History 697U/797U: Landscape and Memory
Spring 2008, Herter
Thurs 1:00-3:30
office hours W 1:30-3:30 and by appt.
D. Glassberg
Herter 608, 545-4252
glassberg@history.umass.edu
This seminar explores the relationship between historical consciousness and
environmental perception, or "sense of history" and "sense of place." Among the topics
we will consider are how individuals and groups identify with particular environments;
represent those environments in words and pictures; and transform those environments
through the creation of monuments and memorials, historic preservation, and heritage
tourism. Of particular interest are issues associated with the identification and
protection of cultural landscapes. We will discuss theoretical works and case studies
drawn from a variety of disciplines, including cultural geography, history, anthropology,
and landscape architecture. Students registering for 697U will be responsible for
leading discussions and writing two short papers based on weekly readings, as well as
a final presentation and short paper analyzing a particular site. Students registering for
797U will be expected to lead discussions and write an original research paper
exploring some aspect of this phenomenon in a particular place and time.
Books on reserve and available for purchase at Amherst Books, 8 Main Street, Amherst
Alanen & Melnick, eds. Preserving Cultural Landscapes in America
Page, Max Creative Destruction Of Manhattan
Low, Setha On The Plaza
Basso, Keith Wisdom Sits In Places
Sandweiss, Martha Print The Legend
Foote, Kenneth Shadowed Ground
Hayden, Dolores Power Of Place
Schein, R. ed. Landscapes of Race
Southwick, Sally, Building On A Borrowed Past
Walkowitz & Knauer, eds. Memory And The Impact Of Political Transformation
In Public Space
Page & Mason, eds. Giving Preservation A History
Glassberg, David Sense Of History
Additional books with required readings are on Reserve; some chapters and
articles are on ereserve (password “landscape”), and many journals are
available online through JSTOR and other databases. Note also that the
journal Places (20th floor of library) contains many additional articles of use
and inspiration.
1/31
Introduction: What is Landscape? What is Memory
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2/7
Theories and Methods
B. Zelizer, “Reading the Past Against the Grain: The Shape of Memory Studies,”
Critical Studies in Mass Communication (June 1995): 214-39.
K. Klein, “On the Emergence of Memory in Historical Discourse,”
Representations 69 (2000): 127-50.
D. Glassberg, “Public History and the Study of Memory,” Public Historian 18
(Spring 1996); 7-23. Or see Glassberg, “Sense of History,” in Sense of
History (2001), pp. 3-22.
D. Glassberg, “Interpreting Landscapes,” in Public History and the Environment
ed. Melosi and Scarpino (2004), pp. 23-36.
J.B. Jackson, “The Word Itself,” in Discovering the Vernacular Landscape (1984),
pp. 1-8.
P. Groth, “Frameworks for Cultural Landscape Study,” in Understanding Ordinary
Landscapes ed. Groth and Bressi (1997), pp. 1-24.
Yi-Fu Tuan, “Thought and Landscape: The Eye and the Mind’s Eye,” in The
Interpretation of Ordinary Landscapes ed. D. Meinig (1978), 89-102.
Raymond Williams, “Ideas of Nature,” in Problems in Materialism and Culture:
Selected Essays (1980), pp. 67-85.
A. Baker, “Introduction: On Ideology and Landscape,” in Ideology and Landscape
in Historical Perspective ed. Baker and Biger (1988), 1-14.
D. Hayden, “Urban Landscape History: The Sense of Place and the Politics of
Space,” in Understanding Ordinary Landscapes ed. Groth and Bressi
(1997), pp. 111-33. also in Hayden, The Power of Place, pp. 14-43.
A. Spirn, “Landscape Genres,” in The Language of Landscape (1998), pp. 54-77.
D. Lowenthal, “Past Time, Present Place: Landscape and Memory,”
Geographical Review (January 1975): 1-36.
2/14
Case Study: History, Place, Modernity in New York City
Max Page, Creative Destruction of Manhattan, 1900-40
2/21
Case Study: History and Public Space in San José Costa Rica
S. Low, On the Plaza: The Politics of Public Space and Culture
2/28
Forms of Representation: Words
K. Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places
J.B. Harley, “Maps, Knowledge, and Power,” in The Iconography of Landscape
ed. Cosgrove and Daniels (1988), 277-312.
