Society for American Archaeology 2012 77th Annual Meeting, Memphis, TN Session: Lessons from the Trenches: The

Pedagogy of Archaeology and Heritage

Teaching Heritage Collaboratively at the University of Minnesota By: Kat Hayes, Phyllis Messenger, Greg Donofrio, Anduin Wilhide, and Patrick Nunnally (University of Minnesota, Twin Cities) Abstract: University of Minnesota scholars of heritage-related disciplines convened a sponsored research collaborative for the current academic year to explore an interdisciplinary pedagogical approach to training heritage resource professionals. This group included both University researchers (engaged in archaeology, architectural history and preservation, public history, natural resources, and museums) and non-academic professionals and community constituents. In this paper we present the summary of our findings on teaching heritage concepts common to our varied disciplines, engaging students in community-based experiential learning, and broader community-university partnerships in heritage resource management. This interdisciplinary collaboration can provide unique educational experiences to students, and serve community needs.

In the spring of 2011, the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota awarded funding support to an interdisciplinary collaborative of researchers to create a working group on how to create curriculum around heritage studies that would not only draw upon the expertise of multiple disciplines, but that would also demonstrate the advantages of an interdisciplinary approach to communityengaged heritage research and management. As a group, we originally were introduced to one another in the aptly named Locating Heritage Collaborative; the new group was thus named the Teaching Heritage Collaborative. Our core group of conveners represents archaeology, historic preservation in architecture, landscape architecture, and public history; though we also had the interest of faculty in museum studies, forestry and wildlife, American studies, American Indian studies, African/AfricanAmerican studies, and numerous community organizations in the Twin Cities area. We have sought to address the core question: How can we train heritage professionals who hold the interdisciplinary concept of heritage as central to their approach? A second question we have come to is: What does interdisciplinarity truly mean in our practice, in terms of our core concepts of heritage 1

study and management? Heritage is a term that has come to encompass the objects/subjects of study, protection, preservation, and education across a wide range of disciplines. Until relatively recently, topics as diverse as landscapes, histories, folk art, archaeological remains, archives, architecture and the built environment, natural environment, languages, and traditional cultural practices were studied and protected by specialized practitioners and communities. Scholars in those fields now recognize the significant elision of concepts previously approached as distinct realms, like culture and nature, social memory and history, past and present. As our fields are increasingly subsumed under the broader concept of heritage, diverse practitioners recognize many commonalities of concern across their disciplines. For example, all heritage professionals must deal with the question of how to protect, preserve, and represent the value of these resources (recognizing that even the concept of resources is problematic) to stakeholders and to wider publics, especially in light of contested/conflicting values. Moreover, interdisciplinary conversations have opened new avenues to addressing those concerns. The University of Minnesota, a public land-grant institution chartered in 1851, is a place with exciting potential to bring together these perspectives in heritage studies teaching. As a Tier I research university with five campuses, the University of Minnesota is home to some 65,000 students and more than 4,100 faculty. The flagship Twin Cities campus is located in a culture-rich urban area with a population of some 2.85 million people. The state has 20 Fortune 500 companies and 600 museums and historical societies (twice the national average per capita). Minnesota (population 4.92 million) is home to seven Anishinaabe reservations and four Dakato communities, as well as significant immigrant communities, including northern and eastern Europeans who arrived in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Hmong, Mexican, and Somali (among others) in recent years. As a state, we like to claim to be the premiere arts center between the east and west coasts; we also are within easy driving distance of two national forests, over 75 state parks, some 20 national wildlife refuges and management districts, and of course, Lake Wobegon and classic rural America. From this vantage point, the Teaching Heritage Collaborative began to take stock of where we are with regard to teaching heritage studies at the University of Minnesota. We have multiple existing programs with common goals, such as an M.S. degree program in architecture with a concentration in heritage conservation and preservation; an M.A. in cultural heritage management (anthropology) with a focus on archaeology; a museum studies graduate minor; and the educational programming of the River Life program, in the Institute on the Environment, as well as the Tourism Center with its related class on 2

