Peter Allen
My current research is focused on the post-WWII transition from a rail-based to highway-based transportation infrastructure system, and the effects of this transition on patterns of energy-use, land-use, and social dynamics. I am also interested in exploring resilience in social and ecological systems, and the trade-offs inherent in re-organizing systems for increased resilience. The key departments and programs with which I’m affiliated are the Nelson Institute, SAGE, and Sandbox (a weekly luncheon dedicated to discussing complex systems). contact
Mitch Aso
I am a graduate student in the History of Science currently working on a dissertation entitled "Colonial Ecologies: Environment, Health, and Politics in French Indochina, 1890-1940", which focuses on environmental change and human health on the rubber plantations of southern Vietnam. My interest in environmental history began as an undergraduate at the University of California, Berkeley, where I majored in environmental engineering. Taking a course in environmental history turned me on to the idea that one could approach environmental topics from a humanistic perspective and, after a sojourn in Southeast Asia, I decided to come to Madison to further pursue those interests. contact
Rachel Azima
I am a Ph.D. candidate in the English department, and I am currently completing a dissertation titled “Alien Soil: Ecologies of Transplantation in Contemporary Literature.” My project employs root metaphors as a lens for examining interconnections among the literary, botanical, and national. My research interests include nature writing and ecocriticism, environmental justice, and intersections between literature and science (especially botany), as well as American literature, postcolonial literature, and Native American literature.
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Amalia (Tholen) Baldwin
I have always been fascinated with the way people relate to their environments across time and in different cultures. As part of my BA in Anthropology at Yale I wrote a senior thesis on the physical expression of the "cultural" designation of World Heritage Areas in Australia. After graduating I spent five years working seasonally for the National Park Service as an interpretive park ranger. Now in my second year as a M.S. candidate in the Land Resources program at the Nelson Institute, I am working on an environmental history of Isle Royale National Park and its relationship to the early wilderness movement. contact
Meridith Beck Sayre
I grew-up on the shores of Deep Cove in Vancouver, BC, Canada. I completed a BA in Archaeology and an MA in History at Simon Fraser University. Over the course of my education at SFU, I worked in the archaeobotany lab identifying plant remains from archaeological sites in BC and Ecuador. This research led to my interest in environmental change over time and the relationships between people and plants in the past. I am currently a graduate student in the History of Science department researching Jesuit natural history in seventeenth century New France. contact
Sarah Besky
I am a graduate student in the Department of Anthropology. My dissertation research is on Fair Trade, Organic, and Biodynamic Tea Production in the Darjeeling district of West Bengal, India. I am interested in changing agricultural practices and how the adoption of fair trade organic production has effected workers’ perceptions of their health, labor, and environment. My research interests, broadly defined are: nature and capitalism; social and environmental justice in agriculture; and plantations and empire. I have benefited from interdisciplinary work in the departments of Rural Sociology and Geography. I also work closely with the Center for South Asia and the Center for East Asian Studies.
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Peter Boger
is interested in environmental history, communications, education, policy, psychology, and ethics. Specifically, he is interested in examining historic cultural influences on formation of environmental values and reasons people behave in environmentally sustainable ways. A third-year student in the Nelson Institute’s Land Resources program, he also takes classes in the history, sociology, journalism and mass communications, and zoology departments. A native of North Carolina, he earned his B.A. in History with a Certificate in Environmental Studies from Princeton University. Prior to attending UW-Madison, he was Special Assistant to the Commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection. contact
Brad Brewster
Sarah Camacho
I am a first-year student in the department of history. My primary interests are urban environmental history and the history of urban planning in the U.S. Midwest and West. I received my B.A. in history and anthropology in 2003 and my M.L.S in 2005. Before returning to school, I worked as an archivist for two years. I am originally from the North Side of Chicago. contact
Andrew Case
I am a PhD student in the History Department at UW-Madison. I became interested in environmental history while an undergrad at the University of New Hampshire where I studied history and geology. Since that time my research has ranged from North Atlantic cod populations, to interstate highways, to an MA thesis on political conflicts over water fluoridation in the United States. I am beginning a dissertation on J.I. Rodale and the organic food movement. I am particularly interested in ideas about food, agriculture, and health in the twentieth century and their influence on environmental politics and culture. contact
Chelsea Chapman
A cultural Anthropology student, my current research is on hip-hop and the politics and poetics of landscape of Northeastern Alaska. Drawing on coursework in Anthropology, Ethnomusicology and Geography, I study Northern Native hip-hop and confluences between environmentalism, indigenous collectivism and youth movements. I grew up in Alaska and find subjective experiences of environment important in understanding political response to the crisis landscapes of the North now symptomatic of drastic climate change. Before coming to Madison, I worked for several years in a sustainable agriculture education program in the Bay Area. contact
Weina Chen
I am a graduate student in the Women’s Studies Program, expecting to finish my M.A. in spring 2009. My research interests mainly lie in ecofeminism. Since I've been doing voluntary work for animal welfare NGOs in Taiwan for the last five years, I have become especially interested in the relationships of animals and women. I'd like to learn more about women, nature, and the environment, all of which are important parts of ecofeminism. I am also excited about learning the history of ideas about women and the environment cross-culturally, and I hope the experience in CHE can help me do better interdisciplinary work for my Master’s thesis. contact
Mike Dockry
I was born and raised in Green Bay, WI and am a registered member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. I have a BS in Forestry with a Certificate in Environmental Studies from UW-Madison and an MS in Forest Resources from Penn State. I was a Peace Corps Volunteer in Bolivia and worked in both the Andean mountains and the Amazonian tropics. I was the Assistant Forest Planner for the Green Mountain and Finger Lakes National Forests. Currently I am the Forest Service Liaison to College of Menominee Nation in Keshena, WI. I am a graduate student with Nancy Langston in the Forest Ecology and Management Department. My research interests focus on indigenous people in North, Central, and South America.
