NEW Spring 2025 - The National Parks in American Life

Instructor:
Anne Mitchell Whisnant
LS 780-03
Spring 2025
Thursdays, 1:40-4:10 PM
Friedl 240

Please note that graduate student enrollment in this course is capped at five. 

This course will introduce students to the history and evolution of the National Park system in the United States.  Beginning with 19th century parks (Yellowstone, Yosemite), it will explore the emergence of the park idea, evolving notions of conservation, indigenous displacement, establishment of the National Park Service in 1916, and the 20th and 21st-century expansion of the National Park system to include both scenic or “natural” and cultural and historical parks. Our focus will be on the entire National Park system, which as of 2024 includes 430 sites.  Our lens will be that of a historian, rather than primarily of a scientist or outdoor recreation enthusiast.  

The course will consider the relationship of the parks to American historical narratives; to tourism and recreation initiatives; to regional economic development; and to environmental movements and science.  Instead of presenting the National Parks only as “America’s Best Idea,” the course will invite students to consider the costs and benefits involved in park creation, the constituencies best served and those excluded. It will also examine the Park Service as an agency with particular historical configurations, racial and gender biases, and organizational priorities that have shaped the park system in certain ways.  It will touch upon the ways in which public historians work within the Park Service. 

Students will have the opportunity to investigate the history of one park of their choosing.  

Course Goals and Objectives

Students completing this course will:

  • Encounter the breadth of the entire U.S. national park system, including 430 sites encompassing vast natural, historic, and cultural resources. 
  • Understand the National Parks and the National Park Service as historical creations that have been shaped by political and social conflicts and processes, and that have, in turn, have shaped particular visions of American self-understanding.
  • Learn to use the history of the National Parks as a laboratory for exploring historical and contemporary issues in public policy, environmental conservation, informal public education, and historic preservation.
  • Explore the work of public historians in and with the National Park Service. 
  • Explore the historical research resources (government research reports, data, “gray literature”) and analytical and presentation techniques used for history work within the Park Service. 
  • Apply the lines of analysis and research approaches presented in the course to a park site of their choosing.  
About Anne Mitchell Whisnant
Graduate Liberal Studies

As the Director of Graduate Liberal Studies, Anne Mitchell Whisnant oversees all aspects of the program, participating in both administration and academics. She joined GLS as director on August 15, 2019. Dr. Whisnant is a 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 has taught public history at UNC-Chapel Hill, UNC-Greensboro, East Carolina University, and George Mason University. In 2006 she published Super-Scenic Motorway: A Blue Ridge Parkway History, the first fully grounded history of the parkway's development, with the University of North Carolina Press. She subsequently 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. More of her Blue Ridge Parkway work may be seen here. As a consultant, Dr. Whisnant has been the co-principal historian on several other National Park Service projects. From 2008-12, 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.

Full Profile for Anne Mitchell Whisnant