Program Overview

With 15 credits of required and elective courses, you can add a Certificate in Cultural Landscape Management to your master’s degree.

What Are Cultural Landscapes?

Cultural landscapes may be urban or rural, and they include parks, gardens, historic sites, agricultural landscapes, and ethnographic landscapes. Often cultural landscapes are “protected” landscapes, recognized as World Heritage Sites, National Parks, National Heritage Areas, or bounded and designated in some other way. Other cultural landscapes may not be officially designated but encompass landscapes reflective of a particular culture or interactions of several cultures and the patterns they have developed socially and on the land. Cultural landscapes are places with significance and meaning for those who create them, live in them, or experience them as visitors.

What Is Cultural Landscape Management?

Cultural landscapes are now recognized nationally and internationally as a significant category of cultural resources, demanding specific theory, training, and practice for successful conservation and management. Cultural landscape management draws on a body of knowledge and skills developed in the fields of landscape architecture, planning, heritage conservation, historic preservation, public history, and anthropology over the last thirty years. Because of the importance of cultural landscapes to communities and their “sense of place,” many different government agencies, as well land trusts and other non-profit organizations, have incorporated the identification, documentation, and management of cultural landscapes into their responsibilities and activities.

Cultural landscape management requires written and graphic research, documentation, and analysis of landscapes. Sources of data include historic documents, maps, and plans, but also interviews and other consultation with the people who live in, and have shaped, landscapes. Cultural landscape management also involves the production of proposed plans, landscape designs, and interpretive schemes for places in order to serve the needs of residents, managers, and visitors. The Cultural Landscape Management Certificate curriculum reflects current theory and methods as practiced by consultants and by professionals within government agencies and non-profit organizations.

Requirements

The Cultural Landscape Management Certificate will be awarded following the completion of fifteen credits of required and elective courses with electives chosen from a predetermined list.

Required courses

Six Credits (3 Each)

  • REGIONPL 661 (or LANDARCH 661) Cultural Landscapes: Documentation, Values and Policy, 3 credits, Brabec (Spring)
  • REGIONPL 663 (or LANDARCH 663) Heritage Landscape Management, 3 credits, Carr (Fall)

Elective Courses, Group One

Three to nine credits. Select one or more courses from this list of courses within LARP. This list of approved electives will change, subject to approval by the program coordinator depending on course offerings:

  • LANDARCH 603 – Heritage Landscape Studio, 3 credits (Fall)
  • Sustcomm 543 History of Landscape I, 4 credits, Brabec (Fall)
  • RP/LA 691S – Cultural Landscape Field Study in the Czech Republic, 4 credits (Summer) or other cultural landscape field study.
  • RP/LA 698A or 699 - Master Thesis or Project on a Cultural Landscape Topic, under the direction of Carr or Brabec (6-9 credits)

Internships or applied experiences with a specific emphasis on heritage or cultural landscape management may be approved by the certificate program coordinator as a three-credit elective.

Elective Courses, Group Two

Three credits Total. One course from this list unless student takes all electives from list above. This is a list of approved electives that have been or are currently taught in these departments. This list of approved electives will change, subject to approval by the program coordinator and depending on department offerings. Please check Spire for latest status on any course:

Anthropology

  • Anthro 697 Historical Archaeology
  • Anthro 560 Introduction to International Heritage Studies

Architecture

  • Arch 597D History and Theory of Preservation 
  • Arch 697N Cultural Resource Management
  • Arch 602 Community Engagement, 6cr

History

  • Hist 659: Public History 
  • Hist 662: Museum and Historic Site Interpretation
  • Hist 691N: Conservation of Nature & Culture
  • Hist 693B Public History Workshop
  • Hist 697U/797U: Landscape and Memory

Availability and Admission

The Cultural Landscape Management Certificate is available to University of Massachusetts Amherst graduate students enrolled in a degree program in any department. The certificate is also available to non-degree students through enrollment in the University of Massachusetts University Without Walls (for application and enrollment policies, see https://www.umass.edu/uww/).

All applicants for the certificate should submit a brief statement of interest by email to the certificate program coordinator, Elizabeth Brabec, for admission to the program. The email should indicate the candidate’s reasons for interest in the certificate program and include suggestions for specific areas of concentration and interest. Applicants should contact Elizabeth Brabec at ebrabec@larp.umass.edu to discuss the selection and timing of courses.

Certificate Advisors

Elizabeth Brabec, ebrabec@larp.umass.edu
Ethan Carr, carr@larp.umass.edu (Co-Advisor)
University of Massachusetts Amherst
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