heritage tourism and visitor behavior analysis. Although there is currently no program structure in place for public history, there is significant effort to create at least a more targeted curriculum. Students from a multitude of disciplines have demonstrated their desire, not only to learn about heritage issues and their importance to communities, but also to find career opportunities in these fields. As such, in each of our disciplines, we find we have been engaging in a more or less ad hoc assembly of student internships and learning opportunities, by reaching out to the network of Twin Cities agencies, organizations, and community groups working with heritage issues. These include the Minnesota Historical Society (MHS), the State Historic Preservation Office (SHPO), the Office of the State Archaeologist (OSA), Minneapolis and St. Paul city planning offices, local non-profit preservation groups, and the many fine museums both inside and outside of the University. These experiences are invaluable to our students, yet we each have approached them from our own disciplinary perspectives. We feel this has placed unnecessary restrictions on the opportunities students may find, and may not best prepare students for the cross-disciplinary realities of professional practice. This indexes not only a lack of shared concepts and goals to teach to our students, but often a disconnect from what community heritage organizations wish for in the students that we send to them. Thus, while the University and the Twin Cities are ideal grounds for teaching and training future heritage professionals, we needed a concerted effort, such as our Teaching Heritage Collaborative, to envision how a coherent curricular structure might look, and to assess the benefits such a curriculum would provide by coordinating its content with community partners. Who Are We? A Robust Overview of the Perspectives Being Brought Together As a group we naturally share an interest in heritage in communities. We have found, however, that our specific approaches converge and diverge in ways that are rather important to understand. Our individual perspectives and goals in the group are described below. Archaeology Archaeology is represented at the University by a small number of faculty and researchers in anthropology; a graduate program of both Ph.D. and M.A. students in that department; and an enthusiastic group of undergraduates, mainly majoring in anthropology, classics and Near Eastern studies, art history, history and geography, who take our courses. All of these departments are within the College of Liberal Arts (CLA) at the University of Minnesota. All of these groups are important to the 3

way in which we engage with heritage studies, but it is the M.A. students (Cultural Heritage Management program) who have served as a focus for our curricular structures. We admit these students on the basis of their desire to pursue a career in cultural resources management (CRM) archaeology, but with the understanding that they may work in a private CRM firm, a state or federal agency managing archaeological resources (among other properties), or a museum. Many archaeologists who are engaged in what we refer to as the cultural heritage sector see their work as connected to development, management, interpretation, and preservation issues related to the worlds archaeological and historical sites. This field of practice requires archaeologists to become applied anthropologists (Pyburn and Wilk 1995, Shackel and Chambers 2004), working closely with developers and tourism offices; with nongovernmental agencies; and with historians, sociologists, interpreters, preservation and planning professionals, museum staff, art historians and writers (Carman 2000, du Cros and Lee 2007). This is an approach we wish to take, by building more explicit ties to these other departments in our curriculum. In our approach to teaching archaeology, heritage has multiple meanings that have not quite been resolved with one another: on the one hand, cultural heritage is generally considered to be the record of a people, manifest in the tangible (cultural relics, handicrafts, monuments, historic towns and villages) and intangible (literature, theatre, music, folk customs) heritage of their culture (du Cros and Lee 2007: 148). This places emphasis on those remains. On the other hand, Logan and Smith (2010: xi) describe heritage as a social and political construct encompassing all those places, artefacts and cultural expressions inherited from the past which, because they are seen to reflect and validate our identity as nations, communities, families and even individuals, are worthy of some form of respect and protection. They argue that it is critical to understand, respect, and incorporate the values and practices of both the communities that feel a sense of ownership of their heritage and the scholars and practitioners who study and manage heritage resources, including archaeological sites. Here emphasis is given to present stakeholders. These two perspectives may be brought together in a social science of the past, as understood both as tangible and intangible remains of the past, and their relevance to contemporary communities (Chilton and Mason 2010). This latter aspect is emphasized in the classroom when we discuss ethics, descendant communities, stakeholders, and publicly engaged research. However, it does seem that the weight of classroom learning and practical work falls into the realm of identifying, documenting, and managing the tangible remains, while the aspect of relevance is to be gained through experience outside the classroom. Interpretation, education, and engagement 4