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Todd Dresser
My primary area of interest is U.S. environmental/agricultural history. My dissertation focuses on the early twentieth century and looks at the ways in which actors within grassroots and governmental organizations concerned with the many problems of “country life” come to think of themselves as concerned with “the family farm.” I am interested in the ways in which rural reformers, who come from many walks of life, situate the “family farm” at the nexus of social and environmental sustainability and craft an environmental identity for “the family farmer” which can be used by farmers and others to alternatively accommodate and resist industrial agriculture. In my research, I draw on insights from environmental, cultural, and religious history. contact
Ari Eisenberg
a student in the Department of History, studies the twentieth century urban environment. She is especially interested in the ways that socially marginal people—including the homeless, queer people and people engaging in queer activities—have historically occupied public and semi-public space in the urban United States. Her work addresses how these people’s access to such spaces changed with the rise and fall of industry, the growth of urban parks and natural spaces, and increasing municipal regulation and surveillance. Ari obtained her BA from Barnard College in 2004. In addition to CHE, she is a member of the Program for Gender and Women’s History at University of Wisconsin. contact
Rob Emmett
I’m originally from Blacksburg, Virginia. I grew up in neighborhoods built on the edge of former farmland and orchards, and spent weekends hiking and camping along the Appalachian Trail. I’m interested in the power of imaginative writing to help us confront the everyday catastrophe of our relation to peoples and environments. My research in American literature and culture focuses on the last century of accelerated changes. English is my home department, where I have been involved in the Americanist circle, the Minority Studies reading group, and the Contemporary Literature Colloquium. However, CHE lies closer to the core of my intellectual commitments. I’m also an instructor at the Writing Center and this year serve as its coordinator for campus outreach. Last year, I worked with its Community Writing Assistance program, which offers free writing help to community residents at the South Madison Branch library. contact
Genya Erling
I am interested in the changing patterns of human landscapes, primarily as regards agriculture, food systems, and land use, over time. With the flexibility of the Land Resources, I have been able to stitch together coursework in Botany, Landscape Architecture, Geography, and Rural Sociology, giving me a broad perspective on environmental issues. My dissertation work focuses on the environmental history of the urban gardens of Germany. I am involved with the Slow Food organization in Madison and in its sister city, Freiburg, Germany, as well as with the REAP food group, the Dane County Farmers Market, and various other local food efforts. contact
Jake Fleming
is a 2nd year graduate student in the Geography Department; he also works closely with the Center for Russia, Eastern Europe, and Central Asia (CREECA). After receiving a B.A. in Biology from Harvard, he spent 2 years in Kyrgyzstan, first as a Peace Corps volunteer with a community-based ecotourism NGO, and later working with a biologist on apples in home gardens. Jake returned to Kyrgyzstan in 2007 to study the effects of post-Soviet decollectivization on land use among semi-nomadic herders on the shores of Lake Song Kol. His interests include post-socialist transition, nomads, Central Asian languages, and ethnoagriculture. contact
Jacquelyn Gill
Jacquelyn holds a BA in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic, and is currently a PhD student in Geography, minoring in Ecology. She is interested in using interdisciplinary approaches to studying the relationship between humans and the natural world over broad time scales, using paleoecological tools to investigate past landscapes. Her graduate research is focused on the causes and ecological impacts of the North American megafauna extinction, and she is also interested in Native American land use and the environmental causes of civilizational collapse. An affiliate of the Climate, People & the Environment Program, she also serves on the graduate committee of the Madison Ecology Group. contact
Todd Goddard
I’m a second-year PhD candidate in literary studies in the English department and am completing a minor in history. My interests include eighteenth- and the nineteenth-century American literature, ecocriticism, and American environmental history. My current research examines the role of land speculation and finance in American literature from 1780 to 1837. contact
Maya Golden-Krasner
I am a Ph.D. student in history. Before coming to graduate school, I practiced environmental law. My research interests center on the histories of law, public health, and environmental health. My dissertation, under the direction of Judith Leavitt, examines the political and legal battles over water fluoridation as a way to understand the interrelationships between cultural conceptions of "health" and "nature," and health care policy, at various levels of government. contact
Summer Harrison
I grew up in Texas where my grandfather has a ranch, and I always spent a lot of time outside. My early interests in human relationships with space continued in college where I wrote a thesis on the carnivalesque space of raves. With English as my home department I’ve spent most of my time here researching the intersections of gender, race, and narrative with space/place. I’m especially interested in Native American environmental literature, literary representations of postmodern space, and metafiction. contact
