Duke Leadership Academy Scholars Profile

Anne Mitchell Whisnant

Title: Director, Graduate Liberal Studies
Location:
Senior Management Area: Duke Graduate School
Class Year: 2021

Bio:
Anne Mitchell Whisnant, Ph.D. is a historian by training and has been Director of the Graduate Liberal Studies Program at Duke University since August of 2019. From 2017-19, she worked full time as a professional historical consultant in her firm Primary Source History Services, conducting historical research projects for the National Park Service. For 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 Hills Office of Faculty Governance. Her first Duke tenure was 2002-06, when she coordinated humanities programs at the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute. Anne has taught public history at UNC, ECU, George Mason University, and UNC-Greensboro. She is the author of Super-Scenic Motorway: A Blue Ridge Parkway History (University of North Carolina Press, 2006) and lead author of the collaborative study Imperiled Promise: The State of History in the National Park Service (Organization of American Historians, 2011), which won the 2013 Excellence in Consulting Award from the National Council on Public History.