Topics in Preservation & Public History: Heritage, Housing, and Labor in the United States

This seminar explores the housing and labor practices of the American heritage sector. Our course will focus closely on the ways museums, national parks, historic sites, and preservation organizations have engaged with real estate, capitalism, and urban development over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to sustain heritage work in the United States. How does an interdisciplinary analysis of housing and labor rooted in architectural and urban history, material culture, and labor studies offer new insight into the contemporary work of historic preservation and public history? We will visit local historic sites and host guest speakers engaged in historic preservation and public history work that examines the field’s housing and labor practices. In surveying the historical and contemporary landscape of the broader heritage sector, our course will interrogate the social and political responsibilities of heritage sites and professionals working to address issues such as housing justice, labor and pay equity, gentrification, and the interpretation of these topics to public audiences. Finally, our course will explore how the provision of housing has animated the labor arrangements structuring the workplaces of public historians, preservationists, and heritage professionals.