Goucher College MA in Cultural Sustainability
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In this era of increasing homogeneity and globalization, local history, traditions, and ways of life are among our most endangered resources and precious assets. By strengthening and building on the foundations of these resources-whether artistic, linguistic, musical, economic, or environmental-we can begin to counter the powerful forces that endanger communities around the world. Our M.A. in Cultural Sustainability brings together knowledge from anthropology, history, folklore, ethnomusicology, communications, business and management, linguistics, and activism to teach students how to effect positive, community-driven change in the cultures they care about most-whether it be an African village, an American inner-city neighborhood, a remote tribe in Asia, or a threatened public space just down the street. The discipline of cultural sustainability can be and will be applied wherever valued ways-of-life are at risk.
Recent Submissions
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Exploring the Necessity for Alternative Perinatal Care for Black Women in the United States
(2022-05-22)The Capstone reflection explores the need for alternative perinatal care for black women in the United States. -
Ethical Considerations and Methodology for Documenting Deaf Cultural Data
(2022-05-03)For years, documentary research methods have focused on hearing-world-centric techniques. There has been very little research up till now on identifying problematic and in some cases, unethical practices in documenting ... -
Culture Sustaining Arts Economies
(2022-05-13)Since the 1980s cities across the United States have discovered the potential of using art as an economic driver for community development. In fact, the U.S. Department of Commerce's Bureau of Economic Analysis tracks ... -
Side Hustle-Main Hustle
(2022-05)Communities on every level in the United States have been plagued by racism for two and a half centuries. The systems in place in our country perpetuate the racial injustice which continues to this day. Because the injustice ... -
Afro Amelioration Introspection
(2021-12-10)Afro Amelioration Introspection is a projected video artwork, abstract sound piece, and solo art exhibition with a digitally interactive component focused on the topic of Black mental health. Using ethnographic methods, I ... -
Reimagining Resistance: Rest as Reparations
(2021)This project explores "How rest could serve as a mode of resistance and reparations for Black people in American". By providing readers with a review of relevant literature, social media analysis, and reflexive writing ... -
New Directions in Tourism in Guanajuato
(2021-03-15)Post-Covid, an opportunity that presents itself is, the ability not to reset, but to significantly upgrade tourism from mass tourism to culturally sustainable and beneficial tourism in what Anna Pollock (2020) of Conscious ... -
Cultural Sustainability: Neighborhood Planning Toolkit
(2021-05)This paper offers a Cultural Sustainability-focused toolkit that can be used as a blueprint for future redevelopment community-based work. This toolkit is based on an 18-month summary of a 2-year neighborhood redevelopment ... -
Seymour In My Shoes: Challenging Invisible Power & Bringing Plurality of Voice to Children's Media
(2021-02)Through the summer of 2020, I worked with 16 Baltimore City high school students to create a pitch for a new kind of cultural learning show for kids. This project reflects on that work and examines how we can use the tools ... -
The Public Park as Liminal Space: A Study of Spontaneous and Intentional Behavior and the Impact on Community
(2020-12)Public spaces, such as parks, provide a space and time that exists outside of the familiar. They are set apart from the everyday, thus providing opportunity for engagement in activities, exploration of behaviors, and ... -
Investigating Cultural Sustainability and Identity by Analyzing my St. Thomian Family through Autoethnography
(2020-07-28)This capstone explores what aspects of culture, if any, have been sustained, lost, or transformed within my St. Thomian family. This paper is split into two sections, themes from literature and takeaways from dialogues. ... -
Dérive: 2021-2025 Business Plan and S.W.O.T. Analysis
(2020-06)The following capstone project saw the completion of a comprehensive 5-year strategic business plan and S.W.O.T. analysis for a cultural exchange business and organization. In order to create such a plan, an intense amount ... -
Go-Go Community Sustainability Report: Impact Investments and Policy Recommendations
(2020-05-18)The Go-Go Community Sustainability Report documents the current challenges of the go-go cultural economy and produces public-private policy and investment recommendations. The impetus for the report is the desired ... -
"The Benguela Called to Play": Capoeira's Embodied Resistance & Sustaining Culture Through Expressive Bodily Practice
(2020-05)Considering the potentials of bodily performance in the expression of meaning and cultural identification for both the individual and their community, this work focuses on concepts of resistance and power as it is embodied ... -
Diagnosis Culture: African American Maternal Health in Houston
(2019-12-18)This project investigates the cultural issues underlying why mothers identified as racially Black in Harris County, Texas are upwards of three to five times more likely to either die or suffer debilitating health effects ... -
As Seen Through Indigenous Eyes and Heard Through Indigenous Voices: A Storytelling Project
(2019-12-17)The purpose for this capstone project is to produce a web-based product which illustrates the intersection of story and tattooed forms of identity among Indigenous people in California. The title of this capstone project ... -
Organizational Identity: How Theology, Cultural Sustainability and Systems Theory Inform Institutional Thrive-ability
(2019-05)The research presented in this thesis addresses the complexities of identity and systems by narrating different pieces of both and how they are at play in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. This narration offers ... -
Chicano Youth Leadership Conference: Speaking Legacies of Leadership into the Future
(2019-06)In this reflection paper, I use the method of oral history to explore leadership through the Chicano Youth leadership conference (CYLC) over fifty-years. For this final capstone project, I have interviewed Charlotte ... -
Maya'loyon: Creating a Space for Indigenous and Cultural Teachers
(2019-05-16)This project, Maya’loyon, consists of a website https://accordion-mayflower-djkm.squarespace.com/config/ designed for Indigenous Languages and Cultural Teachers, nationally and internationally. (The site will go live on ... -
A Museum Educator's Identity Toolkit: How knowing Ourselves Transforms Our Work
(2018-07)This project seeks to explore narratives (NARRATIVE: A story of any kind. Different cultures have a differing “sense of story” telling them what is and isn’t appropriately narrative) of identity as they relate to how public ...