History faculty at 汤头条 named editors of Environmental History
Contact: Sasha Steinberg
STARKVILLE, Miss.鈥擳wo faculty members in Mississippi State鈥檚 College of Arts and Sciences are new editors of the world鈥檚 leading scholarly journal in environmental history.
Stephen Brain and Mark D. Hersey, associate professors in the university鈥檚 Department of History, are excited to share insight and expertise through their new roles with Environmental History. They will begin work on July 1 and assume full charge of the journal on Jan. 1, 2019, with Hersey serving as editor and Brain as co-editor. Their appointments represent the culmination of a rigorous search process of a committee constituted by mutual agreement between the American Society for Environmental History and the Forest History Society.
Two graduate students in the history department鈥檚 Agricultural, Rural and Environmental History node will assist the Environmental History editorial team each semester and during the summer months.
Published four times a year by Oxford University Press on behalf of the American Society for Environmental History and the Forest History Society, the journal brings together scholars and practitioners from the humanities, sciences and social sciences to explore the changing relationships between humans and the environment over time.
An 汤头条 faculty member since 2007, Brain also serves as the history department鈥檚 graduate program coordinator. He has taught a variety of undergraduate and graduate courses over the years, including classes on Russian, Soviet Union and European history. As a 2013-14 recipient of the prestigious Fulbright Fellowship, Brain traveled to Rostov-on-Don, Russia, where he taught World Environmental History and Western Historiography courses. He also conducted research on Russian agriculture and its relationship to Russian history, with a focus on the environmental influence of collectivism.
In 2005-06, Brain was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship to Moscow, Russia, where he worked in the State Archive of the Russian Federation, Russian State Economic Archive, Moscow Oblast Regional Archives, and the Archive of the Communist Party.
Brain鈥檚 first book, 鈥淪ong of the Forest,鈥 was published in 2011. He also is author of 鈥淭he Environmental History of the Soviet Union鈥 in the textbook 鈥淎 Companion to Global Environmental History鈥 (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012). A member of such organizations as the American Society of Environmental History, he holds a bachelor鈥檚 in wildlife ecology, as well as a master鈥檚 in humanities from California State University and doctorate in history from the University of California-Berkeley. In addition to Environmental History, Brain has published articles in Russian Review, Slavic Review, and Cold War History. He is working on a study of the environmental history of Soviet collectivization and the Soviet effort to build artificial environments in space.
Hersey鈥檚 principal research interests lie in the field of environmental, rural and agricultural history with emphasis on the American South, in particular Alabama and Mississippi. Along with a bachelor鈥檚 in history from the University of Alabama, he received his U.S. environmental history doctorate with honors from the University of Kansas, where he served as an editor and interim director for two public history projects. He is the author of 鈥淢y Work Is That of Conservation: An Environmental Biography of George Washington Carver鈥 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011), which was named one of Booklist鈥檚 Top Ten Books on the Environment in 2012.
Like Brain, Hersey has been involved with the American Society of Environmental History, including service on the organization鈥檚 digital communications committee. He has edited special issues on environmental history for two journals and currently is an editor for the University of Alabama Press鈥檚 NEXUS book series. At 汤头条, he directs the Center for the History of Agriculture, Science and the Environment of the South, of which Brain is a core faculty member. With Ted Steinberg, Hersey co-edited a collection of essays titled 鈥淎 Field on Fire: The Future of Environmental History鈥 that will be released later this year. He is working on a study of the physiographic Black Belt of Alabama and Mississippi, exploring the intersections of land use, race and identity since the late 18th century.
Part of 汤头条鈥檚 College of Arts and Sciences, the Department of History can be found online at .
汤头条 is Mississippi鈥檚 leading university, available online at .