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About Me

Anne Mitchell Whisnant is a professional historian whose teaching, research, speaking, consulting, and writing focus on public history, digital and geospatial history, and the history of the U.S. National Parks. She is a public historian in private practice, working with her husband David Whisnant as co-principal of the public history consulting firm Primary Source History Services, based in Chapel Hill, NC.

During 2016-17 she was Whichard Visiting Distinguished Professor of History at East Carolina University, and before that, for ten years (2006-16), she was Deputy Secretary of the Faculty and Director of Research, Communications, and Programs for UNC-Chapel Hill’s Office of Faculty Governance.

Dr. Whisnant received her Ph.D. in history at UNC-Chapel Hill in 1997. In 2006, UNC Press published her book, Super-Scenic Motorway: A Blue Ridge Parkway History. At UNC-Chapel Hill, she served as scholarly adviser for Driving Through Time: The Digital Blue Ridge Parkway, an online history collection developed collaboratively with the Park Service and the UNC Libraries. Her teaching in public history has always incorporated significant digital components, and her students have developed a number of web exhibits related to Blue Ridge Parkway and university history.  In 2010, she and husband David published a Parkway book for children, titled When the Parkway Came. As a consultant, Dr. Whisnant has been the co-principal historian on several other National Park Service projects. Most recently, she chaired a task force commissioned by the Organization of American Historians and the National Park Service to study historical practice within the Park Service. The resulting report, Imperiled Promise: The State of History in the National Park Service, won the 2013 Excellence in Consulting Award from the National Council on Public History and is helping set a vision for future NPS historical work.

Anne’s full CV is online here.

Recent Publications

• Imperiled Promise:  The State of History in the National Park Service [with Marla Miller, Gary B. Nash, and David Thelen] (Organization of American Historians/National Park Service, 2011).  146 pp. (Winner: 2013 National Council on Public History Excellence in Consulting Award).
• Gateway to the Atlantic World: Cape Lookout National Seashore Historic Resource Study [with David E. Whisnant] (National Park Service, 2015).  280 pp.
• When the Parkway Came [with David E. Whisnant] (Primary Source Publishers, 2010).  First book for children and youth about Blue Ridge Parkway history.  57 pp.
• Small Park, Large Issues: De Soto National Memorial and the Commemoration of a Difficult History [with David E. Whisnant] (National Park Service, 2007).  201 pp.
• Super-Scenic Motorway: A Blue Ridge Parkway History (University of North Carolina Press, 2006).  First full scholarly analysis of the history of the most visited site in the American National Park system.  434 pp.
• “Pulling from Outside, Pushing from Inside: Imperiled Promise and Change in the National Park Service,” (with Marla R. Miller), The Public Historian (November 2016). 29 pp. (Honorable Mention, G. Wesley Johnson Award, National Council on Public History, 2017).
• “Interstate Road Project, Single-State History: Tammy Ingram’s Look at the Dixie Highway,” Southern Spaces, 7 April 2015.

Media Coverage

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@amwhisnant

Country Focus

United States

Expertise by Geography

United States

Expertise by Chronology

18th century, 19th century, 20th century

Expertise by Topic

Environment, Government, Higher Ed, Museums, Public History, Race, Technology, Women