Eric MacDonald
Job Title: ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR
Contact
Email: eamacdon@uga.eduPhone: 706-542-0118
Street address: 105B Denmark Hall
Personal Interests
Botany, ecology, gardening, hiking, hunting, foraging, cookery, brewing and fermentation, Japanese anagama-fired ceramics, history, linguistics, toponyms, and Scots Gaelic
Eric MacDonald
Biographical Information
I grew up on a hobby farm in a rural Michigan community where my family's ancestor have lived and farmed since the mid-1800s. As a child I looked after cows, baled hay, shucked and shelled corn, chopped firewood, and played in the surroundings fields, pastures, and woods. My love of landscapes began then and there, although I have realized this only after moving far away—in time, as well as in distance. I studied architecture, became disenchanted with what I perceived to be that profession's inability to create environments that really served and uplifted people (rather than serving the profit margins or real estate developers, or the egos of starchitects), and consequently drifted into the field of historic preservation. I worked for the Michigan State Historic Preservation Office for about four years, where I became enamored with the burgeoning arena of cultural landscape preservation. This prompted me to pursue a Ph.D. in Land Resources (environmental history and cultural landscape management), where I studied under the direction of cultural geographer Arnold Alanen at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My dissertation explored the discourses of ecology and landscape architecture in the late nineteenth-century American periodical Garden and Forest. In 2005, I arrived at the University of Georgia.Education
Ph.D., Land Resources, University of Wisconsin-MadisonMaster of Architecture, University of Michigan
Master of Urban Planning, University of Michigan
BS, Architecture, University of Michigan
RECENT COURSES TAUGHT
EDES 6550 – History of the Built Environment I: Landscape
EDES 7350 – Landscape Management
HIPR 6440 – Historic Landscape Management
LAND 2510 – History of the Built Environment I: Landscape
SELECTED CURRENT & RECENT SUPERVISION OF STUDENT RESEARCH
Jingxian Li, “Managing Overtourism in the Classical Gardens of Suzhou, China” (dissertation, Ph.D. in Environmental Design and Planning).
Gretchen Bailey, “Building a Compliant Commons: The Story of People’s Park at the University of Georgia” (thesis, Master of Landscape Architecture).
Amanda J. M. Braithwaite, “Something Blue: A Framework for the Revival of Indigo Culture in the North American South,” (thesis, Master of Historic Preservation).
Maxwell Nosbisch, “'To Free Thought, Free Speech, and Free Investigation': The Cultural Landscape of Lily Dale, New York” (thesis, Master of Historic Preservation), 2020.
Maura Jackson, “Traditions and Preservation of Iconic Statues on University Campuses: A Comparison of Columbia University’s Alma Mater and Harvard University’s John Harvard” (thesis, Master of Historic Preservation), 2019.
Mary Scales English, “Private Management of Cultural Landscapes: Challenges at Lake Winfield Scott Recreation Area” (thesis, Master of Historic Preservation), 2017.
Olivia Head, “Camp Merrie-Woode: The Interaction of Gender Attitudes and Historic Preservation at an All-Girls Summer Camp” (thesis, Master of Historic Preservation), 2017.
Megan Turner. “Typologies of Reconciliation: Adapting the Urban Park to Welcome Little Brown Bats (Myotis lucifugus)” (thesis, Master of Landscape Architecture), 2017.
RESEARCH INTERESTS
Environmental history, historical ecology, human dimensions of ecological restoration, and sustainable cultural landscape management
My scholarly research focuses the history of landscape architecture, environmental history and historical ecology, and cultural landscape management. I am grateful for the support provided by a number of public and philanthropic institutions over the years, including the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection, and the University of Georgia’s Willson Center for Humanities and Arts. My research also is heavily oriented toward consulting on various cultural landscape management endeavors for public agencies including Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore, Voyageurs National Park, and the grounds of the Wisconsin state capitol in Madison, Wisconsin. In 2009, I co-founded the College of Environment and Design’s Cultural Landscape Laboratory, which initiated cultural landscape research and planning at Hyde Farm in metropolitan Atlanta, Wormsloe Plantation near Savannah, Georgia, and Stratford Hall Plantation on Virginia’s Northern Neck peninsula. Over the past decade I have coordinated an initiative to restore degraded “natural areas” on the University of Georgia campus, with support from the university’s Office of Sustainability, the Ford Motor Company Fund, and other partners.
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS
Eric A. Macdonald. “’The River Is the Trail’: The Middle and North Oconee Rivers Greenway.” In Scott Nesbit, ed., Places: Commemorating 50 Years at the College of Environment and Design. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia, 2020, 89-91.
Eric A. Macdonald. “Still, Striving to Be Love.” In Scott Nesbit, ed., Places: Commemorating 50 Years at the College of Environment and Design. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia, 2020, 6-7.
