Historic Preservation Research Works

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http://hdl.handle.net/1903/1610

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Browsing Historic Preservation Research Works by Author "Wells, Jeremy C."

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    10 Ways Historic Preservation Policy Supports White Supremacy and 10 Ideas to End It
    (2021-05) Wells, Jeremy C.
    In the United States, policy-driven work in historic preservation comprises about three-quarters of the field’s work. Addressing issues of diversity, inclusion, and equity in federal and local preservation policies has usually been synonymous with the need to recognize the history of people with non-dominant racial or ethnic identities. While this omission is very much a policy problem, it is far from the only manifestation of how preservation policies support White supremacy, especially through the field’s pervasive regulatory climate. To more fully explore the policy problems in the field, this paper attempts to define ten ways in which preservation policy supports White supremacy followed by specific recommendations to solve some of these issues. A central theme is for the National Park Service and the Advisory Council on Historic Preservation to open up and support the rule-making process around the National Register of Historic Places and the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards. A secondary theme is to support people-centered changes to historic preservation policy, including more flexibility around what have often been dogmatic approaches to significance and integrity.
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    Does Intra-Disciplinary Historic Preservation Scholarship Address the Exigent Issues of Practice? Exploring the Character and Impact of Preservation Knowledge Production in Relation to Critical Heritage Studies, Equity, and Social Justice
    (2020) Wells, Jeremy C.
    This data repository originates from research that seeks to understand the relationship, in historic preservation, between equity/social justice and the field’s intra-disciplinary scholarship by using a critical heritage studies lens. Intra-disciplinary scholarship is defined as the scholarly literature produced by the 58 tenured and tenure-track faculty associated with historic preservation degree programs in the United States through the end of 2018. A content analysis of this literature shows a general lack of engagement by authors on issues related to the public’s needs, including topics related to justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. A citation analysis of this literature reveals meager faculty productivity and low impact for intra-disciplinary preservation scholarship. In order for the field to sustain itself, it needs to reconsider its anti-intellectual tendencies, increase its socially-relevant scholarly publications, and embrace more critical, people-centered approaches.
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    Probing the Person-Patina Relationship: A Correlational Study on the Psychology of Senescent Environments
    (2020) Wells, Jeremy C.
    There is a lack of research on people’s psychological perceptions to decay or patina that is part of the historic environment. Built heritage conservation doctrine and law are based on the assumption that all people have a similar, positive aesthetic perception to patina in the built environment, although there are very few empirical studies that have attempted to confirm or challenge this assumption. This study is based on the statistical analysis of survey data from 864 people in the United States who ranked 24 images of old, decayed building materials and 7 control images of new building materials based on aesthetic qualities, condition, and perceived age. The results indicate that people do not like decayed earthen building materials, concrete, or ferrous metals and have a neutral opinion of the aesthetic qualities of aged brick, preferring new brick as well as aged wood. While there are small differences based on race, ethnicity, and gender, the largest difference in responses is between people who work in the historic preservation/CRM field and those who do not. This finding appears to indicate that people who work in these fields have a different psychological response to decay/patina in the built environment than laypeople, which has important ramifications in terms of decision-making processes regarding interventions in the older built environment.