Brian Whetstone

Brian Whetstone is a public historian and preservationist whose research and teaching explores the intersection between housing and labor equity at museums, historic sites, and preservation organizations in the United States. His current research encompasses a manuscript project, titled Renting History: Housing, Labor, and America’s Heritage Infrastructure, currently under contract with the University of Massachusetts Press. Renting History explores the role of renting and the provision of housing at historic sites, museums, and heritage organizations across the twentieth century. Drawing from the experiences of tenants, caretakers, and employees who live onsite at these institutions, Renting History situates tenants as key figures in the development of modern public history practice and the preservation and interpretation of historic sites. In addition to this manuscript project, Whetstone serves as the principal investigator for an upcoming digital humanities project, Caretakers: Living and Working at Philadelphia's Historic Sites, that explores the experiences of caretakers and tenants in sustaining Philadelphia's heritage landscape. Whetstone is also working on a project examining the role of historic preservation and public history in the expansion and contestation of mass incarceration from the nineteenth century to the present day. This second project foregrounds the practice of "carceral collecting," the intentional collection and display of artifacts, material culture, and architectural salvage related to the carceral system, including police, prisons, and other implements of punishment in American museums and collecting institutions.

Prior to joining the University of Pennsylvania Stuart Weitzman School of Design faculty, Whetstone was a historian with the National Park Service’s History, Architecture, Conservation, and Engineering Center (HACE), where he coordinated research and preservation documentation projects for national parks in the northeastern United States. He has additionally served as a postdoctoral fellow in the Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities at Princeton University and as a research fellow for the Center for the Preservation of Civil Rights Sites at the University of Pennsylvania. Whetstone also serves on the Membership Committee of the National Council on Public History and as a board member for the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Foundation in Massachusetts.