Sterling Evans: (Ph.D., University of Kansas)
Dr. Evans will join the History faculty in January, 2009 in the newly endowed Welsh Chair. He has research and teaching interests in the history of the trans-national Great Plains, the U.S-Mexican and U.S.-Canadian borderlands, agricultural history, and environmental history. These interests meet in his book Bound in Twine: The History and Ecology of the Henequen-Wheat Complex for Mexico and the American and Canadian Plains, which won the Theodore Saloutos Best Book Prize from the Agricultural History Society in 2008. He also edited the books The Borderlands of the American and Canadian Wests: Essays on Regional History of the 49th Parallel and American Indians in American History, 1870-2001: A Companion Reader, and is the author of a number of articles in a variety of journals. He is active in such organizations as the Western History Association, the Agricultural History Society, the American Society for Environmental History, and the Society for Latin American and Caribbean Environmental History. His interest in the environmental history of Latin America prompted him to write The Green Republic: A Conservation History of Costa Rica, and to work on his current project, Damming Sonora: Water, Agriculture, and Environmental Change in Northwest Mexico. Evans received his doctorate in history from the University of Kansas.
Roberta Magnusson: (Ph.D., University of California,
Berkeley)
Professor Magnusson is the author of Water Technology
in the Middle Ages: Cities, Monasteries, and Waterworks
after the Roman Empire that draws on insights from
environmental, technological, legal, social, and cultural
history and makes use of French, German, Italian, and
Latin sources. She is now at work exploring the origins
and development of public services in medieval English
cities and how such services--street-paving, sanitation,
bridge building and repair, fire protectionBshaped medieval
government and culture. Professor Magnusson is an award-winning
instructor who just received The Regents Award for
Superior Teaching and is also the History Department's
Director of Undergraduate Studies. She regularly offers
courses on medieval history including a popular course
on the Crusades and another on women in the medieval
age.
Donald Pisani: (Ph.D., University of California, Davis)
Professor Pisani, the Merrick Professor of History, is one of the nation's leading environmental historians
and is a past presidents of the American Society for Environmental History. He is recognized as the foremost
expert in the United States on the history of natural resources, the environment, law, and public
policy in the West. His book, To Reclaim a Divided West: Water, Law, and Public Policy,
1848-1902, was a co-winner of the Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Award for its contribution to the history
of the environment and natural resources. His most recent book, Water, Land, and Law in the West,
continues his exploration of important environmental issues, as does his current research on water and
public policy in the first three decades of the twentieth century.
Elena Songster: (Ph.D., University of California, San Diego)
Professor Songster holds a joint appointment with the
School of International and Area Studies and is finishing
a book, PANDA NATION: Nature Protection, Science,
and Nationalism in the People’s Republic of China,
which examines the creation of Nature Reserves and giant
panda protection in the context of China’s efforts
to distinguish itself as a nation. This research bridges
many fields and topics and will contribute to a rich
scholarly literature on American, European, and Japanese
ways of thinking about nationalism, state-building,
and the role of nature and nature reserves in this process.
The study will offer a pioneering look at Chinese approaches
to nature reserves while simultaneously exploring the
cultural production of the panda as a national symbol,
both occurring against the backdrop of China’s
much publicized attempts at socialist transformation
and later post-socialist development. Her next major
research project examines the extraction of wild fauna
and medicinal herbs from China’s natural areas
for use in Chinese medicine and medicinal trade during
the Republican and PRC eras. She is also interested
in the relationship between nature, industry, and politics
(specifically paper production and supply) during the
Republican Era, 1911-1949. Professor Songster has offered
a wide array of courses, including East Asian surveys,
ethnic identity in China, and a small seminar on China
and the international environmental crisis.