cannot be modeled adequately in the classroom, so our M.A. students are strongly encouraged to complete internships with agencies or organizations where they will take on these roles in practice. These skills may be best learned, moreover, in the kinds of organizations that are oriented to public engagement, rather than in CRM firms where such roles are not, strictly speaking, required. We have made use, however, of the several initiatives focusing on undergraduate and graduate education that have come out of archaeology-specific efforts to address this issue, and continue to develop today (see Bender and Smith 2000; MATRIX 2003). At the same time, there has been a growing recognition among many professionals in the field, and reinforced through legislation, especially the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) (see Soderland 2006; Messenger and Smith 2010; Jameson, Jr. 2008), that archaeologists are but one group of specialists who have an interest in the study, interpretation, and disposition of the past. There is a growing awareness that professionals working in this arena increasingly need a broader set of skills and a greater understanding of such issues as globalization, economics, politics, and tourism. In addition, postcolonialism, multivocality, and even radical religious and political movements have changed the nature of work throughout the world (see du Cros and Lee 2007, Fairclough et al. 2008). Archaeologists and heritage managers recognize the need to consult and collaborate with, not only descendant communities, but also collectors, museum curators, developers, tourism professionals, and politicians, as part of a larger and more complex cultural heritage sector. Our approach to educating in this program walks a fine line. While we do wish for our students to be successful in their job search on completing the degree, we do not want their program to be entirely instrumentalist (Hamilakis 2004), not least by reproducing divisions between CRM or agency archaeologists and academics, instilling a narrow focus on archaeological practice, or by thinking solely in terms of the marketability of students as employees. We would like our students to recognize and learn from the multiple concerned communities who value heritage in particular ways. We want our students to be equally inspired by advanced graduate students in archaeology who are undertaking extensive problem-oriented research often with high-tech methods, and by faculty and students in other disciplines who take different perspectives on heritage (for instance, a focus on built environments, cultural landscapes, and public history) and to consider them as their cohort. Conversely, we would like our own Ph.D. students to think more expansively about the goals of academic archaeology, particularly in relation to contemporary communities, and our undergraduates to have examples of the diversity of 5

heritage studies outside of archaeologys grand narratives. Thus, our desire to engage in an interdisciplinary heritage curriculum is a means of expanding the possibilities of the ways that our students can think about their roles vis--vis heritage, as well as our own. Historic Preservation Since 2008, an M.S. with a concentration in Heritage Conservation and Preservation has been offered by the School of Architecture, situated within the College of Design; its faculty consists of roughly a half dozen adjunct and tenured or tenure-track professors who teach classes that are the requirements or core of the curriculum, such as an introduction to historic preservation, architectural history, documentation of historic buildings and landscapes, historic building conservation, world heritage, and preservation economics. While these classes draw both upper-level undergraduates and graduate students from a broad range of majors across the University, the pedagogical objectives of the program are primarily oriented toward students enrolled in the Heritage Conservation and Preservation degree program. These students tend to have two distinct backgrounds. Roughly half are studying for a Masters of Architecture and seek a concurrent degree in heritage as a specialized addendum to their training in architectural design. The other half come to the program having completed undergraduate degrees in subjects other than architecture; most have liberal arts backgrounds in anthropology, history, and art history. We admit students based on their interests in preservation, which we prefer to see expressed or demonstrated through prior engagement in heritage-related coursework, volunteerism, internships, or work experience. Because the program is still relatively new, it is too early to tell if the two distinct backgrounds of our students lead to different career trajectories within or beyond heritage management. Professional, university-based historic preservation education is a relatively recent development in the United States; courses in historic preservation became available at a few schools in the late 1950s, but it was not until 1968 that James Marston Fitch established the first masters-level degree programs at Columbia University. Several other programs were established elsewhere in rapid succession in the decade that followed, most of them housed within older departments of architecture, landscape architecture, planning, and especially architectural history (Tomlan 1994). Regardless of departmental affiliation, preservation education has always been construed as broadly interdisciplinary professional training combining coursework in the history, analysis, and documentation of architecture, and to a lesser extent landscape, as well as policy, law, and economics. It has also largely focused somewhat 6

