This issue of Forum Journal focuses on how to preserve cultural heritage in the absence of historic places that represent that heritage.  Articles focus on specific communities and the efforts to preserve intangible heritage, as well as more general explorations of the topic. Articles included are about intangible heritage in African American, Latinx, Vietnamese American, immigrant, and coal mining communities throughout America in places as disparate as San Diego; Pennsylvania Coal Country; Minneapolis, Minnesota; and Arlington, Virginia. Intangible heritage is also positioned within the context of historic preservation and the legal framework guiding the protection of historic sites. Finally, the notion of intangible heritage, itself, is challenged, with an article asking “If heritage is itself intangible, how can there be an intangible version of it?”

Table of Contents

• Historic Preservation Without Place by Dennis Hockman
• Away from Place: Expanding Intangible Cultural Resource Protections Under U.S. and International Law by Emily Bergeron
• Is There Such a Thing as Tangible Heritage? by  Jeremy C. Wells
• Shared Spaces, Invisible Imprints: Intersections of Latinx and African American Intangible Heritage by Sehila Mota Casper and Lawana Holland-Moore
• Vestiges of Vietnam: Uncovering the Hidden Heritage of Virginia’s Little Saigon by Kim O’Connell
• Engaging Communities to Identify Intangible Heritage in Minneapolis by Michael Tolan
• Working-class Intangible Heritage from the Pennsylvania Coal Fields by Camille Westmont
• Count the Outside Children! Kinkeeping as Preservation Practice Among Descendants of Texas’ Freedom Colonies by Andrea R. Roberts

Accessing the Forum Journal

For a limited time we've opened our entire collection of Forum Journal issues, both on Preservation Leadership Forum and on Project Muse.