Nature Next Door: Cities and Trees in the American Northeast. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2012. Research supported by fellowships from Columbia University, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
“A Lively Seminar on Death: Teaching the Environmental History of the Human Corpse.” The Organization of American Historians’ Magazine of History (October 2011), 55-56.
“Who Cares About Forests? How Forest History Matters,” in A Companion to Environmental History, ed. Douglas Sackman, 410-424. Blackwell Companions to Environmental History, Wiley-Blackwell, 2010.
“Dead Bodies in Harlem: Environmental History and the Geography of Death,” in The Nature of Cities: Culture, Landscape and Urban Space, ed. Andrew Isenberg, 62-76. University of Rochester Press, 2006.
“Postcards from the Edges of a Field.” Environmental History 10:1 (January 2005), 96-97. Invited essay for the journal’s tenth anniversary issue.
“Does Nature Always Matter? Following Dirt Through History.” History and Theory, 42 (December 2003), 75-81.
“Reflections From Six Feet Under the Field: Dead Bodies in the Classroom.” Environmental History 8:4 (October 2003), 618-627.
“Troubled Waters in Ecotopia: Environmental Racism in Portland, Oregon.” Radical History Review. Issue 74: Special Issue on Environmental Politics, Geography and the Left (Spring 1999), 65-95. Awarded the ASEH Alice Hamilton Award, 2000. Reprinted in Louis S. Warren, ed., American Environmental History, Blackwell Readers in American Social and Cultural History Series (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd, 2003).
Selected Recent Presentations
“Haunted Basements, Toxic Fields: The Corpse in American Environmental History.” University of Pennsylvania Department of History and Sociology of Science Workshop Series. April 11, 2011.
“Bodies in the Basement: Paupers’ Graves and Property Values in Philadelphia.” University of Delaware History Workshop. April 5, 2011.
“The Disposal of the Dead in 19th-century American Environmental History.” The Library Company of Philadelphia Symposium “Revisiting Rural Cemeteries.” March 16, 2011.
“Urbs in Horto: Urban Nature in Europe and North America.” Roundtable participant. American Society for Environmental History Conference. March 12, 2010.
“Dead as Dirt: An Environmental History of the Dead Body.” Social Science Research Seminar at Wake Forest University. March 1, 2010.
“Living Among the Dead: Corpses and Property Rights in U.S. Environmental History.” Massachusetts Institute of Technology Seminar on Environmental and Agricultural History. February 19, 2010.
