Is historic preservation relevant to the public and to experts, including scholars? Ever since I entered the field in 1998, my anecdotal experience has been that general interest in the field has been been on the decline, while, at the same time, people who are working in an area directly related to preservation policy (i.e., …
Historic preservation is dead. Long live (cultural) heritage preservation. Read More »
Earlier this year, as part of Lived Heritage Studies LLC, I successfully completed a project for the Historic Preservation Program at the University of Vermont (UVM) to help them create a “curricular vision” for their program. This project was catalyzed by UVM’s proposal, in 2020, to terminate many low-enrollment graduate programs, including the Historic Preservation …
A Curriculum Vision for the University of Vermont Read More »
At the recent meeting of the US chapter of the Association for Critical Heritage Studies, a frequent question, especially from graduate students, was “what is critical heritage studies”? There was a wide range of responses to this question, often from disciplinary perspectives, which should not be surprising given the very recent arrival of this field …
What Is Critical Heritage Studies and How Does It Incorporate the Discipline of History? Read More »
Recently, I was reading a post on LinkedIn where a World Heritage expert was attempting to define cultural heritage for the twenty-first century. Many people have tried to do this, especially in terms of World Heritage and state definitions of cultural heritage for use in the protection and inscription of built heritage. These are what …
The Rupture in Cultural Heritage Meanings: Where Are We Going? (Where Do We Want to Go?) Read More »
If you teach in an historic preservation or built heritage conservation program in a college or university, you may be aware that there are very few publications that directly address the pedagogical, curricular, and assessment needs of the field, especially from an international perspective. In fact, I would argue that until recently, there was no …
Back in 2009, the Getty held a conference on “Consensus Building, Negotiation, and Conflict Resolution for Heritage Place Management.” Although perhaps a bit tardy, the eponymous proceedings have finally been published (edited by David Myers, Stacie Nicole Smith, and Gail Ostergren) and I would recommend this publication as an obligatory read for practitioners in the …
A few weeks ago, I attended the 7th National Forum on Preservation Practice hosted by Goucher College, which focused on the next 50 years of practice. One thing I’ve always liked about the National Forum is that it has a mix of both practitioners and academics, which helps to facilitate productive exchanges that otherwise would …
What Will Historic Preservation Look Like in 50 Years? Read More »
In the United States, several people have had an unusually large impact on the practice of historic preservation. James Marston Fitch created the first historic preservation degree program; Charles Peterson started the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS); W. Brown Morton, III was mostly responsible for writing the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards; and Pat Parker …
Fixing the Environmental Review Process and Section 106 Read More »
A few years back, Kent State University published a book on Historic Preservation and Urban Change (Terry Schwarz, editor). In it was a paper by a familiar author: Jack D. Elliott, Jr. Elliott had a profound effect on my doctoral research when I came across his 2002 article on “radical preservation” in the National Trust …
Preservation Policy’s Subversion of “Significance” Read More »
As an expert in historic preservation pedagogy and curriculum design, I often examine the curricula of post-secondary degree programs that address tangible and/or intangible heritage. One theme that consistently emerges is that, in the United States, in these curricula, “heritage studies” is often treated as a functional equivalent to public history. But, most importantly, the …