narrowly on preserving the physical reality of buildings, structures, objects, and places, the artifactual context of our environment (Stipe 2003:452). The School of Architectures approach to heritage conservation and preservation is, on the one hand, firmly rooted in the traditional artifact-centered approach; the object of preservation is assumed to be buildings, landscapes, structures, and historic districts. On the other hand, we are enthusiastic about emerging interests in and ideas about so-called intangible culture and community engagement. Our adherence to an admittedly traditional curricular focus is likely driven by two influences: one, national preservation education standards; and two, our perception of job opportunities. While the National Council for Preservation (NCPE) Education Standards for Historic Preservation Degree Granting Graduate and Undergraduate Programs rhetorically emphasize program diversity, and the plurality of disciplines and skills demanded in the field, the only courses deemed fundamental are those addressing the history and documentation of the built environment (NCPE 2012). The NCPE Education Standards were first developed in 1981 (Tomlan 1994) and do not yet encourage the adoption of new subjects to the core. We may also be reticent to change the core of preservation education because the skills and knowledge it prioritizes seem to correspond to our perceptions of job opportunities currently available to our graduates. These include government positions administering federal, state, and local preservation laws, jobs in the non-profit and education sectors, and private work in architectural design and the conservation of architectural materials (Visser 2009). Several more recent heritage concepts or approaches rooted in public history and anthropology suggest a need for preservationists to reconsider the meanings and uses of historic places for communities in the present. Cultural resource specialists are, in general, increasingly encouraged to go beyond merely consulting the public about matters of historical significance and potential impacts to historic resources; greater attention to community engagement will be necessary to identify, understand, document and, indeed, protect a fuller range of sites and practices that have cultural values associated with nature, religion, and subsistence, to name only a few (King 1998, Morgan et al. 2006). In a similar vein, some suggest that public history will enable us to move beyond preservation so that historic sites become relevant and stabilizing forces for communities (Hurley 2010). Assessing a broader range of heritage values deemed important by diverse constituencies will require methodologies that preservationists are not now generally being taught, including ethnographic and community planning approaches to observation, interviews, and mapping (Mason 2002). Before it can effectively engage the public, the 7

preservation community may also have to fundamentally change its theoretical orientation to the past. Mason (2004) argues that in the standard preservation paradigm, places are deemed historic by virtue of association with significant people, events, and design attributes, the meanings of which are considered essentially stable and unchanging. A contrasting view maintains that because heritage is experienced in the present, its uses and meanings are being constantly assessed and renegotiated by the public (Smith 2006). The degree to which this academic writing and discourse is changing professional preservation practice is unknown. However, the influence of our pedagogical design on the education of future generations of preservation professionals is particularly meaningful in light of these current debates. If we remain unresolved about who should address these issues or where they should be placed in our curriculum, it may be because we are sensitive to the fact that a masters education is relatively brief, and that the addition of new subject material may mean that other traditional topics of study receive less attention. Landscapes Although there is a graduate degree program in Landscape Architecture, it does not explicitly focus on heritage issues. Educational experiences in cultural or heritage landscapes are modeled in the unique River Life program, run by one of our conveners who also teaches in the landscape architecture department. Focusing on the Mississippi River National Parks corridor which runs through the Minneapolis campus, this program facilitates student-community partnerships focusing on the many aspects which make the river significant to contemporary communities. Of note, the River Life program brings attention to the contested nature of the rivers heritage, for example with regard to the sacred landscapes of the Dakota people now layered with the history of the development of the Twin Cities. With regard to the preservation of cultural landscapes, the practice itself is so new that a literature of pedagogy has yet to emerge fully. The National Park Service only brought the preservation of landscapes fully into the National Register-based historic preservation program in the early 1990s. Since then, while the number of Historic Landscape reports has proliferated, the scholarly exploration of theoretical, methodological, and ethical issues to arise from the practice has lagged. The pedagogical discussion has lagged farther still, although a few titles have begun to emerge. The project has brought exposure and greater familiarity with heritage-based disciplines other than those concentrating on material culture of built form (e.g., architecture). It has been particularly 8

