Sea levels are rising ever faster in the face of climate change, and by the year 2100 many historic properties could be underwater. Recent Heritage Conservation graduate Alex Clark wrote her thesis on the Adamson House in Malibu, built in 1929 and famed for its Malibu Potteries tile. In her thesis, Heritage at the Water's Edge. Adaptive Release at the Adamson House, Alex outlines the site’s layered history and current use as a museum. Alex tells producer Willa Seidenberg how coastal erosion, storms, king tides, and projected sea-level rise could place the house and parts of the coastal highway underwater in a few short decades. She evaluates past and proposed mitigations and advocates for “adaptive release,” or actively managing the inevitable decay or loss of a historic site.

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Recent USC Heritage Conservation graduate Eliza Jane Franklin wrote her master’s thesis on a deeply personal topic: lynching. Not just the act of physical violence that took her great-grandfather’s life in 1922, but “the act of terrorizing and/or controlling individuals’ or a community’s heritage,” which she named “heritage lynching.” In this episode, co-host Trudi Sandmeier speaks with Eliza Jane about her thesis, Re-Membering Heritage Lynchings, Hoop Skirts, and History: A Southernbelle Radical’s Unveiling of the Daughters of Dixie’s Role in the Legacy of Violence in Preservation in Eufaula, AL. Eliza Jane discusses how White people sustain a Lost Cause narrative in her hometown, how she is reclaiming her heritage, and how people can do the same in their own communities.

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What does “sublime” mean to you? Join us for an art history-meets-heritage conservation episode with recent graduate Ryan Holcomb. Like many of our students, Ryan fused seemingly disparate interests with heritage conservation in his thesis, Ponderous, Romantic and Awful: Tracking the Sublime within the Interpretation of Industrial Landmarks. He puts a name to that feeling we get—that mix of awe, wonder, even terror—from certain overwhelming experiences. He shares the role of the sublime in three case studies: Lowell National Historical Park’s Boott Mill in Massachusetts, Pittsburgh’s Carrie Blast Furnaces, and Ford’s River Rouge Plant near Detroit. Ryan tells co-host Cindy Olnick how he came to this unusual thesis subject, how the sublime affects our experience of industrial sites, and how it serves heritage conservation through emotional connection.

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