Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies

Eckerd College - LTR
4200 54th Avenue South
St. Petersburg, FL 33711
Email Professor Curtis

I teach Introduction to Environmental Studies, Influential Environmental Writers, Environmental Ethics and Justice, U.S. Environmental History, Global Environmental History, and Urban Ecology. I also have a deep and abiding interest in place-based education, which I am currently implementing in the form of two local landscape projects,The Organic Garden at Lakewood Elementary and TheZero Carbon Brazil Pepper Removal Project

My current research focuses on the historic development of environmental values, broadly conceived; I am interested in the full palette of values that people have developed toward nature, not just those that led to environmentalism. I am completing a manuscript about the role of 19th-century American mining in shaping the character of 20th-century U.S. environmental values. I am also interested in Henry David Thoreau and have begun researching an environmental history of his life and values. As part of my ongoing naturalist training, I am developing aField Guide to the Eckerd College Palm Hammock.

Education

Ph.D., Environmental History, University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas, May 2001
B.A., Liberal Arts, The New School for Social Research, New York, New York, May 1988

Professional Teaching Experience

• Emerson College, Boston, MA
• University of Massachusetts, Boston, MA
• Fordham University, New York, NY
• The University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS Professional Environmental Experience
• Director of Education, The Thoreau Institute, Lincoln, MA
• Education and Outreach Manager, Gulf of Maine Council, Boston, MA
• Program Manager, Second Nature, Inc., Boston. MA
• Consultant, Canyon Consulting, Inc., Missoula, MT
• Researcher, Toxics Project, The Natural Resources Defense Council, NYC

Academic Papers

"Cultivating Exotics and Protecting Natives: Promises of and Problems with Plants in Twentieth-century Cities, Gardens, Grasslands, and Parks." Panel Chair and Respondent, American Society for Environmental History, Tallahassee, FL, February 27, 2009

"Roundtable on Environmental History and Campus Sustainability." Roundtable Participant, American Society for Environmental History, Tallahassee, FL, February 28, 2009

"Tradeoffs and Compromises: Environmental Historians in Environmental Studies Programs--Pedagogy & Institutional Setting." PAPER: "Becoming Interdisciplinary," American Society for Environmental History, Boise, Idaho, March 12, 2008

"The Value of Mining: Metals and Biology in the Smelting Region of Montana, 1880-1920, " Paper presentation, American Society of Environmental History, March 15, 2008

"Marginal Lands, Marginalized People: The Politics of Human Habitat," Panel Organizer. Paper: "Woodlots, Shanties, Freed Slaves, and Fortune Tellers: The Social History of Walden Woods," American Society for Environmental History, Baton Rouge, LA, March 1, 2007

"Defining Environmental Edges to Anaconda's Global Mining Enterprise," Panel Chair. American Society for Environmental History, Baton Rouge, LA, March 2, 2007

"The Case for Integration: Nature and Limits in Montana's Copper Industry," Business History Conference, Minneapolis, MN, May 20, 2005.

"Henry David Thoreau and his Legacy: Crossing the Conservation/Preservation Divide," Panel Organizer. Paper: "Thoreau's Value-Based Land Ethic." The Thoreau Society Annual Gathering, Concord, MA, July 10, 2004.

"Henry David Thoreau and his Legacy: Crossing the Conservation/Preservation Divide," Panel Organizer. Paper: "Thoreau's Value-Based Land Ethic." Nature & Culture in the Northern Forest, an American Society for Literature and the Environment Symposium on Northern Forest Studies, Crawford Notch, NH, June 4, 2004.

"Walden in Context: Walden and the Gold Rush," Concord Community Lecture Series, Concord Museum, Concord, MA, May 27, 2004.

"The Limits of Landscape: Natural Constraints on Economic Formation," Panel Organizer. Paper: "The Logic of the Mines: Ore Grade and Business Growth in the Butte Hardrock Mining Industry, 1872-1882." American Society for Environmental History, Victoria, B,C. March 2004.

"The Nature of Systems: Copper Abundance and the Electrical Imagination," American Society of Environmental History, Providence, RI, March 2003

"Tailings in History: Waste as a Theme in Economic History," Society of Industrial Archeology Annual Meeting, Brooklyn, New York, June 8, 2002.

"Knowing (and Unknowing) Nature in Western Montana, 1866-1921." Panel co-organizer. American Society for Environmental History. Tacoma, Washington. March 16-18, 2000.

"The Nature of Mining Engineers: Conservation and Western Minerals, 1866-1896." Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering and Technology Fellow's Presentation, Kansas City, Missouri. February 18, 2000.

"Industrial Adaptations?: Modern Mining, Nature, and the Law, 1890-1912." American Society for Environmental History. Tucson, Arizona. April 14-18, 1999.

"Landscape, Ecology, and Power: Redefining Community in Anaconda, Montana." 1996 Montana History Conference. Butte, Montana. October 17-19, 1996.

"A Landscape to Mine: Engineers and the Creation of a Mining West." Environmental Cultures, Historical Perspectives conference. Victoria, British Columbia. April 26-27, 1996.

