The Graduate School > Students > Connect With Us > ACS Postdoctoral Fellow

Ph.D. History, UGA, 2010
    Emphasis on Environmental & American History
M.A. History, Appalachian State University, 2004
B.S. Naturalist/Biology & History, Lees-McRae College, 2001

“Georgia has an incredibly strong history faculty, especially when it comes to southern history. And the department provided generous financial aid and an encouraging atmosphere; the importance of liking the place where you spend so much of your time for five or more years can’t be over-emphasized!”

“The interaction with faculty was a highlight. The professors know what you are researching, they care about your progress, but at the same time they treat you like an adult. I also had a wonderful advisor, Paul Sutter - now at the University of Colorado - who taught me much of what I know about what it means to be a historian.

I was fortunate to receive several awards while at UGA, including departmental and graduate school teaching awards, and the William Jennings Bryan Award for the best article written by a department graduate student. I also received a couple of national awards, including the Theodore C. Blegen Award from the Forest History Society for the best article on conservation history and the Southern Historical Association’s C. Vann Woodward Prize for the nation’s best dissertation on the American South. A wealth of research and travel grants along the way, both external and from within the university, also made life and work much easier.”

“My dissertation is an environmental history of tobacco in the South. I look at the crop in a particular region to explain why nature mattered, as well as how agriculture influenced social, cultural, and racial relationships.”

“Slowly! In all seriousness, I think my interest stemmed from my background. I grew up on a small farm, and so I always carried an appreciation for living and working in close connection with the environment. My undergraduate degree was in the life sciences, and while I pursued a master’s degree I worked full time as a natural resource manager in western North Carolina. Environmental history is the ideal way for me to combine my experience working in nature with my passion for trying to make sense of the past.”

“I am currently turning my dissertation on tobacco into a book. I also have an advance contract from the University of Georgia Press for an environmental history of southern Appalachia, and I am researching and writing on that project at the same time. I do a little foodways writing on the side, so I manage to stay pretty busy.”

“My UGA advisor made me aware of the program when it began, and I had kept an eye on the position openings while I worked on my degree. Millsaps is actually my wife’s alma mater, we had just moved to Mississippi for her work, and I had a great deal of respect for the postdoctoral program and William Storey (the position mentor at Millsaps), so you might say that getting the job was a bit of a perfect storm.”

“There are two that leap to mind. First, it is a rare treat to work closely with William Storey, who is both an important environmental historian and a genuinely wonderful person. Second, Millsaps seems blessed with a wealth of engaged and interested students - they have been nothing but fun to teach.”

“The small class sizes are a joy. In some ways they are a greater challenge than a lecture hall of three hundred, where you have a script for the class and keep to it; small discussion groups can take twists and turns that lay your careful planning in ruins, but you so often end up learning new things from the journey. It is also nice to be able to have at least a passing relationship with virtually every other faculty member at the college, something unheard of at a large research institution.”

“My first book came out in March: Remaking Wormsloe Plantation: The Environmental History of a Lowcountry Landscape (Georgia, 2012). It is a history of a particular piece of the Georgia Lowcountry near Savannah covering three-hundred years. In the book I try to use this plantation-turned-park to begin to explain why we preserve certain portions of the coastal South, while developing others without restraint.

The book came out of a wonderful opportunity that my advisor brought to my attention. I spent my last two years at UGA working as a research fellow for the Wormsloe Institute for Environmental History, based in Savannah. I created a land use document for the institute that focused on Wormsloe State Historic Site’s environmental history. When I completed that work, I realized that I had a topic worthy of a book, and developed it from there. Finishing the book while completing my dissertation proved a challenge, but it was also a great lesson in how to effectively manage my time!”