The conference opens Friday evening with a passionate appeal from preservationists and photographers discussing the fate, beauty, and majesty of early survivals of religious spaces. It continues Saturday morning and afternoon with presentations on music, graffiti, and icons in public religious spaces; on the continuing competition of traditional Catholics as well as local English and American religious sects; and on the retention of transatlantic architectural memory and the prefabrication of joinery within New England. The conference concludes with talks on the disestablishment movement in New England and the effect of shifting populations. An optional field trip to tour the 1739 Pelham meetinghouse and other structures will be offered. Books on meetinghouses and other publications will be available for purchase; selected papers from this conference will be published by the Dublin Seminar.

The Seminar is designed for educators, historians, collectors, independent scholars, librarians, preservationists, and museum curators, as well as students and the general public. A selected and edited transcript of this conference will appear as the 2018 Annual Proceedings of the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife, to be issued about two years after the conference. Past Seminar Proceedings and publications by program speakers will be available at the conference.

The 43rd annual meeting in the Dublin Seminar series, "Religious Spaces: Our Vanishing Landmarks" will take place at Historic Deerfield, Deerfield, Massachusetts.   Housing is available at group rates at local hotels.      

For the complete conference schedule of lectures, please visit 

www.historic-deerfield.org.

Advance registration for the conference is available online or a registration form can be downloaded at www.historic-deerfield.org . Registrants may request complimentary lecture abstracts through e-mail. For information and registration by telephone, contact Julie Orvis at (413) 775-7179 or events@historic-deerfield.org .

  

The Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife is a continuing series of conferences, exhibitions, and publications whose purpose is to explore everyday life, work, and culture in New England's past. Founded on the premise that traditional lore and material folk culture are rapidly disappearing in New England, the series focuses attention on emerging areas of folk studies, regional and local history, cultural geography, historical archaeology, and vernacular and antiquarian studies. Conferences are held in June or July of each year with concurrent exhibitions at participating museums and art galleries. Dublin Seminar conferences are sponsored by Historic Deerfield.