Schedule
TBA. Please check back in the coming days.
Presentations
Flynn Larson MAHP ‘25: The Indigenous Cultural Landscape: Approaching a Community Centered Approach to US Heritage Preservation
Abstract: Heritage preservation in the United States continues to prioritize material integrity and formal designation, often overlooking the relationships, responsibilities, and knowledge systems that sustain cultural places. The Indigenous Cultural Landscape (ICL) approach offers a community-centered method that documents and treats heritage through Indigenous perspectives, emphasizing continuity, reciprocity, and stewardship. Drawing on international examples of Indigenous-led management, this study examines how relational approaches to heritage can inform preservation practice within existing U.S. frameworks. This study applies the ICL approach to Bear Lodge (Devils Tower National Monument) to demonstrate how federal preservation can better support Indigenous authority, knowledge, and ongoing cultural use. By adapting established tools such as the Cultural Landscape Inventory and Cultural Landscape Report, the study shows how preservation can move beyond static documentation toward active, collaborative stewardship. The ICL framework expands current practice by integrating relational integrity alongside physical condition, offering a practical and additive path toward more equitable, responsive, and community-informed preservation in the United States.
Suzanne Delle MADC ‘27: Keeping Tabs: Ethics of Care and Surveillance in Swiftie Fan Participation
Abstract: Music fandom has long functioned as a deeply personal and affective practice, shaping identity, memory, and community through emotional connection, creative expression, and shared meaning-making. In digitally networked environments, these practices increasingly unfold in real time, reshaping how fans participate in, and mediate, musical culture. This presentation, born out of DCOM603, examines Taylor Swift’s fandom during the Eras Tour as a case study in how technologically enabled participation can simultaneously foster intimacy, belonging, and creative engagement while introducing ethical tensions around privacy, consent, and safety.
Isabella Bruno MAESM ‘26: Sustainability in Practice: Decision-Making and Tradeoffs in an Independent Restaurants
Abstract: This capstone project examines how sustainability is prioritized and negotiated within an independent Baltimore restaurant, focusing on how everyday operational realities shape what sustainability looks like in practice. The project investigates how different stakeholders define sustainability, which sustainability practices are currently implemented, and what factors influence the feasibility and prioritization of additional sustainability initiatives. Using a qualitative, action-oriented case study design, data was collected through semi-structured interviews with the restaurant’s owner, employees, regular customers, and local suppliers, in addition to observational insights. The findings show that sustainability is guided by the restaurant’s values and reflected in sourcing and waste reduction practices, but is limited by high labor costs, building constraints, and competing operational priorities such as infrastructure and maintenance over new sustainability initiatives. This case study highlights the need for tailored recommendations that are realistic and financially feasible. Action items for this particular restaurant are discussed.
Benjamin F. Simon MAESM ‘26: Using Quasi-Experimental Methods to Discern the Effectiveness of Farmland Protection Policies
Abstract: Urban expansion is an important driver of farmland loss in the United States. In response, many governments have adopted land-use policies designed to slow the conversion of farmland at the urban fringe to other uses. The goal of this research is to establish to what extent farmland protection policies increase farmland cover relative to areas without such policies. Using Northern Virginia as a study area, this study used pair matching as a quasi-experimental approach to disentangle the impact of farmland protection policies from other drivers of land-use change. The results did not indicate any significant change in land-use as the result of the implementation of farmland protection policies over the short term, suggesting that such policies should not be implemented to achieve immediate goals. This highlights the need to investigate the impact of farmland protection policies over longer time scales.
MacKenzie DeBruhl MACS ‘27: Looming Large in Palestine: an ancient olive tree
Abstract: This study examines the cultural landscape of the al-Badawi olive tree in al-Walaja village of Palestine through assemblage theory and a tripartite analytical framework of matterscape, mindscape, and powerscape. Situated at the nexus of biocultural heritage, geopolitical contestation, and dispossession, the research highlights how the nearly five-thousand-year-old tree operates simultaneously as a symbol for Indigenous belonging, a site of sacred resistance and persistence – sumud, as well as a flashpoint in ongoing struggles over land, identity, and sovereignty. The study advances relational approaches to heritage by foregrounding how the material, affective, and political dimensions co-constitute a contested site under illegal occupation.