instructive to understand the broader dynamic of the "heritage concept" as disciplines such as archaeology, public history, and some of the newer scholarship in architectural history and preservation has developed. "Heritage" as cultural dynamic offers important avenues for unpacking the very complex set of imperatives that have created the cultural landscape, and that will in the best instances guide its preservation. That dynamic will continue to inform the teaching of heritage landscape preservation in important ways that have yet to unfold. Public History Public history is a challenging term to define. It can encompass a wide array of people, productions, and activities that involve doing history in the public realm with multiple audiences. Public history takes place in historical societies, in academia, in museums, in documentaries, in living history sites, and in how people experience the landscapes of places. It includes two key components: creating more inclusive historical narratives that represent a wide array of experiences and engaging publics in shaping historical consciousness (see Porter et al. 1986, Horton and Horton 2006, Elliot 2007, Stanton 2006, Walkowitz and Knauer 2009). The academic field of public history in the United States emerged in the 1970s and 1980s from the New Social History movement (Tyrell 2005). Public history at the University of Minnesota is sustained by a small group of dedicated faculty, staff, and students who seek to engage individuals and communities in the varied processes of history-making and making history matter. We take to heart the goal of sharing authority in historical research, documentation, and storytelling, based on ideas first set forth by Michael Frisch (1990). Public history advocates at the University encourage collaborative initiatives between academics and community partners to conduct historical research, to get involved in history education and curriculum development, to create community-based archives, and to construct historical narratives through various media (print, video, digital). While there is not a formalized Public History program, there are many opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to get involved with community partners in various avenues of doing history. These opportunities include courses, research projects, and internships, as well as self-directed public history projects. For example, the Minnesota History Day Program (part of National History Day) provides a mentorship program for undergraduate students to get involved in history education in local public high schools. Graduate students coordinate this program by connecting students with schools and host a library tour program that brings thousands of high school students onto campus to conduct research at University libraries. Students in interdisciplinary 9

undergraduate and graduate courses on public history discuss issues in the field and then focus on neighborhoods in the Twin Cities and coordinate public history projects with community partners. The world of digital media has opened up a number of possibilities for creating community-based digital archives, as well as finding new avenues for digital storytelling and digital history. The Universitys Immigration History Research Center (IHRC) provides public history opportunities on campus, including encouraging recent immigrant and refugee students to work with graduate students and faculty on creating digital archives, for example the Minnesota 2.0 Digital Facebook Archive (IHRC 2009) and the Sheeko: Somali Youth Oral History project (IHRC 2011). While there are exciting opportunities to get involved in public history activities, there is not yet a cohesive or comprehensive undergraduate or graduate program at the University. In fact, there is only one higher education institution in Minnesota that offers a graduate degree in Public History (St. Cloud State University). For now, faculty and students at the University of Minnesota who are interested in public history must create their own program. For faculty, this involves creating and sustaining public history initiatives on top of already demanding schedules of teaching, research, and writing. Public engagement is not considered in tenure decision-making and many of the faculty involved in public history go above and beyond what the department recognizes as valuable. For students, creating their own public history program involves participating in classes in other departments where aspects of public history are addressed (geography, historic preservation, American studies, cultural studies) and taking directed study courses with individual professors to address topics related to their interests. With a cultural landscape where disciplines operate in a silo mentality, it can be challenging for students to find interdisciplinary, supportive and sustainable networks with others interested in public history. It can be difficult to find classes that provide the kinds of professional training needed in public history such as oral history, museum exhibit design, or video and web production. Moreover, public history initiatives are most successful when trusting relationships with community partners can be developed through sustained effort. Bringing the Stakeholders to the Table In the fall of 2011, we began the process of assembling perspectives, desires, and issues by bringing stakeholders to the table to discuss a curricular structure that might draw on faculty expertise and interest, create opportunities for students, and coordinate with the needs of community partners. The 10

Teaching Heritage Collaborative is advancing its objectives with three types of meetings: 1) monthly meetings of the conveners and of the research team, which includes student assistants and their supervisors; 2) periodic meetings with larger groups for information gathering and networking; and 3) public lectures and consultations with visiting scholars. Small group meetings Research conducted by undergraduates from the School of Architecture and the Department of History has made a significant contribution to the Collaboratives work. Our undergraduate researchers began by surveying the national scene of heritage-related pedagogy, with a particular eye to what interdisciplinary programs existed and how they were structured. Anthropology, historic preservation, public history, and archives graduate programs were surveyed via web presence, beginning with lists from some key national organizations (Society for Historical Archaeology, National Council for Preservation Education, National Council on Public History, and the American Historical Association). These lists were supplemented by collaborative researchers own recommendations. Literature reviews found relatively little scholarship about heritage educationits goals, methods, values, or transdisciplinary potential. Accordingly, we asked students to compile a database of programs recommended by collaborators from their respective disciplines (anthropology, archaeology, historic preservation, public history), particularly schools and programs teaching across departmental and disciplinary lines. The resulting data is now informing our program and curricular discussions, as well as our scholarship. For example, our preliminary program research shows that there are few truly interdisciplinary degree programs, but there are a number of singular programs associated with interdisciplinary research centers. Large Group Networking and Brainstorming Meeting 1: New Ways of Teaching Heritage. For our first large group meeting, held in fall 2011, we convened faculty from around the University who teach heritage-related subjects to discuss collaborating on curriculum and program development. We had remarkably diverse and enthusiastic attendance by colleagues from American studies, American Indian studies, anthropology, architecture, landscape architecture, history, museum studies, and the IHRC; we also had adjunct-faculty representatives from MHS, OSA, and for-profit preservation firms. Regular faculty, adjunct faculty, and graduate students were represented. 11

