2024 Garden and Landscape Studies Graduate Summer Program
Environmental and Landscape Histories: Contested Places and Counter Narratives
To develop the field of Garden and Landscape Studies across disciplines and to promote the depth and breadth of future scholarship in landscape and environmental histories, Dumbarton Oaks is hosting an intensive three-week summer program focused on engaging with contested places and counter narratives.
Workshop Offerings
This three-week summer program for graduate students seeks to expand approaches to landscape and/or environmental histories with attention to grounding investigations in the complexities of contested places, alternative archives, and counter narratives. Bringing together PhD and advanced MLA candidates, the program focuses on the historiography and methods of landscape and environmental history writing and telling in ways that challenge traditional frameworks and sources engaging with concepts of sovereignty, authority, and authenticity. Workshop participants will critically interrogate core bodies of knowledge alongside emerging scholarship in environmental history. We will engage with the collections at the Dumbarton Oaks Garden Library to explore seminal works in landscape and environmental history and consider their contributions to public scholarship. We will visit Jamestown and Williamsburg, VA to explore how counter narratives are being developed and shared with the public. Developing and using the tools of critical place-based narratives and field studies, we will engage with visiting scholars to consider the practices of inquiry in the histories of democracy in place that foregrounds questions of race, gender, and identity.
Student Participation
Eligible applicants include PhD candidates writing dissertations, current advanced MLA candidates and recent MLA recipients who have received their degree between May 2022 and May 2024. Applicants may be from any discipline whose research is engaged in landscape, garden, and/or environmental histories. Students should have a thesis or dissertation project in process and be prepared to share their research with workshop participants. The workshop is an intensive program requiring full participation throughout. The first two weeks the workshop will be on campus at Dumbarton Oaks Library and Collections in Washington, D.C. with classes Mondays through Fridays, 9:00 a.m.–1:00 p.m., with local field trips or research time scheduled for the afternoons. During the third week (June 5–7), we will travel to engage in place-based field studies and the reading of land. These will include field trips to Jamestown and Williamsburg as well as possible other sites in the region.
Travel and Accommodation
Successful applicants will receive on-campus housing and lunch on weekdays (except for scheduled closures). Participants will also receive a Library Reader’s Badge and access to the Garden for the duration of the program. Dumbarton Oaks has partnered with a travel agency to arrange and pre-pay for participants’ round-trip air or rail travel, in accordance with the Dumbarton Oaks Travel Policy. International candidates are eligible to apply; however, J-visa sponsorship is not available. A stipend is not offered for this program.
Applications
Prospective candidates are required to submit a letter of interest, a five-hundred-word abstract of their dissertation or thesis (recent MLA recipients should submit a statement of their previous thesis or relevant research interests), and a current CV. All materials and one letter of recommendation must be submitted to the application portal Embark by February 15, 2024, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern. For further information, please contact Garden and Landscape Studies.
Image: Indian Land and towns in Pamunkey Neck, Virginia. Detail from Virginia and Maryland as it is planted and inhabited this present year 1670, Augustine Herrman, cartographer [London: Augustine Herman and Thomas Withinbrook, 1673]. Library of Congress Geography and Map Division Washington, D.C. 20540-4650
Past Topics
2020s
Landscape History and Historiography
May 22–June 9, 2023 | Intensive three-week program for PhD and MLA candidates and recent MLA graduates
With support from the Mellon Initiative in Democracy & Landscape Studies and in partnership with the University of Virginia’s Center for Cultural Landscapes (CCL) and Morven Sustainability Lab, this program sought to expand approaches to landscape and place-based histories with attention to grounding such investigations in the complexities of contested and counter archives and narratives. The topic focused on the historiography and methods of landscape and environmental history writing and telling in ways that challenged traditional frameworks and sources engaged with concepts of sovereignty, authority, and authenticity and considered the practices, methods, and approaches to inquiry on the histories of democracy in places that foreground questions of race, gender, and identity.
Participants
- Walid Akef, Harvard University
- Melanie R. Ball, University of Texas at Austin
- Hana Cohn, Harvard University
- Robin Hartanto Honggare, Columbia University
- Bernardo de Magalhães e Menezes, University of Virginia
- Jade Orr, University of Colorado, Denver
- Ellen Sharman, University of Oxford
- José M. Sambucety, Roma Tre University
- Tyler Shine, University of Pennsylvania
- Lauren Wolfe, University of British Columbia
Landscape History and Historiography
May 15–June 3, 2022 | Dumbarton Oaks and Virtual
With the support of the Mellon Initiative in Urban Landscape Studies, this program sought to ground histories of place, land, and landscape in the complexities of contested and counter narratives and sources. The program focused on the historiography and methods of landscape and environmental history writing challenging traditional frameworks and sources as well as questions of sovereignty, authority, and authenticity. It offered the opportunity to become more familiar with the core scholarship of the discipline while engaging in a productive critique of its development and its future. Participants interrogated seminal works in landscape and environmental history while exploring emerging practices, methods, and approaches to inquiry including scholarship on the public realm, and on democracy, race, gender, and identity, and the tools of critical place-based narratives.