Chandra Hinton
I am a doctoral student in the joint PhD program in Sociology and Rural Sociology. I am interested in inequality and stratification, with strong interests in the politics of food (both producers and consumers) and hunger, as well as environmental justice. My current research projects center on agricultural producers. One project concerns farm entry and access to land—in particular, interrogating which traditional and nontraditional forms of land tenure can better assist beginning farmers. The other focuses on Growing Power, the urban agriculture center in Milwaukee. The key departments I have worked with are Sociology, Rural Sociology, and Horticulture. contact
Ray Hsu
I live in Madison and Toronto. I am interested in how such sites as disaster zones allow us to confront scales beyond, below, or other than the U.S. nation-state. My other teaching and research interests include American studies, creative writing, cultural theory, public humanities, and twentieth century American literature. I am completing my literary studies dissertation, "Knowledge Economies: Funding Structures and Literary Ethnography in the United States, 1935-1943," in the Department of English.
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Po-Yi Hung
I am a doctoral student in the geography department. My dissertation aims to understand the relationships between globalization, place-making and landscape transformation in Shangri-la County, Yunnan Province, China. By looking into the processes of reproducing and repackaging landscapes, I intend to see how modern consumption and protection concerning the magnificent landscapes of nature and culture signify a contingent mixture of socialist modernity and globalization which have collided with histories of the Chinese imperialism and the Western colonialism. This historical sedimentation in landscapes has not only actively turned the fiction of Shangri-la into a modern fact, but puts the place-making of Northwest Yunnan in an ongoing fluidity. contact
Tori Jennings
Since 1998, I have been conducting research with farmers and ranchers on a variety of human/environmental issues including water rights in the San Luis Valley of southern Colorado (BA); adaptation to climate variability in the American Northern Great Plains (MA); and currently, a critical examination of the sociocultural and political dimensions of climate and climate change (Ph.D.). By incorporating the insights of anthropology, geography, environmental history, my dissertation project provides a nuanced historical analysis of the inter-relations between cultural constructions of climate, class, and social values. I seek to understand and explain ‘climate narratives’ as a subset of cultural meaning. contact
Andrew Mahlstedt
Having grown up in Latin America, studied in China, and taught in India for the last four years, I have lived amongst the changing relationships between humans and the environment across the third world. I am pursuing a PhD in English to shape an academic lens, to bring into focus the lens of experiences that have revealed the direct impacts of globalization, international development, and historical regimes of disparate power relations still present especially in the postcolonial world. It is this confluence that I will explore in my dissertation: how these forces, both historical and contemporary, have shaped and been shaped by environments locally and, increasingly, globally. Currently, I am interested in narratives of landlessness and "natural exile" in the developing world that are precipitated by "international development" specifically and globalization generally. contact
Adam Mandelman
I am researching Hawai'i’s Ala Kahakai National Historic Trail, which attempts to recapture the routes of ancient coastal foot-trails, many of which still exist on the ground. Because much of Hawai'i’s coastline has been privatized for resort and residential development, the establishment of the Ala Kahakai raises several questions about public access and land tenure. My thesis also asks how stakeholder discourses around the trail reflect competing ideas about Hawaiian culture, history, and nature. My broader academic interests include environmental history, cultural geography, and regional planning. contact
Kathleen Masterson
As a graduate student in journalism I’m focusing on how to investigate and communicate the complexity of the local to global science and environmental issues using both print and film media. My research interests include how environmental messages are communicated and how people and cultures define their relationships to land and place. Most recently, I spent the past summer in western Bolivia interviewing a range of people regarding land-use practices and their sources environmental information. contact
Liz Mills
I am a Ph.D. candidate in Land Resources at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. As an environmental historian, I am interested in how people connect to the natural world both presently and in the past, and I seek to understand both human and ecological changes in landscapes over time. I am currently a Teaching Assistant for IES 113: Environmental Studies – The Humanistic Perspective, for which I lead several discussion sections aimed at engaging undergraduates with social and cultural dimensions of environmental issues. contact
Nic Mink
