PER Volume 5 (2012)

Editors’ Note

With this fifth volume, we complete our term as PER’s editors. It was a great privilege to serve the National Council for Preservation Education (NCPE) and the field of historic preservation.
PER 5 includes seven papers, one special report, one film review, and four book reviews. The first three papers introduce the diversity of research topics in preservation. Robin Williams examines the impact of shifts in cultural and social contexts on erecting and preserving historic monuments. Karen Mulder describes the dilemmas and issues involved in Germany’s post-Holocaust physical and moral reconstruction. Although Rumiko Handa talks about a specific place in England, her article raises questions on the relationships among literature, imagination, and preservation. The next four papers and the Special Report focus on pedagogical issues. Hugh Miller’s article is the first biography published in PER. With this publication, we honor the memory of Bernd Foerster, the recipient of the 2000 NCPE Fitch Award for outstanding contribution to preservation education. Both Jeffery Tilman’s and Barry Stiefel and Gilbert Stiefel’s papers introduce the challenges in preservation education. The first illustrates the experience in teaching a preservation studio in collaboration with practitioners and city officials. The second looks at an alternative method of teaching preservation law. Andre_a Livi Smith discusses preservation undergraduate pedagogy, curriculum, and placement in her article on the First Undergraduate Historic Preservation Education Symposium (2010). Ann Komara’s Field Report continues PER’s tradition of publishing special reports on pedagogical experiences in field work.

Catherine Zipf, PER’s book review editor, solicited for the first time a review of a documentary film. Amy D. Finstein reviewed Chad Freidrichs’s The Pruitt-Igoe Myth. Jeffrey Chusid’s book Saving Wright: The Freeman House and the Preservation of Meaning, Materials and Modernity was reviewed by Jane King Hession. Michael McCulloch reviewed three publications on historic Detroit: Dan Austin and Sean Doerr’s Lost Detroit: Stories Behind the Motor City’s Majestic Ruins, John Gallagher’s Reimagining Detroit: Opportunities for Redefining an American City, and Andrew Moore’s Detroit Disassembled.

During our editorial term, we were thrilled and challenged in establishing a new scholarly peer-reviewed academic journal. Indeed, the journal is included in the Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals and was recently selected for inclusion in the prestigious EBSCO database of scholarly articles. However, we would not be able to publish PER and maintain its high scholarly standards and production quality without our contributors. We thank NCPE’s previous executive committee, chaired by Ted Ligibel, for endorsing and supporting the establishment of PER, the current executive committee for continuing NCPE support, and the entire membership of NCPE. We would like to extend special thanks to Michael Tomlan, who was instrumental in the funding and production of PER. We thank Catherine Zipf, PER’s book review editor, all the authors, editorial consultants, and the editorial board, chaired by Michael Tomlan. Many thanks to the production team: Patricia Gioia, copy editor; Gali Zilbershtein, graphic designer; Cayuga Press; and Historic Urban Plans Inc.

Thanks also go to PER’s sponsors and institutional supporters: NCPE; the Clarence S. Stein Institute of Urban and Landscape Studies at Cornell University; Texas A&M University College of Architecture, under Dean Jorge Vanegas; TAMU’s Department of Architecture, under Ward Wells; and the Department of Landscape Architecture & Urban Planning, under Forster Ndubisi.

As we welcome the new co-editors Jeremy Wells and Rebecca J. Sheppard, we send special thanks to all of you, the readers of Preservation Education & Research.

Anat Geva and Kevin Glowacki
Editors, Preservation Education & Research

Editors’ Note

Contents

Articles

Special Report

Book and Film Reviews