Disciplinary distinctions were acknowledged in the discussion, but there was also agreement that if we could address the connections (and potential conflicts) among them, this would be a significant achievement, perhaps even what sets the University of Minnesota apart from other institutions pedagogical approaches to heritage/public history. Several participants were new to the broader University discussions about heritage education; many were eager to continue the discussion. The sentiment in this meeting was that our goal should be both to educate impassioned amateurs and to train professionals. Faculty felt that these are not mutually exclusive threads, though they do require a broader approach to capture both applied heritage management and critical intellectual practices. Graduate students in the discussion noted also that simply having ones cohort include students across these many fields would encourage more interdisciplinary conversations. Participants felt that the enterprise has to have an intellectual project at its core; it is not enough just to fill a vocational need or put bodies in the seats for the purposes of capturing tuition. In this respect, faculty were acutely aware of the potential gap between the mission of our teaching and the fiscally driven constraints or wishes of the University administration, especially at the college level. However, there is recognition that engagement with community members is professionally important, and is now stated as a core value of the University that acknowledges the understanding of shared authority. Moreover, it is both in alignment with University directions and an ethical imperative (i.e. informing and being informed by diverse communities, raising the issues both are interested in, addressing the issue of ontological security). Perhaps somewhat stickier was the issue of the common bases of our approach to heritage or public history. Even the labeling of our field is at issue: not all participants were comfortable with the term heritage, preferring instead the designations that emphasize the public, as in public history or public archeology. These concerns touch upon potentially important differences in the conceptual vocabulary of our various disciplines, specifically the question, To whom does heritage belong? However, participants seemed resistant at this stage to discussing those conceptual bases, preferring instead to celebrate the diversity and extent of our subject matter, including tangible and intangible heritage, and the inquiries of public history. Despite the resistance, there was recognition that we must address disciplinary distinctions and potential conflicts at some point before we can create a truly interdisciplinary heritage curriculum. Meeting 2: Partnering with Community Organizations and Public Agencies for Student Experience. 12

The Teaching Heritage Collaborative tapped its virtual Rolodex to invite representatives of regional organizations that already have, or might consider creating, internships for heritage-studies students. Attendance at this late fall 2011 meeting was again remarkable in number, breadth, and level of support. Representatives came from MHS, SHPO, St. Paul Heritage Preservation Commission, Science Museum of Minnesota, National Park Service (three separate offices), Swedish-American Institute, Historic St. Paul, Hennepin History Museum, and the Universitys Goldstein Museum of Design, as well as from University programs with established internship programs such as the Center for Urban and Regional Affairs (CURA) and the Community Service-Learning Center. The discussion focused on how best to create internships that benefited both students and community partner organizations, without an undue burden being placed on either. Participants sought to clarify how internships can be thought of as either project-specific or standing programs. Many of our contributing professionals felt that it was easier to have internships that were project-specific. Establishing open communications between our programs and their institutions with regard to those project needs would be a desirable approach to making internships more consistently available. Partner institutions agreed that they could alert faculty to specific skills that they would like students to have. In addition, suggestions were made for bringing professionals into the classroom; course and internship pairings (e.g. 2-semester sequences) or course-based projects (e.g. the public history course); laying groundwork with education directed at undergrad and K-12 students; and being mindful of the variable learning curve for certain projects and preparing accordingly. Perhaps most telling, our partner organizations taught us that they are less concerned with the disciplinary background or purity of the student than the university structure is. They recognize that internships are opportunities for intern networking outside of the university structure, and they desire competent and creative thinkers, rather than historians or archaeologists. We were also able to outline some of the most significant difficulties that plague student internship opportunities. Timing and coordination of schedules is clearly an important issue. Some frustration was expressed with the constraints of the academic calendar, but many of our contributors acknowledged the need to accommodate to it. More careful coordination in planning for the internships would ease this problem. Although these internships often require tremendous supervisory investment by the host organization, the availability of supervision is variable in part dependent upon the size of the office or agency (in the case of the SHPO, literally the physical size of the office). Often this investment is not 13