Workshops and Presentations

"Environmental Fundamentalism, or Bisecting Thoreau's 'Wildness' and Preserving Nothing" Eckerd College Council of Faculty Fellows Colloquium on Religion and Nature, March 25, 2009.

"Under the West" Workshop and Symposium, Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West, San Marino, CA. May 17, 2008.

Georgia Workshop in the History of Agriculture and the Environment, "Nature in the Margins: Biography, Geography, and History in Walden Woods." University of Georgia, Athens, GA. April 18, 2008.

"Ecological Cities and the Promise for Environmental Education, or, Finding Nature Where You Least Expect It," workshop presented in partnership with the Urban Ecology Institute at the New England Environmental Education Alliance Annual Conference, Sandwich, MA, October 15, 2005.

"Thoreau's Sense of Place," presented to the Brandeis University "Nature as Modern Myth" Freshman Seminar, September 14, 2005.

"Henry David Thoreau and the Modern City," presented as part of the Urban Ecology Institute's Summer Institute, "Foundations of Urban Ecology," Boston College Law School, Newton, MA, July 18, 2005.

"Being Henry David: A Walk Through Walden Woods," an interpretive walk presented in partnership with Walden Pond State Reservation at the Thoreau Society Annual Gathering, July 14, 2005.

"Walden, Thoreau, and Local Stewardship," presented at the New England Regional Youth Summit, Lincoln, MA, March 19, 2005.

"Studying Sense of Place by Exploring Landscapes and Watershed," presented at the Massachusetts Environmental Education Society Annual Meeting in Worcester, MA, March 9, 2005.

"Finding a Sense of Place Through Henry Thoreau," presented at the Museum of the Hudson Highlands Winter Lecture Series, Cornwall-on-Hudson, NY, February 23, 2005.

"Henry Thoreau and Wilderness," presented to the Bowdoin College "Environment, Culture, and Human Experience" course, February 7, 2005.

"Building Bridges from Education to Community: Collaborating on Local Stewardship Activities with High School and Middle School Students," presented at the New England Environmental Education Association's Annual Meeting, Ripton, VT, October 17, 2004.

"Henry David Thoreau and Place," presented to the Brandeis University "Nature as Modern Myth" Freshman Seminar, September 20 & 22, 2004.

"Modeling Interdisciplinary Learning with Henry David Thoreau," presented at the Massachusetts Environmental Education Society Annual Conference, Worcester, MA, March 10, 2004.

"Contemporary Issues of Biodiversity," presented at the Wildlife in Walden Woods day program at the Thoreau Institute, Lincoln, MA, January 31, 2004.

"Henry David Thoreau and Place," presented to the Brandeis University "Nature as Modern Myth" Freshman Seminar, January 20 & 27, 2004.

Fellowships and Awards

The Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California
Andrew W. Mellon Fellow. Two month residential research fellowship. May – Jun 2007

The Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California
Fletcher Jones Foundation Fellowship. Two month residential research fellowship. May – Jun 2000

The James J. Hill Library, St. Paul, Minnesota
Graduate Research Fellowship. One month residential research fellowship. Mar 2000

Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering and Technology, Kansas City, Missouri
Humanities Research Fellowship. Two month residential research fellowship. Jan – Feb 2000

Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering and Technology, Kansas City, Missouri
Humanities Research Fellowship. Two month residential research fellowship. Nov – Dec 1999

The Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, California
Trent R. Dames Civil Engineering History Fellowship. Two month residential fellowship. Sept – Oct 1999.

University of Illinois, Urbana, Illinois
The John E. Rovensky Dissertation Fellowship. General research support. Jan – Aug 1999

Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, Kansas
Alfred M. Landon Historical Research Grant. Travel grant. May 1997

University of Kansas, Department of History, Lawrence, Kansas
Best New Graduate Student. May 1995

Publications

Gambling on Ore: The Nature of Mining in the American West, under contract, University Press of Colorado, Mining the American West Series.

"Producing a Gold Rush: National Ambitions and the Northern Rocky Mountains, 1853-1863" Western Historical Quarterly, 40:3 (Autumn 2009).

"Greening Anaconda: EPA, ARCO and the Politics of Space in Post-Industrial Montana," in Jefferson Cowie and Joseph Heathcott, eds., Beyond the Ruins: The Meanings of Deindustrialization, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003).

An Ecology of Industry: Mining and Nature in Western Montana, (Ph.D. Diss., University of Kansas, 2001)

Book Reviews

John C. Stewart, Thomas F. Walsh: Progressive Businessman and Colorado Mining Tycoon in Western Historical Quarterly, 39:4 (2008).

David Robertson, Hard as the Rock Itself: Place and Identity in the American Mining Town in Environmental History 13:1 (2008).

J. Brooks Flippen, Conservative Conservationist: Russell E. Train and the Emergence of American Environmentalism, and Thomas G. Smith,Green Republican: John Saylor and the Preservation of America's Wilderness. Reviewed for H-HistGeog, H-Net.org (2007)

Karen R. Merrill, Public Lands and Political Meanings: Ranchers, the Government, and the Property between Them in Enterprise & Society 4:2 (2003)

Lee Scamehorn, Albert Eugene Reynolds: Colorado's Mining King in Western Historical Quarterly, 27:3 (1996).