Announcements"Anyone who proposes to cure the environmental crisis undertakes thereby to change the course of history.”
Barry Commoner
"If you would understand anything, observe its beginning and its development."
Aristotle
“The aim of history, then, is to know the elements of the present by understanding what came into the present from the past.”
Frederick Jackson Turner
“We must not delude ourselves with an idea that the past is recoverable. … What we recover from the past is an image of ourselves."
Bernard DeVoto
“The past is not discovered or found. It is created and represented by the historian as a text.”
Alun Muslow
|
History of Science/United States History
Ph.D. Candidate
B.Phil (Interdisciplinary Studies), Miami University (OH), '00; M.A. (History) UC Santa Barbara, '08
Office: Girvetz Graduate Fellows Room Hours: Email to schedule an appointment
Advisor: W. Patrick McCray
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, American scientists, influential members of the counter-culture, and collectives of third-world scientists sought to frame environmental discourse and direct international environmental diplomacy amidst the newly realized environmental crisis. In the events leading up to and taking place at the UN's 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, these media-grabbing actors worked at both the public-perception interface and the international science-policy interface. My project explains their actions, motives, and legacies. (more...)
This research explores the complex links between stories of environmental change over time, the science and knowledge used to bolster those stories, and the political, social, and economic forces motivating the use of a particular story over another. My dissertation traces the history of whose knowledge, discourse, and science becomes dominant over time, why it happened the way it did, who won and who lost in this process, and what legacies it established for contemporary frameworks of environmental diplomacy.
Dissertation Title- THE GLOBAL ENVIRONMENTAL MOMENT: The Limits of Sovereignty and American Science on Spaceship Earth, 1956-1974
Teaching Fields- History of American Science, Technology, and Environment
- U.S. History
- World History
- U.S. & Global Environmental History
Teaching Assistantships- History 17 C: The American People, WWI to the Present
Summer 2010 with Prof. Carol Feinberg; Spring 2009 with Prof. Salim Yaqub
- INT 199 DC: Interdisciplinary Research Seminar in Washington D.C.
Spring 2010 with Prof. Alice O'Connor
- History 2 C: World History, 1000-1700
Winter 2010 with Prof. Debra Blumenthal
- History 17 A: The American People, 1492 to 1820
Fall 2009 & 2008 with Prof. Ann Plane
- History 17 B: Contested Visions of American Liberty, 1840 to 1920
Winter 2009 with Prof. John Majewski
- (Reader) History 177: California History
Summer 2008 with Prof. Greg Graves
- Law&Society 194 RL/Asian American 171 LS: U.S. Colonial Era Race and Law
Fall 2007 with Prof. John S.W. Park
- Law&Society 113: Law and Politics
Spring & Winter 2007 with Prof. Jacqueline Stevens
- Law&Society 112: Law and Society
Fall 2006 with Prof. Lisa Hajjar
- (Reader) History 166 B: United States History, 1929 to 1963
Fall 2005 with Prof. Lisa Jacobson
Publications- "Better to Cry than Die? The Paradoxes of Tear Gas in the Vietnam Era"
Book chapter in "Toxic Airs: Chemical and Environmental Histories of the Atmosphere," edited by James Rodger Fleming and Ann Johnson (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press), forthcoming.
- “Lake Victoria,” in Afro-Eurasia: Assessing Sustainability, Berkshire Encyclopedia of Sustainability, Vol. 9 (Spring 2012).
An encyclopedia entry on Africa’s largest freshwater source and the sustainability challenges stemming from its broad use by numerous African nations. Published just prior to the UN's Rio +20 global environmental conference, this peer-reviewed, interdisciplinary encyclopedia connects academic research to real world challenges.
- Book Review: J. R. McNeill & Corinna Unger, eds., "Environmental Histories of the Cold War" (Cambridge Press, 2010).
Journal of World History 23:1 (March 2012).
- Book Review: Paul N. Edwards, "A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming" (MIT Press, 2010)
IEEE Annals of the History of Computing 33:1 (Jan-March 2011).
Awards- 2010-2012 Graduate Fellow, Center for Nanotechnology in Society at UCSB
Fellowship to research policy histories concerning nanotechnologies and the environment with Interdisciplinary Research Group 1 (Origins, Institutions, and Communities) of the NSF-funded CNS-UCSB.
- 2012 Doctoral Student Travel Grant, UCSB Academic Senate
Award to fund presentation of my paper "Systems, Scientists, and Sovereignty: Dai Dong and the Limits of Transnational Environmentalism" at the 2012 American History Association in Chicago.
- 2011 UCSB History Associates Awards: The Larry Badash Prize & The Dick Cook Memorial Award
The Lawrence Badash Prize: prize for best essay in history of science & technology or weapons control. The Dick Cook Memorial Award: prize for a graduate deemed outstanding in terms of research, teaching, & service.
- 2010 Graduate Fellow, UC Washington Center (UCDC Program)
Selected as UCSB’s graduate fellow at the UC Washington Center for spring 2010
- 2009 John Coleman Award: UCSB History Assoc. prize for best essay in Cold War, international, or military history
"'The fruits of science for death and destruction': AAAS Scientists’ Environmental Activism against Operation Ranch Hand," presented at the Int'l Graduate Student Conference on the Cold War at the London School of Economics, 2009.
Editing & Research Experience- 2012: Associate Editor, Journal of Environment and Development
Peer-reviewed and published quarterly, The Journal of Environment & Development (JED) seeks to further research and debate on the nexus of environment and development issues at the local, national, regional, and international levels.
- 2008: The Summer Institute on Conducting Archival Research (SICAR)
SICAR is a five-day seminar at George Washington Univeristy's Elliot School of International Affairs where Ph.D. students receive training in conducting archival research from top researchers and archivists in the Washington D.C. area.
- 2008: Research Assistant for Prof. W. Patrick McCray
Conducted research for McCray's book, The Visioneers (Princeton University Press, 2012). I focused on systems analysis, the Club of Rome's Limits to Growth Report, K.Eric Drexler and nanotechnology, and the ecological science of Biosphere 2.
- 2006: Research Assistant for Prof. Lisa Jacobson
Conducted research for Jacobson’s edited book project, Children and Consumer Culture in American Society: A Historical Handbook and Guide (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2007).
Service- 2005-08, 2012: History Graduate Student Association (HGSA), UCSB
2012, Fund-Raising Committee; 2006-08, President; 2005-06, Secretary
- 2010-11: Teaching Assistant Video Consultant, Office of Instructional Consultation, UCSB
TA Video Consultant, selected and trained to facilitate feedback and provide pedagogical suggestions for videotaped TAs.
- 2009-10: Co-Lead Teaching Assistant, Department of History, UCSB
Co-Lead Facilitator of the History Department's award-winning and year-long Teaching Assistant Training Program
- 2008: Program Coordinator and Graduate Assistant, Center for Cold War Studies and International History (CCWS), UCSB
Cold War Lecture Series w/ Odd Arne Westad (3/7/08), Melvyn Leffler (3/13/08), Emily Rosenberg (4/4/08), Berthold Molden (5/7/08); Films of the Cold War Series
- April 4-5, 2008: International Conference Organizer (UCSB, GWU, LSE)
I organized the 2008 International Graduate Student Conference on the Cold War, sponsored by UCSB, George Washington University, and London School of Economics and Political Science
|