E. Casey, “Retangularity & Truth, “in Representing Place: Landscape Painting
and Maps (2002)
2
3/6
Forms of Representation: Pictures
M. Sandweiss, Print the Legend: Photography and the American West
J. Sears, “Scenery as Art: Yosemite and the Big Trees,” in Sacred Places:
American Tourist Attractions in the 19C, pp. 122-55.
S. Schama, “The Verdant Cross,” Landscape and Memory, pp. 185-206.
E. Casey, “Pursuing the Natural Sublime: Thomas Cole’s Oxbow, “ in
Representing Place: Landscape Painting and Maps (2002)
S. Daniels, “The Political Iconography of Woodland in Later Georgian England,”
in Iconography of Landscape ed. Cosgrove and Daniels (1988), 43-82.
Picturing Old New England: Image & Memory ed. W. Truettner & R. Stein (1999)
D. Brown, Inventing New England: Regional Tourism in the 19th Century
P. Cenkl, This Vast Book Of Nature: Writing The Landscape Of New
Hampshire’s White Mountains, 1784-1911 (2006).
3/13
Forms of Intervention: Marking and Obliteration
K. Foote, Shadowed Ground: America’s Landscapes of Violence and Tragedy
J. B. Jackson, “The Necessity for Ruins,” in The Necessity for Ruins (1980), pp.
89-102.
E. Linenthal, The Unfinished Bombing: Oklahoma City in American Memory
(2001)
E. Linenthal , Sacred Ground: Americans and Battlefields
L. Lippard, Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society (1997)
M. Potteiger & J. Purinton, “Openings,” in Landscape Narratives: Design
Practices for Telling Stories (1998)
H. Seine & S. Webster, eds, Critical Issues in Public Art: Content, Context,
Controversy (1992)
W. Logan, “Hoa Lo: A Vietnamese Approach to Conserving Places of Pain and
Injustice,” in Culture, Place, Identity ed. Garnham & Jeffery (2005), pp.
152-60.
Asaf's (Blondi) memorial web site:
www.Blondi.co.il
Israel's Terror victims commemorations: www.ezy.co.il
Spring break
3/27
Landscape and Identity: Migration and Attachment
D. Glassberg, “Place and Placelessness in American History,” in Sense of
History, pp. 109-27.
Yi-Fu Tuan, “Rootedness vs Sense of Place,” Landscape 24 (1980):3-8.
3
Robert B. Riley, “Reflections on the Landscapes of Memory,” Landscape 23
(1979): 11-18.
C. Cooper Marcus, “Environmental Memories,” in Place Attachment ed. I. Altman
and S. Low (1992), 87-112.
L. Chawla, “Childhood Place Attachments,” in Place Attachment ed. I. Altman
and S. Low (1992), 63-85.
B. Allen, “The Genealogical Landscape and the Southern Sense of Place,” in
Sense of Place: American Regional Cultures ed. Allen and Schlereth
(1990), 152-63.
M. Fried, “Grief and Adaptation: The Impact of Relocation in Boston’s West End,”
and K. Neustadt, “It is Indeed a Strange and Wonderful Emotion You
Arouse: Memory, History, and the Old West End,” in The Last Tenement:
Confronting Community and Urban Renewal in Boston’s West End ed.
Fisher and Hughes (1992), pp. 80-93, 94-105.
A. Dawson & M. Johnson, “Migration, Exile, and Landscapes of Imagination,” in
Contested Landscapes: Movement, Exile, Place, ed. B. Bender & M.
Winer, 319-32.
Leo Spitzer, “Back Through the Future: Nostalgic Memory and Critical Memory in
a Refuge from Nazism,” in Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present
ed. Bal, Crewe, Spitzer (1999), pp. 87-104.
D. Wrobel, “Remembered Journeys,” in Promised Lands: Promotion, Memory,
and the Creation of the American West (2002), pp. 95-119.
D. Glassberg, “Making Places in California,” in Sense of History, pp. 165-202..
V. Scharff, “Lighting Out for the Territory: Women, Mobility, and Western Place,”
in Power and Place in the North American West ed. R. White and J.
Findlay (1999), pp. 287-303.
4/3
Landscape and Identity: Ethnicity, Gender, Race, Class
P. Limerick, “Disorientation and Reorientation: The American Landscape
Discovered from the West,” Journal of American History (Dec 1992):
1021-49.