justified by the benefit to either party. Likewise, evaluation of student learning objectives is problematic, particularly if the internships are done for academic credit. What is the product expected of the student? If it is not project-based work, these benchmarks may be difficult to define. These issues need to be clarified before the internship. Finally, while not all internships can be paid, most institutions agreed that when they are able they like to offer paid positions, in part because they foster greater investment from the intern. Other possibilities to explore on that front, especially for undergrads, may be UROP (Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program) or work-study positions. Meeting 3: Public History and Heritage Studies Program Development. Teaching Heritage conveners and collaborators from several departments met in December 2011 to discuss potential curriculum and program development. There was interest in developing new content and synergies without duplicating, or competing with, existing programs like the Museum Studies Graduate Minor. There was consensus for working toward creation of both a graduate minor and a certificate in Heritage Studies and Public History. This conclusion was based in part upon our desire to serve two constituencies: existing graduate students and professionals seeking additional training. Additionally, unlike a stand-alone degree program, these two new programs could be more easily implemented within the current University structure. As a working structure, the participants agreed that the graduate minor, which could be completed by students in any number of departments, would be a four-course (12 cr.) sequence consisting of a core concepts and approaches course; two electives, one of which must be in a discipline outside of the students major field; and a capstone course culminating in a communityengaged project. At this time, we are soliciting wider interest among departments, particularly with suggestions for elective courses. But, as might be expected, the discussion of what would be covered in a core concepts seminar is slower to materialize. Faculty researchers seem to be more project-oriented in their approach to curriculum, and less willing to engage in interdisciplinarity at a conceptual level. These theoretical frameworks will undoubtedly be needed in order to argue for the establishment of a new degree program; with the recent dissolution of a centralized graduate school, and a general unwillingness on the part of the University to breach college boundaries (our collaborative draws from several), a cohesive front will be required in order to transcend disciplinary borders. Public Lectures and Consultations with Visiting Scholars Finally, we have hosted three public lectures by nationally recognized scholars who direct interdisciplinary heritage programs. Each guest participated in a small round-table discussion with the 14

collaborative about heritage education, community engagement, and research. Colleagues from within and beyond the University have attended these presentations. Our invited speakers (and their topics) included Liz evenko (Director of the Guantnamo Public Memory Project at Columbia University: A Guantnamo Site of Conscience? Remembering Gitmo long beforeand long after9-11), Elizabeth Chilton (Director of the Center for Heritage and Society at the University of Massachusetts Amherst: Why Does the Past Matter? Towards a Social Science of the Past), and Randall Mason (Chair, Program in Historic Preservation, University of Pennsylvania: The Long-term Future of Heritage and its Conservation: Will There be a Heritage Conservation Field in 50 Years?). Each of these scholars is calling for an approach to the past that is less entrenched in the evidential or disciplinary specificities, and more attentive to the role and impact of heritage to contemporary communities. While none would advocate abandoning the foundational knowledge that comes from our home disciplines of history, archaeology/anthropology, and architecture/urban planning, significantly each has pursued research through institutions outside of universities, or that transcend university academic units. These projects and discussions raised an additional consideration: Would our purposes be better served by creating an interdisciplinary research center for community-engaged heritage projects, rather than a heritage-based curriculum? What Have We Learned Where do we stand now with the effort to create an interdisciplinary structure for heritage studies? Our survey of researchers, communities, programs and institutions has pointed to two sides of the heritage curriculum coin: project-based approaches (bringing different disciplines together in the context of specific cases), and interdisciplinary method and theory. Examples of the former are easily found, and the most structurally expedient way to facilitate these project-based heritage studies in the university setting is through research centers. This is an approach that we are now taking seriously. It is a more immediate way to tap and channel the tremendous enthusiasm among researchers, students, and communities for bringing together the diversity of heritage scholarship under one umbrella, facilitating both access to funding sources and public awareness. The University of Minnesota recognizes that as a public land-grant institution, it is entirely within its mission to support these community partnerships, as well as foster students awareness of their stewardship roles. A research center is also better equipped to foster longer-term community relationships than can be tended on a semester-by-semester basis. One of the drawbacks to beginning with a research center, however, is that centers often do not 15

