Historic Preservation Terminal Projects

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Browsing Historic Preservation Terminal Projects by Subject "cultural landscapes"

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    Beyond City Beautiful: Interpreting Cultural Landscapes at the International Rose Test Garden and Laurelhurst Park in Portland, Oregon
    (University of Oregon, 2023-06) Tran, Lindsay
    Historical interpretation (alternately referred to in this research as “heritage interpretation and “public interpretation”) often limits the narratives that are highlighted for public consumption in places of historical importance. I argue via discussion of cultural landscape theory and material rhetoric (the idea that discourse is material, i.e. that beyond content, the format of a piece of communication carries a rhetorical power of its own) that such limitations are a choice, not an inevitability—especially with cultural landscapes, which thanks to their relationship with time are historic resources of a particularly dynamic character. Treating public parks as cultural landscapes that evolve over time, rather than as historic sites wedded to a discrete period of significance, allows for a more flexible interpretation of their historical meaning. When parks are treated as cultural landscapes, their significance to many people and many groups throughout history presents as a coherent narrative, rather than a haphazard and seemingly unrelated collection of events. Using the inductive process of grounded theory as a methodological approach, I critically examine the extant interpretive infrastructure in two case studies, Laurelhurst Park and the International Rose Test Garden. I explore the material form of each park’s historical interpretation as a series of rhetorical choices, and then suggest expansions based on each park’s respective history and the material rhetoric of the existing interpretive infrastructure.