Why Cultural Sustainability Matters: Information Session about our Program

Are you concerned about the rapid pace of change threatening the rich traditions that define your community? Are you eager to do work that ensures all voices are heard in decision-making, that honors the multiple histories that make up America, and that guarantees the right of all cultures to thrive? You're not alone. In today's world, our cultural heritages are under constant threat. But there's hope! Goucher College's Master of Arts in Cultural Sustainability equips you with the knowledge and skills to champion the values and practices that make communities distinct. Join this conversation with MACS faculty member Amy Skillman and current program director Melanie Lytle to learn how the program works, why it matters, and what graduates are doing to empower communities to shape their own futures, celebrate diversity, foster intercultural understanding, and find creative solutions to environmental and social challenges.

Amy Skillman is a folklorist whose work occurs at the intersection of culture and tension, where paying attention to culture can serve to mediate social change and foster cultural equity. When she isn’t teaching in the MA in Cultural Sustainability, she is working with artists and community-based organizations to design and implement programs that honor and conserve their cultural traditions and builds their capacity to sustain these initiatives. For over 20 years, her work has integrated personal experience narratives of immigrant and refugee women into leadership empowerment initiatives. Working in collaboration with the PA Immigrant and Refugee Women’s Network, she has co-produced an exhibition called Our Voices, a theater piece about Coming to American in the 21st Century, and a reader’s theater called Magnificent Healing, which explores various cultural collisions with our healthcare system. Other work includes a Grammy-nominated recording of Old Time fiddlers in Missouri, a yearlong arts residency with alternative education high school students rooted in the ethnography of their lives, and a traveling exhibition called Making It Better, about role of folk arts as a catalyst for activism in communities throughout Pennsylvania. She is currently President of the American Folklore Society.

Melanie Lytle has an MA in Historic Preservation (Goucher College ‘11) and a BA in History (California State University, Sacramento). She has been a preservation consultant for 15 years, guiding her government agency clients through the complex U.S. regulatory framework to protect, support, and revitalize built environments and cultural landscapes. She's also worked on the nonprofit and advocacy side of the field as the former executive director of the non-profit Maryland Association of Historic District Commissions and for an architectural easement organization. Since 2015, she's served as a board member at Restoration Works International. Through her service with the nonprofit in Nepal, India, and the US, she's discovered how meaningful heritage sustainability and community engagement work can be when a historic place becomes the place from which communities can cultivate their values and community members can address local challenges and design strategic innovations to make positive social change.