From an early age, I knew that my career path would somehow be related to food. Perhaps I would be a chef or a restaurateur, I thought. But spending years of my life behind a flame failed to satisfy my intellectual passions. As a compromise, I now study the history, sociology, and economics of food production and consumption. Working at the intersection of cultural, environmental, labor and economic history, my dissertation in the history department explores the catching, transporting, marketing, cooking, serving and consuming of the stone crab during the twentieth century. Prized first as a regional delicacy sustained by the tourist economy in Florida, the stone crab is now flown to culinary destinations throughout the United States where wealthy gourmands dine on the crustacean. contact
Sarah Mittlefehldt
I am currently writing my dissertation on the social and environmental history of the Appalachian Trail. My research uses the AT as a conduit to explore some of the challenges associated with trying to balance the power of the central state with the desires of local communities. I am investigating how changes in economic geography, power, and culture influenced local communities’ relationship to the project. This is part of a joint degree in Forestry/Environmental Studies. My background is in science education and I am interested in helping students develop deeper understandings of environmental issues by examining the interaction of human and non-human agents over time. contact
Alex Nading
I am a PhD. Candidate in the Department of Anthropology, though I have been fortunate to get acquainted with Anthropology’s academic kin in Geography and Medical History and Bioethics. My interests are in urban landscapes, ecological health, and the effects of “free market” reforms on the lives of urban Latin Americans. For my dissertation, I am researching the intertwined problems of waste management and public health in urban Nicaragua. From late 2007 to early 2009, I will be in Ciudad Sandino, Nicaragua, carrying out ethnographic research on the emergence of dengue fever in both public health policy and the local garbage economy. contact
Abby Neely
Key Departments and Programs: Geography; Africa History; African Studies; CHE
Fields of Interest: environmental history, political ecology, South Africa, environment and health, international development
Dissertation: "Health and Nature in Twentieth Century Zululand."
This project looks at the historical (up to the present) relationship between health and nature in rural KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa. I argue that AIDS as a "social" diseases and malnutrition as a chronic condition are inextricably linked with local and national landscapes through individual's bodies via complex feedback loops that result from political-economic, cultural, and ecological factors. By taking a place use a place-based approach hope to show what one small and seemingly unconnected place can tell us about the interconnections between microbes, bodies, landscapes, and wider national and global circumstances. contact
Abigail Popp
I am a graduate student in the department of Geography as well as a fellow in the CHANGE (Certificate on Humans and the Global Environment) program. I am interested in the dynamics of socio-ecological systems in the context of water management in arid regions. I’m curious about the ways in which socio-cultural processes mediate environmental management decisions and how western “scientific” ecological understanding can be blended with a political ecology approach to assess vulnerability and resilience of socio-ecological systems. contact
Megan Raby
I am beginning the first year of the PhD program in the History of Science department and am a CHANGE (Certificate on Humans and the Global Environment) fellow. My research interests center on the role of place in shaping scientific knowledge and the ways in which scientists fail or succeed at making their knowledge and practices travel to other places and disciplinary spaces. I focus primarily on the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century earth and life sciences, and I am also interested in the intersection between the history of science and environmental history. contact
Kelly Roark
I am a doctoral candidate in the Department of History. My dissertation explores ideas of health and Southwestern landscapes from the 1850s to the 1940s. It rests at the intersection of environmental history, history of science and medicine, and U.S. Western history and draws upon theories of the body, medicine, and science in colonial settings. It foregrounds the discourses of health Anglo migrants used to understand the landscapes they encountered and explores the ways in which perceptions of healthfulness informed the remaking of regional identity, ethnic and racial identity, and social structures in the Southwest. contact
Jennifer Schmitz
My graduate research investigates how lakes have responded to 18th-20th century land use changes in northern Wisconsin. Using paleolimnological research and social historical research, I am studying past changes in lake environments and interpreting them in a context of changing land use decisions and social values. With these perspectives, I hope to reveal some of the historical relationships between social decisions and environmental processes that have helped shape the Northern Highlands region of Wisconsin. I am a PhD student in the Limnology & Marine Sciences program and my advisor is Sara Hotchkiss. website contact
Vincent M. Smith
I am a Ph.D. student in Land Resources at the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. In general, my teaching and research explores the social and historical factors influencing landscape change. I am currently looking at the social, historical, and ecological influences on food systems as a way to inform efforts in sustainable agriculture and agroecology. Traditionally, my work blurs the distinction between natural and social sciences. I have a background in farming and plant ecology and a Masters Degree in environmental ethics and education. contact