command the necessary level of investment in the long term from either faculty scholars or the university. Currently, the new University president has initiated a system-wide review of the efficacy of all centers and institutions, with the aim of reducing their numbers. But does having scholars from multiple disciplines, working under the aegis of a single center for heritage and community, constitute, in and of itself, an interdisciplinary approach? That is to say, does the method and theory of heritage studies as its own discipline (not a combination of archaeology, preservation, public history, and natural resources) follow automatically? Clearly not, as our ongoing association as a collaborative continues to struggle with focusing on the common concepts and goals among us. Perhaps in part this is because we tend to be project-oriented, or if you like, managementoriented in our collaboration, needing specific context to explore in order to understand one another. Also, while we readily agree on an inclusive epistemology which comes with the understanding that heritage values are locally constructed we also understand that we need not share the same toolkit of methods. This argues that we cannot leave behind our own home disciplines when it comes to teaching that toolkit. But for defining common theoretical frameworks, it would be tremendously beneficial to team-teach seminars across disciplines and colleges, which remains a significant challenge at this University due to financial considerations related to tuition revenue sharing. We have noted in our review of heritage studies graduate programs that very few have overcome this hurdle, and very often the interdisciplinary program is dominated by one or two departments, and does not engage in teamteaching. The longer-term task, if we are to move towards a truly interdisciplinary collaboration and curriculum, is to step back to the drawing-board of theory and method. Method, in this case, would not consist in how to excavate a site or complete documentation of a structure or use archives. For us, method should consist in how to both access and communicate the importance of the past to concerned stakeholders; how to navigate between competing or conflicting claims; how to navigate among multiple epistemologies; approaches to sustainability, conservation, preservation; and how to measure the real effects of heritage preservation projects on communities (per Chilton and Mason 2010). We need also to better formulate theoretical approaches: why do we remember, or forget, the past (Connerton 1989, 2009; Harrison 2007)? What do we mean by public or global heritage? How does knowledge of the past circulate? How is that knowledge made meaningful, or abused? What would a decolonized heritage studies look like? Where are the multiple sites of these processes - archives, sites, 16

neighborhoods, museums, but also websites and other digital media, classrooms, community or family settings? All of these issues and approaches are ones which can, and should, begin outside of specific disciplines, if we are to break the gravity of resource centered approaches. Before we can prepare students for the rapidly shifting transdisciplinary field of heritage studies, we ourselves must come to some shared understanding of what that is. References Cited Aitchison, Kenneth 2004 Supply, Demand, and a Failure of Understanding: Addressing the Culture Clash between Archaeologists Expectations for Training and Employment in Academia versus Practice. World Archaeology 36(2):203-219. Bender, Susan and George S. Smith (editors) 2000 Teaching Archaeology in the 21st Century. Society for American Archaeology, Washington, D.C. Carman, John 2000 Theorising a Realm of Practice: Introducing Archaeological Heritage Management as a Research Field. International Journal of Heritage Studies 6(4):303-308. Chilton, Elizabeth S. and Randall Mason 2010 NSF White Paper: A Call for a Social Science of the Past. SBE 2020: Future Research in the Social, Behavioral, and Economic Sciences. Electronic document, http://www.nsf.gov/sbe/sbe_2020/2020_pdfs/Chilton_Elizabeth_297.pdf, accessed March 17, 2012. Connerton, Paul 1989 How Societies Remember. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 2009 How Modernity Forgets. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.

du Cros, Hilary and Y.F. Lee (editors) 2007 Cultural Heritage Management in China: Preserving the Cities of the Pearl River Delta. Routledge, New York. Elliot, Michael 2007 Custerology: The Enduring Legacy of the Indian Wars and George Armstrong Custer. University of Chicago Press, Chicago. Fairclough, Graham, Rodney Harrison, John Jameson, Jr., and John Schofield (editors) 2008 The Heritage Reader. Routledge, New York. Frisch, Michael 17

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