Are you feeling tension 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, cultural heritage is 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 director Amy Skillman to learn about how the program works, why it matters, and what graduates are doing to empower communities to shape their own futures, celebrate diversity and 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 directing our 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.