CURRICULUM VITAE THOMAS M. LEKAN (updated July 2019)

Address: Department of History 135 Gambrell Hall University of South Carolina Columbia, SC 29208

Telephone: +1 (803) 777-5928

E-Mail: [email protected]

Place of Birth: Cleveland, Ohio, USA

Languages: English (mother language) German (fluent) French (reading knowledge) Spanish (reading knowledge) Swahili (beginner)

PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE

2019-present: Professor in the Department of History & The School of the Earth, Ocean and Environment Faculty Associate of the Walker Institute University of South Carolina

2015-2019: Associate Professor in the Department of History & The School of the Earth, Ocean and Environment (SEOE) Faculty Associate of the Walker Institute University of South Carolina

2005-2015: Associate Professor of History Faculty Associate, School of the Environment & Walker Institute University of South Carolina

1999-2005: Assistant Professor of History Faculty Associate, School of the Environment (SOE) & Walker Institute of International and Area Studies University of South Carolina

1997-1998: Lecturer, University of Wisconsin-Madison & Carleton College

1989-1991: Research Associate, ICF Incorporated Fairfax, Virginia

EDUCATION

August 1999: Ph.D. University of Wisconsin-Madison Major Field: Modern European Social History Minor Field: Geography Passed doctoral preliminary examinations with distinction

March 1993: M.A. University of Washington-Seattle Major Fields: American Environmental History & Modern European Intellectual History

June 1989: B.A. Carleton College, Northfield, MN Major: History, magna cum laude

CURRENT PROJECTS

Aug. 2017-May 2019: Co-Principal Investigator Congaree National Park Historic Resources Survey U.S. National Park Service, Southeast Region Atlanta, GA

May 2018-present: Co-Principal Investigator Working Group “Shifting Baselines, Altered Horizons: Politics, Practice, and Knowledge in Environmental Science and Policy.” Max Planck Institute for the History of Science Berlin, Germany

August 2018-present: Co-Editor and Contributor to Environmental and Planning E: Nature and Society Special Section: “Baselining Nature: Explorations of Futures-Past in Environmental Science and Policy.” (with Sebastian Ureta and Wilko von Hardenberg): “Baselining Nature: An Introduction.”

August 2018-present: Green Germany: The Cultural and Practice of Sustainability (with Carol Hager, Bryn Mawr College; undergraduate-focused textbook) Chapter: “Green Commons: German Forests and the National Imagination.” Chapter: “An Urban Heimat?: Remaking the City from the Kaiserreich to The Bonn Republic.”

January 2019-present: Arusha 1961: The Making of the Global Environment in an East African Town (academic monograph) Walker Institute Faculty Grant: Summer 2019. Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society Residential Fellowship, January-June 2020

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FACULTY GRANTS AND FELLOWSHIPS

National and International May-August 2018: Visiting Scholar Max Planck Institute for the History of Science Berlin, Germany

Jan.-July 2013: Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (RCC) Residential Fellowship Munich, Germany

Jan. 2010-Dec. 2011: National Humanities Center Residential Fellowship Research Triangle Park, NC

Aug. 2009-Dec. 2010 Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies Residential Fellowship Princeton University

March 2008: German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Conference Grant Southeast German Studies Workshop University of South Carolina

Aug. 2006-May 2007: American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship

June-August 2006: German Historical Institute Postdoctoral Fellowship

June 2001: Fulbright Grant: German Studies Seminar in Urban Planning

June-Aug. 2000: National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend

University Aug. 2015-July 2016: College of Arts and Sciences Associate Professor Development Award

Feb.-Mar. 2015: Office of the Provost Institute for Visiting Scholars Grant “Dipesh Chakrabarty and the Environmental Humanities.”

Dec. 2011-July 2013: Office of the Provost Humanities Grant for Research in

Sept. 2005-May 2006: University of South Carolina Foundation Research and Productive Scholarship Award

Jan.-May 2004: USC Office of Research/College of Liberal Arts Faculty Development Award “Tales of the Tidewater: Oral History, Documentary Video, and Environmental Values in the South Carolina Lowcountry.”

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Jan.-June 2013: University of South Carolina/Hewlett Foundation Undergraduate Research-Based Learning Grant “Tales of the Tidewater: Oral History and Environmental Values on the South Carolina Coast.”