D. Hayden, “Invisible Angelenos,” and “Workers Landscapes and Livelihoods,” in
The Power of Place, pp. 82-137.
W. Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of
its Mexican Past
P. Kropp, California Vieja (chapters on Rancho Santa Fe and Olvera Street)
G. Dubrow, “Asian American Imprints on the Western Landscape,” in Preserving
Cultural Landscapes in America, ed. Alanen and Melnick, (2000), pp. 14368.
L. Aponte-Pares, “Appropriating Place in Puerto Rican Barrios,” in Preserving
Cultural Landscapes in America, ed. Alanen and Melnick, (2000), pp. 94111.
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J. Sewell, “Gender, Imagination, and Experiece in the Early 20C American
Downtown,” in Everday America: Cultural Landscape Studies After JB
Jackson ed. Groth & Wilson (2003), pp. 237-54.
T. Hareven & R. Langenbach, “Living Places, Work Places, and Historical
Identity,” in Our Past Before Us ed. D. Lowenthal (1981), 109-123.
R. Schein, ed. Landscape and Race in the U.S. (2006), selections as interested.
D. Upton, “White and Black Landscapes in 18C Virginia” in Material Life in
America ed. R. St. George, 357-69.
R. St. George, “Placing Race at Jefferson’s Monticello,” in Cultural Memory and
the Construction of Identity ed. Ben Amos and Weissberg (1999), 231-63.
R. Weyeneth, “The Architecture of Racial Segregation,” The Public Historian 27
(Fall 2005): 11-44.
4/10
Landscape and Identity: Locale and Nation
S. Southwick, Building on a Borrowed Past: Place and Identity in Pipestone,
Minnesota
B. Anderson, “Census, Map, Museum” Imagined Communities: Reflections on
the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (revised ed.1991), 163-85.
D. Walkowitz and L. Knauer, eds. Memory and the Impact of Political
Transformation in Public Space (2004), selections as interested.
A. Confino, “The Nation in the Mind,” in The Nation as a Local Metaphor:
Wurttemberg, Imperial Germany, and National Memory, 1871-1918, pp.
158-209.
T. Selwyn, “Landscapes of Separation: Reflections on the Symbolism of Bypass
Roads in Palestine,” in Contested Landscapes: Movement, Exile, Place,
ed. B. Bender & M. Winer, 225-40.
C. Bardenstein, “Trees, Forests, and the Shaping of Palestinian and Israeli
Collective Memory,” in Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Present ed.
Bal, Crewe, Spitzer (1999), pp. 148-68.
N. Stanley, “Chinese Theme Parks and National Identity,” in Theme Park
Landscapes: Antecedents and Variations (2002) ed. T. Young & R. Riley,
pp. 269-89.
4/17
Forms of Intervention: Historic Preservation and Heritage Tourism
M. Page and R. Mason, eds. Giving Preservation a History (2004)
“Introduction: Landscape Preservation in Context, 1890-1950” in Design With
Culture: Claiming America’s Landscape Heritage ed. Birnbaum & Hughes
(2005), pp. 1-18.
J. B. Jackson, “The Necessity for Ruins,” in The Necessity for Ruins (1980), pp.
89-102.
D. Lowenthal, “The Past as a Theme Park,” in Theme Park Landscapes:
Antecedents and Variations (2002) ed. T. Young & R. Riley, pp. 11-23.
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R. Francaviglia, “Selling Heritage Landscapes,” in Preserving Cultural
Landscapes in America, pp. 44-69.
P. Shackel, ed. Myth, Memory and the Making of the American Landscape
(2001)
4/24
Forms of Intervention: Civic Engagement, Cultural Conservation and Protected
Landscapes
“The National Park Service and Civic Engagement” (2001)
N. Mitchell & Susan Buggey, “Protected Landscapes and Cultural Landscapes,”
George Wright Forum 17 (2000): 35-46.
R. Hester, “Subconscious Landscapes of the Heart,” Places 2 (1985): 10-22.
M. Hufford, “Stalking the Native View: The Protection of Folklife in Natural
Habitats” in The Conservation of Culture: Folklorists and the Public Sector
ed. Burt Feintuch (1988), pp. 217-29.
D. Glassberg, “Rethinking New England Town Character” in Sense of History,
pp. 129-63.
5/1
Present student case studies
5/8
Present student case studies
5/15
Hand in final papers
6