Eric A. Macdonald. “Tanyard Branch.” In Scott Nesbit, ed., Places: Commemorating 50 Years at the College of Environment and Design. Athens, Georgia: University of Georgia, 2020, 53-55.
Genevieve A. Holdridge, Fausto O. Sarmiento, Suzanne E. Pilaar Birch, Bynum Boley, James K. Reap, Eric A. Macdonald, Maria Navarro, Sarah L. Hitchner, John W. Schelhas. “Feeding Futures Framed: Rediscovering Biocultural Sustainable Foodscapes.” In Fausto Sarmiento and Larry Frolich, eds., Handbook on Geography of Sustainability, Chapter 15. Cheltenham, United Kingdom: Edward Elgar Publishing, 2018, chapter 15.
Eric A. MacDonald and Elizabeth G. King. 2018. “Novel Ecosystems: A Bridging Concept for the Consilience of Cultural Landscape Conservation and Ecological Restoration.” Landscape and Urban Planning 177 (September): 148-159.
Eric A. MacDonald. “Defending the American Genius Loci: The Reception of Foreign Trends in “Garden and Forest”. In Raffaella Fabiani Giannetto, ed., Foreign Trends on American Soil. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2017. [ISBN 978-0-8139-3929-2]
Zachary Richardson and Eric A. MacDonald. “Four-legged Ecorevelatory Agents of Engagement: The Value of Prescribed Grazing as a Tool for Community Building, Ecological Restoration, and Public Interaction.” In Ming-Han Li and Hyun Woo Kim, eds., Landscape Research Record: Space, Time/Place, Duration. Arlington, TX: Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture, 2013, pp. 319-331. [ISBN 978-0-9853013-2-3].
Michael Salter, Eric A. MacDonald, and Zachary Richardson. “Prescribed Grazing in Urban Settings: A Survey of the Legal Framework of Efforts across the United States.” In Ming-Han Li and Hyun Woo Kim, eds., Landscape Research Record: Space, Time/Place, Duration. Arlington, TX: Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture, 2013, pp. 188 – 200. [ISBN 978-0-9853013-2-3].
Eric A. MacDonald. “Hortus Incantans: Gardening as an Art of Enchantment.” In Dan O’Brien, ed., Gardening: Philosophy for Everyone—Cultivating Wisdom. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010, pp. 121-134. [U.K. edition published in November 2010; U.S. edition published in February 2011; ISBN: 9781444330212]
Cari Goetcheus and Eric A. MacDonald, eds. Exploring the Boundaries of Historic Landscape Preservation: Proceedings of the Twenty-ninth Annual Meeting of the Alliance for Historic Landscape Preservation. Clemson, SC: Digital Press of Clemson University, 2008. [ISBN: 9780979606656]
SERVICE
I serve on various committees within the College of Environment and Design, and on the board of directors of the Alliance for Historic Landscape Preservation, an international organization of professionals and academics who are engaged in the scholarship and practice of cultural landscape conservation. Over the past decade, however, much of my service activity has been directed toward reclaiming, reimagining, and uplifting a number of neglected and uncelebrated landscapes within the University of Georgia campus. I serve on a number of ad hoc committees focused on issues such as watershed management, sustainability education, and pollinator habitat. In collaboration with the university’s Office of Sustainability, I coordinate ecological restoration work within Driftmier Woods, a ten-acre patch of old-growth forest, and within in a small tract of riparian forest along Tanyard Branch. These efforts are largely driven by student volunteers, and also provide me with meaningful hands-on engagement with the issues and activities that interest me intellectually. They also serve as laboratories for the courses that I teach, and as venues for collaborative research with other UGA faculty who are similarly interested in the management of cultural landscapes and “natural areas” in urban settings.
HONORS AND AWARDS
Outstanding Teacher Award, University of Georgia, College of Environment and Design, 2011
Fellowship in Garden and Landscape Studies. Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection. 2008-2009.
Faculty Research Fellowship, University of Georgia, Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, 2006.
Merit Award. American Society of Landscape Architects, Wisconsin Chapter. Project: Wisconsin’s Capitol Park: A Rehabilitation Master Plan (with Ken Saiki Design, Inc). 2005.
Trustee’s Citation of Merit, Carter Manny Award Competition, Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts, 2003.
National ASLA Merit Award for Research. American Society of Landscape Architects. Project: Landscape History and Cultural Landscape Management, Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore (with Arnold R. Alanen). 2002.
President’s Award of Excellence. American Society of Landscape Architects, Wisconsin Chapter. Project: A Landscape History of Wisconsin’s Capitol Park, 1838-2000 (with Arnold R. Alanen and Holly Smith). 2002.
Jorge M. Perez Urban Planning Fellowship, University of Michigan, 1989.