May-Aug. 2000: University of South Carolina Strategic Programs and Research Award & College of Liberal Arts Scholarship Support

AWARDS AND HONORS

May 2015: Michael J. Mungo Undergraduate Teaching Award Two Thumbs Up Award, Office of Student Disability Services

April 2015: Sustainability Carolina Curriculum Award (shared with Lara Ducate, German)

May 2009: USC Educational Foundation Award for Research in Humanities and Social Sciences

May 2005: Golden Key Faculty Award for the Creative Integration of Research and Undergraduate Teaching

TEACHING AND MENTORSHIP EXPERIENCE

Courses Taught • History 102: Modern European Civilization (regular and honors sections) • History 338: Modern Germany, 1871-1989 • History 360: Into the Wild: Global Conservation since 1800 • History 378: The Urban Experience in Modern Europe • History 448: American Environmental History • History 474: European Social History, 1789-1914 • History 498: Senior Seminar – Exploring Local Environmental History • History 498: Senior Seminar – Twentieth-Century Berlin • History 498: Senior Seminar – Inside Nazi Germany • ENVR 590: Capstone Senior Seminar for Environmental Studies/Science Majors— Environmental History and Conservation Policy in Public Lands • History 700/ENVR 700: Visions and Revisions of Nature: Environmental History and the Ecological Imagination (Graduate Seminar in Comparative Environmental History) • History 815: Graduate Dissertation Prospectus Workshop

Supervision of Student Research

Post-doctoral Students

Name Year Title or Topic Robert Greene 2016-2017 (with Jessica Elfenbein): Research Associate for Congaree Historic Resource Study

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Doctoral Students

In Progress Name Year Title or Topic Andrew Reclaiming Nature and Community: The Evolution of Gutkowski Environmental (In)-Justice in the American South, 1945 – 1990. (Reader—Advisor Patricia Sullivan) Cane West Environmental Negotiations: Cherokees, Scientists, Writers, and Runaways in the Southern Borderlands, 1803-1850. (Reader—Advisor Woody Holton) Jada Ach (English Sand, Water, Salt: Managing the Elements in Literature of the American West, 1880-1925. (Reader—Advisor Cynthia Davis) Carter Bruns Environmental History of the Kanawha Valley. (Reader— Advisor Holton)

Completed Name Year Title or Topic Caroline Peyton 2016 Radioactive Dixie: A History of Nuclear Power and Nuclear Waste in the American South, 1950-1990. (Reader— Advisor Kent Germany) Daniel Remar 2015 Effects of Local Food Descriptions and Related Menu Information on Consumers’ Purchase Behavior and Perceptions of Restaurant Image. (HRTM Student: Reader) Rebecca Swanson 2011 As Dry Leaves that Before the Wild Hurricane Winds Fly: Negotiating Risk and Reality in the South Carolina Hurricanes of 1752, 1893, and 1989. (Reader—Advisor Mark Smith) Eric Cheezum 2007 Discovering Chessie: Waterfront, Regional Identity, and the Chesapeake Bay Sea Monster, 1960-2000. (Reader— Advisor Ken Clements)

Masters Students

Name Year Title or Topic Will Mundhenke 2016 Uncle Sam’s Jungle: Recreation, Imagination, and the Caribbean National Forest.

Chris Fite 2016 Deserts Will Bloom: Atomic Agriculture and the Promise of Radioactive Redemption.

Undergraduate Students

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Name Year Title or Topic Stefan Kassza 2019 Carl Schenck and the Translocation of German Forestry to Appalachia, 1898-1910 Katherine Arnold 2012 The Anglo-German Relationship: From Cooperative Exploration to Aggressive Colonialism.

John Hendrix 2007 The Collapse of the German Democratic Republic: The Socialist Unity Party’s Failure to Retain Political Power.

Corinne 2007 Honors Thesis: Wilderness Legacies and Feral Hog D’Ippolito Management at Congaree National Park. Amy Strong 2006 Honors Thesis: The Green Revolution in the Perpetuation of the Gender Bias in Rural India. Jeremy 2006 Magellan Scholar (co-supervised with Laura Kissel, Art) Vanderknyff Tales of the Tidelands: online video/audio repository.

SELECT PUBLICATIONS

Books

2019: Our Gigantic Zoo: A German Quest to Save the Serengeti (forthcoming, Oxford University Press).

2005: Germany’s Nature: Cultural Landscapes and Environmental History (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press). Co-edited with Thomas Zeller (University of Maryland).

2004: Imagining the Nation in Nature: Landscape Preservation and German Identity, 1885-1945 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press).

Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters:

2019: “Baselining Nature: An Introduction,” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Society E (under review)

2016: “A Natural History of Modernity: Bernhard Grzimek and the Globalization of Environmental Kulturkritik,” New German Critique 2 (August 2016): 55-82.