Jesse Oak Taylor
My interest in global environmental issues is to some degree inherited and the result of a childhood blessed with an abundance of nature, divided between rural West Virginia and the Himalayas. I initially thought that I would pursue a career in nature/ travel writing and wildlife photography before becoming interested in studying representation and aesthetics in an academic setting. Having written on topics ranging from the clouded leopard to environmentalism and hunting in the British Empire, Fair Trade coffee, and Sherlock Holmes, my current research focuses on aesthetic response to air pollution in late-Victorian Britain. contact
Travis Tennessen
My research interests include environmental and wilderness politics in the North American West, especially local narratives and understandings of environmental change and policies. I’m also interested resource extraction industries in all forms (the classics—ranching, minerals, forestry; and the oddballs—whale watching, hobby ranches, mountain biking) and the communities and cultural landscapes they help shape. I am a geographer at heart, but history and ecology are also central to my research and teaching. I teach about the history of conservation in the U.S. in Geography 339, and am involved with the ongoing management of the Lakeshore Nature Preserve on campus. contact
Noah Theriault
Prior to beginning graduate studies in the Department of Anthropology in 2007, I spent nine months conducting preliminary fieldwork in the Philippines. My main project there involved working with an NGO and indigenous people’s organization, which together were protesting the expropriation of the latter’s ancestral domain by a commercial interest. Coming away from that experience, my present hope is to better understand the potentially transformative encounters among marginalized people, their environments, and interventions into both in the name of development, conservation, and proselytization. More generally, my academic interests center on the intersections of identity, subjectivity, state/NGO intervention, and the environment. contact
Christine Vatovec
is a PhD student in the Land Resources program of the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. Her research examines the environmental implications of American perceptions of death and dying as mediated through end-of-life healthcare and mortuary practices. contact
Ryan Walsh
I’m a poet in the MFA Creative Writing Program in the Department of English. My research interests include ecocriticism, 19th and 20th century American literature, contemporary poetry, geography, bioregionalism, environmental history, experiential education, and Appalachian studies. Since 2004, I have taught in the University of Michigan’s New England Literature Program (NELP), an experiential learning program that combines creative writing, literary studies, and environmental engagement. I also co-edit the place-based literary journal, Rivendell. contact
Hannah Nyala West
“At Sea in the World (or, The Unnatural Histories of a Ship): The Cruise of the U.S. Frigate Essex, 1798-1837” I aim to be an ethnographic maritime historian of the long eighteenth century. My work has been shaped and conditioned by the intellectual disciplines of sociocultural anthropology (esp. ethnography) and environmental and social history, as well as by long practice of deep immersion in other cultures, diverse ecosystems, and close interactions with our planet’s non-human inhabitants. My research is transoceanic in scope and focuses on questions of cultural memory, identity, violence and cooperation, power and pain, and contingency. contact
Amrys Williams
As a graduate student in the history of science, I seek to bring together the perspectives of environmental history and the history of science and technology through the study of agriculture. I am also interested in the history of science education, and urban and rural perspectives on scientific and technological issues. My master's research explored the ways in which 4-H clubs in Wisconsin drew on ideas of ecology to promote a holistic vision of rural revitalization during the Depression and the Second World War. I hope to expand on this topic for my dissertation. contact
Louis Paolin Wu
I am Louis Paolin Wu, a PhD student in English Department. I am from Taiwan and very interested in environmental issues. As an English major student, I am especially interested in ecocriticism, environmental literature, environmental justice, how humans perceive/construct/imagine nature and how nature inscribes culture and people’s daily lives. For my doctoral work, I aim to further specialize in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century American literature and environmental criticism. I propose to explore the engagements of early American writers with the landscapes and the appropriations of the American wilderness for various interests. contact
Anna Zeide
I am a graduate student in the History of Science and Medical History departments, expecting to finish my M.A. in Spring 2008. My research interests center on the history of conservation, the history of environmental and science education, public and environmental health (especially as related to nutrition and agriculture), gender issues, and the interactions between scientists and environmentalists, loosely construed. I also am excited about using history to communicate environmental and scientific concepts to a public audience. contact