Over the past month, I’ve been working with Kyle Conway and Carenlee Barkdull to organize a conference on new research, challenges, and culture in the Bakken oil patch. We are particularly interested in research that considers how the patch is adapting to the current decline in oil prices, production, and activity in the Bakken, but we also recognize the the current bust might not be a permanent state so we are equally interested in works that considers changes in the Bakken related to any number of political, social, and economic issues.
Some of our motivation comes from the time that Kyle and I have spent editing the Bakken Goes Boom volume. The papers in this volume are, in general, fine and sophisticated, but are also a bit preliminary. We recognize that we only captured a sliver of the important research taking place in the Bakken and, in many cases, on the the preliminary results of this work.
So the Digital Press has teamed up with the College of Nursing and Professional Disciplines to hold a one-day conference on Friday October 30th at the University of North Dakota. We hope to be able to run a couple of formal paper sessions and a couple of workshop sessions where people from the arts, humanities, and social sciences discuss their work and the work presented in the formal papers. We plan to have a
Here’s the call for papers. Abstracts are due July 1. Contact me for more details.
The Bakken Goes Bust?
New Research on Communities, Challenges, and Culture in the Bakken Oil Patch
For most of the past decade, the Bakken oil boom has generated unprecedented economic growth, population increases, and industrialization in western North Dakota. For much of this time, researchers in North Dakota and surrounding states have worked to understand the impact of the Bakken Boom on the state, the participants in the new economic growth, and long-standing communities in the affected regions. The rapid changes in region, the difficulties acquiring reliable data, and the myriad of interrelated challenges and opportunities facing the Bakken region have spurred creative projects and research initiatives prompted by wide range of challenging questions concerning the impact of the boom.
The Bakken Goes Bust? conference invites abstracts for contributions (<250 words) from scholars involved in all area of social science and humanities research, teaching, and creative work that explore the challenges associated with the Bakken oil boom. While this conference encourages submissions on any recent Bakken research, we are particularly interested in research and creative activities that embrace the “spatial turn” in the humanities and social sciences, considers the rhetoric of boom (and bust), examines the impact of social or new media on communities, situates the Bakken boom in a national or global context, or explores issues of crime, discrimination, and social justice in the patch.
The one-day conference will feature formal papers as well as interactive workshop sessions over the course of a single day. A public event in downtown Grand Forks will offer a critical capstone to the day’s events and provide an opportunity for socializing and outreach. The one-day conference will be held at the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, ND on Friday, October 30th. Abstracts are due by July 1.
The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota has expressed interest in publishing the proceedings of the conference as a companion volume to their Bakken Goes Boom book slated to appear in the fall of 2015.
Part of the fun of this conference is that we’re working with almost no budget so we’re approaching it punk rock style. In other words, we’re not going worry about whether every participant has a awesome UND branded folder and note pad. We’re not going to get anxious about whether every “stakeholder” has embossed invitations. We want to have actual conversations about the art, culture, and social world of the Bakken rather than to use this event to showcase how much UND cares about some imaginary place or problem or thing. We just want to do it. To show how punk rock I am, I did ignored the Oxford comma in the poster. And, I made the poster myself. Yeah!
So we need a poster in black-and-white with a type-o that we can staple to bulletin boards across campus.
Archaeology of the Mediterranean World 