2014: “Fractal Eaarth: Visualizing the Global Environment in the Anthropocene,” Environmental Humanities 5 (2014): 171-201.

“Region, Scenery, and Power: Cultural Landscapes in Environmental History,” co-authored with Thomas Zeller in Oxford Handbook of Environmental History, ed. Andrew Isenberg (New York: Oxford University Press), 332-365.

2011: “‘Serengeti Shall Not Die’: Bernhard Grzimek, Wildlife Film, and the Making of a Tourist Landscape in ,” German History 29, no. 2 (June 2011): 224- 264.

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2010: “The Nation State,” in Turning Points in Environmental History, ed. Frank Uekötter, Christof Mauch, and Joachim Radkau (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press), 55-71.

2009: “A ‘Noble Prospect’: Tourism, Heimat, and Conservation on the Rhine, 1880- 1914,” Journal of Modern History 81, no. 4 (December 2009): 824-858.

2007: “Saving the Rhine: Ecology, Culture, and Heimat in Post-World War II Germany,” in Rivers in History: Perspectives on Waterways in Europe and North America, ed. Christof Mauch and Thomas Zeller (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press), 110-136.

“The Nature of Home: Landscape Preservation and Local Identity,” in Localism, Landscape, and the Ambiguities of Place: German-Speaking Central Europe 1860-1933, ed. David Blackbourn and James Retallack (Toronto: University of Toronto Press), 165-194.

2005: Introduction “The Landscape of German Environmental History” (with Thomas Zeller) in Germany’s Nature: Cultural Landscapes and Environmental History (Rutgers University Press), 1-16.

“German Landscape: Local Promotion of the Heimat Abroad,” in The Heimat Abroad: The Boundaries of Germanness, ed. Krista O’Donnell, Renate Bridenthal, and Nancy Reagin (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press), 141- 166.

“’It Shall be the Whole Landscape!’ The Reich Nature Protection Law and Regional Landscape Planning in the Third Reich," in How Green Were the Nazis?: Nature, Environment, and Nation in the Third Reich, ed. Mark Cioc, Franz-Josef Brüggemeier, and Thomas Zeller (Athens: Ohio University Press), 73-100.

1999: "Regionalism and the Politics of Landscape Preservation in the Third Reich," Environmental History, 4 (July 1999): 384-404.

Non-Refereed Scholarly Essays, Reviews, and Special Forums

2016: “Whose Anthropocene? Revisiting Dipesh Chakrabarty’s 'Four Theses',” (with Robert Emmett) RCC Perspectives: Transformations in Environment and Society 2016, no. 2. Open source print. 122 pages.

2014: “Working Beyond Disciplines: Toward a Problem-Centered Approach to the Environmental Humanities,” in Minding the Gap: Working across Disciplines in Environmental Studies, ed. Robert Emmett and Frank Zelko. Rachel Carson Center Perspectives, No.2 (2014): 37-41.

2013: “A Place for Animals,” in Rachel Carson Perspectives: Making Tracks: Human and Environmental Histories, no. 5 (August 2013): 43-47.

2009: Forum Editor: “The Nature of German Environmental History” German History 27, no. 1 (January 2009): 113-130.

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“Waterways: Hydraulic Engineering, Environmental History, and the Making of the Modern State,” Sa Chong (Journal of the Korean Historical Society), no. 69, September.

2007: “Review Essay: From Naturschutz to Umweltschutz: Nature Conservation and Environmental Reform in the Federal Republic of Germany, 1950-1980.” German Historical Institute Bulletin, London 19, no. 2 (November 2007): 68-95.

2006: “Naturschutz und Landschaftspflege in der Weimarer Republik” in Handbuch Naturschutz und Landschaftspflege, ed. Werner Konold, Reinhard Böcker, and Ulrich Hampicke, no. 19 (Landsberg: Ecomed), 1-18.

2003: “Organische Raumordnung: Landschaftspflege und die Durchführung des Reichsnaturschutzgesetzes im Rheinland und in Westfalen” in Naturschutz und Nationalsozialismus, ed. Frank Uekötter and Joachim Radkau (: Campus), 145-165.

2004: “Globalizing American Environmental History,” Environmental History, 10, no. 1 (January 2005): 50-52. Contribution to journal’s thirtieth anniversary forum “What’s Next for Environmental History.”

Government Reports

2019: US National Park Service, US Department of Interior: Congaree National Park Historic Resource Study. Co-Principal Investigator, editor, and contributor (under review: 268 pages).

