming with Stanford University Press and draws on interviews with white parents from Asheville, North Carolina.
Dr. David Gillette
Dr. David Gillette has been teaching environmental science at UNC Asheville since 2008 and current serves as department chair. He earned a PhD in ecology and evolutionary biology from the University of Oklahoma where he studied the importance of connections between terrestrial and aquatic habitats to stream fishes. Before coming to UNCA, Dr. Gillette taught for a year at Austin College in Texas. At UNCA, Dr. Gillette and his students are investigating the impacts of human activities on aquatic ecosystems in western North Carolina, and the effectiveness of practices designed to remediate those impacts. During the 2015/2016 academic year, Dr. Gillette traveled to Nepal with support from the Fulbright Foundation, World Wildlife Fund and National Geographic Society to investigate effects of environmental change on Himalayan fishes.
Team Members
Send inquiries about the conference to Alex Severa at asevera@unca.edu
Alex Severa
Administrative Coordinator
Alexandria Severa is a graduate of the Anthropology program at UNCA, starting her freshman year in fall 2020 and graduating in 2024. During her time as a student at UNCA she published two papers with the help of Dr. John Wood and Dr. Heidi Kelley,. Currently, she works as the administrative assistant to the Humanities Program and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Blaikley Thompson
Event Coordinator
Blaikley Thompson is a psychology student at the University of North Carolina Asheville. She has been honored to assist in the UNCA symposium, primarily serving as the event coordinator for community gatherings following the symposium sessions. Blaikley loves the outdoors, bringing people together and seeing the joy that comes from connection.