Participants
- Sam Coren, Brown University
- Sarah Daiker, University of Pittsburgh
- Abiola Ibirogba, The Pennsylvania State University
- Molly McCahan, The Ohio State University
- Alba Menéndez Pereda, University of California, Los Angeles, California
- Robert Moeller, University of California, Berkeley
- Luis Mota, University of Southern California
- Sara Saad Alajmi, University of Pennsylvania
- Antonia Weiss, Rutgers University-New Brunswick
- Alex Zivkovic, Columbia University
Public Landscapes and Public Health: An Inquiry into the Histories of Landscape Design
May 10–28, 2021 | Virtual
With the support of the Mellon Initiative in Urban Landscape Studies, the 2021 program focused on issues of public health and democracy. Bringing together early-career scholars and practitioners, the program addressed key issues in garden and landscape history and theory through the lenses of public health and democracy. Participants discussed seminal works in landscape and environment as they pertain to questions of public health, while exploring emerging practices and modes of inquiry related to theories of the public realm, race and identity, and environmental and urban history. As we trace the trajectories of landscape design, we might begin to reimagine futures that position the public realm as a site of collective health and wellbeing. Furthermore, a focus on the history of the public realm as a foundation for democracy challenges us to address calls for increased equity, inclusion, and environmental justice. These questions suggest an alternative foundation for teaching landscape history, one that interrogates the role of design in creating landscapes that are beautiful, productive, healthy, and just.
Participants
- Ebenezer Olamiposi Adeyemi, University of Iowa
- Diana Boric, Rutgers University
- Elza D’Cruz, Srishti Manipal Institute of Art, Design and Technology
- Evan Elderbrock, University of Oregon
- Negar Imani, Shiraz University
- Dirco Kok, Wageningen University
- Gwendolyn Lockman, University of Texas at Austin
- Gabriela Tie Nagoya Tamari, University of São Paulo
- Y. L. Lucy Wang, Columbia University
- Jon Winder, University of Kent
The Public Realm and the Design and Construction of Public Landscapes
May 18–June 5, 2020 | Virtual
Due to the circumstances surrounding COVID-19, instead of being an on-site program, we have developed a robust digital program of lectures, readings, discussions, and projects. We welcomed nine graduate students from schools across the nation whose research is engaged in questions of landscapes, gardens, and cities. These include students researching music history, cultural geography, social justice and design, philosophy, and so much more. The program engaged with readings, discussions, and guest lectures tackling key issues in landscape studies with special focus on public landscapes and the public realm. We discussed seminal works in landscape and urban history while exploring emerging practices and methods of inquiry such as theories of the public realm, race and identity, and environmental and urban history.
Participants
- Miguel Arango Calle, Indiana University
- Kathleen Conti, University of Texas at Austin/University of Wisconsin–Madison
- Jessica May Fletcher, Graduate Center, City University of New York
- Rachel Hirsch, Harvard University
- Sarah Mallory, Harvard University
- Chloé Skye Nagraj, University of Virginia
- Christina Shivers, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University
- Maxwell Smith-Holmes, Graduate School of Design, Harvard University
- Taryn Wiens, University of Virginia
2010s
2019 Summer Graduate Program
May 12–June 1, 2019 | Dumbarton Oaks and Oak Spring Garden Foundation
Bringing together early-career scholars and practitioners who are pursuing cross-disciplinary research on landscape-related topics, the program focused on key issues and texts in landscape history and theory, situating garden and landscape design in the context of humanities scholarship: from the idea of the Three Natures to the ecological challenges of the Anthropocene and the discourse of landscape urbanism. Special emphasis was laid on the study of urban landscapes.
The program also included two study sessions in the Rare Book Reading Room at Dumbarton Oaks, site visits in the Washington metropolitan area (including the National Mall, the Franciscan Monastery of the Holy Land, and Meridian Hill Park), and a three-day stay at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation in Upperville, Virginia, focused on the issues of conservation biology. During their residency at Dumbarton Oaks, program participants had access to the institute’s library resources and its celebrated gardens designed by Beatrix Farrand.
2018 Summer Graduate Program
May 13–June 2, 2018 | Dumbarton Oaks and the Center for Cultural Landscapes at the University of Virginia
Bringing together early-career scholars and practitioners who are pursuing cross-disciplinary research on landscape-related topics, the program focused on key issues and texts in landscape history and theory, situating garden and landscape design in the context of humanities scholarship: from the idea of the Three Natures to the ecological challenges of the Anthropocene and the discourse of landscape urbanism. Special emphasis will be laid on the study of urban landscapes.
The program also included two study sessions in the Rare Books Library at Dumbarton Oaks, site visits in the Washington metropolitan area (including Mount Vernon and the National Mall), and a three-day stay in Charlottesville, VA, with a visit to Richmond and James Madison’s Montpelier to explore the racial geographies of Virginia. During their residency at Dumbarton Oaks, program participants had access to the institute’s library resources and its celebrated gardens.
2017 Summer Graduate Program
June 5–23, 2017 | Dumbarton Oaks
Bringing together early-career scholars and practitioners who are pursuing cross-disciplinary research on landscape-related topics, the program focused on key sites, figures, and texts in garden and landscape design, theory, and history. It examined the historical evolution of landscape as an idea, investigating theoretical underpinnings and methodological implications of such concepts as nature, ecology, sustainability, and design; special emphasis was laid on urban landscape issues.
2016 Summer Graduate Program
June 6–18, 2016 | Dumbarton Oaks
Bringing together early-career scholars who are pursuing cross-disciplinary research on landscape-related topics, the program focused on key sites, figures, and texts in garden and landscape design and history. It investigated the historical evolution of landscape as an idea and laid special emphasis on theoretical underpinnings and methodological implications of such concepts as nature, ecology, sustainability, and design.
Frontiers in Urban Landscape Research
November 20, 2015 | Mellon Initiative in Urban Landscape Studies Graduate Program