Schedule 2021

Desert Skies Final Program 

This schedule is a complete guide to participating in the 2021 Desert Skies Symposium. Each session and paper session room has been assigned its own Zoom link. You can find those links by clicking on each of the session and paper room titles (i.e., “Plenary Session 1,” “Room Three”). 

Additionally, you can find abstracts for each paper session at the top of each session, and you can see lightning talk introductions to the papers by clicking on most of the paper titles.

We look forward to starting the symposium with the Welcome and Orientation on Thursday, February 18th at 9:00 am MST.  During the first session of each day, you can enjoy last-minute announcements as well as answers to questions that have been addressed in previous emails over your morning beverage of choice! 

One of the most enjoyable part of conference attendance is the sometimes-spontaneous/sometimes-long awaited conversations we take up with colleagues and new acquaintances. On both Thursday and Friday, we’ll end the day with a session of “Conversation and Reflection.” We invite you to gather to talk about the day, about questions, about problems, about ideas, and about actions. We’ve designed Desert Skies 2021 to focus on matters of equity and justice, with three plenary speakers who will have much to offer us alongside your thought-provoking papers. 

We’ll have several breakout rooms that you can enter on your own. So, invite a graduate student, senior scholar, close friend, or new collaborator to coffee, dinner, or a drink throughout the day with plans to meet during the Conversation and Reflection session. 

If you’d like to host a conversation on a specific topic, let us know and we’ll set up a room for you. You can tell us about the breakout discussions you’d like to have in advance by emailing your ideas to desertskies2021@asu.edu. We hope to generate ideas that can lead to action and transformative change for all of us.  

The conference ends with two sessions for everyone. The first is labeled “Reflection and Calls to Action.” We hope that the conference generates ideas for how each of us individually and all of us collectively might continue to work toward justice and equity in our lives and our profession. Please join us during this time to reflect, think, and act. Finally, the very last session is an “End of Conference Zoom Room Celebration.” We will be very glad to hear your ideas about conference during that time, and, we don’t know about you, but happy hour will have arrived in Arizona by then. Please join us!