Brian Whetstone, assistant professor of historic preservation at the Weitzman School, explores the intersections between housing and labor equity at museums, historic sites, and preservation organizations.
2 min. read
Architectural historian Brian Whetstone joined the Weitzman School of Design as assistant professor of historic preservation this fall. His research explores the intersections between housing and labor equity at museums, historic sites, and preservation organizations in the United States. Whetstone teaches Historic Preservation’s American Architecture course, which is a core part of the curriculum of the department. In a Q&A, he discusses his forthcoming book, “Renting History: Housing, Labor, and America’s Heritage Infrastructure,” and the complexities of teaching a survey of American architecture to preservation students.
Assistant professor of historic preservation Brian Whetstone.
“In the department right now, we are having a lot of deep and sustained conversations about this course and many others. The [Historic Preservation’s American Architecture] course helps introduce students to architecture from the beginning of human settlement in America up to the present. It’s truly this marathon sprint through American architectural history across time,” Whetstone says.
“The course and others like it have used buildings as the unit of analysis to understand American architectural history, focusing on specific buildings or the work of specific architects. I'm trying to encourage students to adopt a framework that thinks about not just American architecture, but an American built environment, a total and comprehensive landscape that’s been shaped by human interaction and human intervention.”
“I am also asking students to expand beyond questions of style or questions of just architectural history in order to think about topics in architectural history from a variety of other disciplinary lenses,” he says. “So, we may read a traditional architectural history text alongside an author engaged in ethnography or material culture or social history or cultural history, and try to think, how can you connect a history of a building or a series of buildings into this broader historical context?”
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