2013: “Nationale Naturschutzakteure international unterwegs” in Naturschutz Heute: Eine Frage der Gerechtigkeit, Bundesamt für Naturschutz, no. 255 (2013): 34- 41. Edited by Verena Münsberg und Regina Damsa-Ard. Available online at: [http://www.bfn.de/fileadmin/MDB/documents/service/skript_355.pdf].

Digital Scholarship and Film

2016: Invited Blogspot: "Mourning the Dodo: On Significant Otherness in the Anthropocene," Inhabiting the Anthropocene (University of Oklahoma).

2014: Rachel Carson Center: You Tube Interview on "Saving the Serengeti: Tourism, the Cold War, and the Paradox of European Conservation in Postcolonial Africa."

2011: Interviewee and faculty consultant, British Broadcasting Corporation series Unnatural Histories, Part I: Serengeti. First aired June 9 on BBC

SELECT PROFESSIONAL CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS

2018: Urban History Association, October Commentator: “Congaree and the Cities: The Story of a Southern Hinterland.”

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Commentator: “Environmental and Political Legacies of Racialized Space in the American Metropolis.”

German Studies Association, Pittsburgh, PA, September Paper: “Having Your Game and Eating it, Too: Ecology, Development, and Resilience in the Serengeti, 1962-1967.”

2017: German Studies Association, Atlanta, GA, October Commentator: “Tales of the Anthropocene: Energiewende.” Moderator: “Tales of the Anthropocene: Human Empathy for Nature.”

Organization of American Historian, New Orleans, LA, April Workshop Speaker: “National Parks as Historical Field Schools.”

American Society for Environmental History, Chicago, IL, March Panel Organizer: “Making Ends Meat: Animals, Ecology, and Political Economy in North American and East Africa.” Paper: “Game Ranching and the Ecology of Development in the Serengeti, 1961- 1967.”

2016: German Studies Association, San Diego, CA, September Paper for Environmental Studies Network Panel on Ecosocialisms “A New Berlin in Africa: Remapping the GDR's Socialist City at Zanzibar, 1964- 1977.”

Council for European Studies Conference, Philadelphia, PA, April Panel Organizer/Commentator: “Ecological Resilience in the Anthropocene: Politics, Practice, and Knowledge in the Anthropocene.”

2015: American Society for Environmental History, Washington, D.C., March Panel Organizer/Moderator: “The Hot Breath of Civilization: Environmental Governance in the Anthropocene.” Roundtable Organizer/Participant: “It’s the End of the World as We Know It: Environmental Histories in/of the Anthropocene.”

2014: German Studies Association, Kansas City, MO, September Co-convener for Environmental Studies Network Panels: “The Metabolism of Cultures: Waste, Pollution, and Desire in the Ecological Humanities.” Commentator: “The Aesthetics of Waste” Moderator: “Changing German Environments”

2013: German Studies Association, Denver, CO, October Co-convener for Environmental Studies Network Panels: “Nature Writing/Writing Nature” Commentator: “Methods” Moderator: “Pests and Pollution”

SELECT SEMINARS, WORKSHOPS, AND INVITED TALKS

2019: Renmin University, Center for Ecology History, Beijing, China (co-sponsored by Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, Munich), May-June

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“The Nature of Health and the Health of Nature” Workshop “‘Having Your Game and Eating It, Too’: Bushmeat Utilization and the Ecological Health of East Africa, 1961-1970.”

Bowdoin College, “Talking Green Series,” March “Televisual Nature: Bernhard Grzimek’s A Place for Animals.”

Southeast German Studies Workshop, Emory University, Atlanta, GA, February “Baselining Ecological and Human Health in the German-East Africa Contact Zone.”

Georgetown, SC Public Library, February German Fulbright/German Studies Association “Wunderbar Together” Lecture “Serengeti Shall Not Die: A Strange German Quest to Save the World’s Most Famous National Park.”

University of Freiburg, January "Can Wildlife 'Pay for Themselves?': Ecology and Economic Development in the Serengeti Region, 1960-1966."

2018 USC History Center, December (with Jessica Elfenbein) "Which Stories to Tell?: Designing Congaree National Park's Historic Resource Study."

Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, Germany, June Workshop Organizer: “Shifting Baselines, Altered Horizons: Politics, Practice, and Knowledge in Environmental Science and Policy.” Roundtable Moderator: “Conservation in the Anthropocene.”

University of Virginia, Department of German & African Cities Humanities Lab, March “Thinking Locally, Acting Globally: A German Zookeeper’s Quest to Save the Serengeti.”

2017 Congaree National Park Lunch and Learn Series, December “Myths of the Southern Wild.” With Robert Greene, PhD candidate in U.S History, University of South Carolina

College of Charleston, “Green Germany” Lecture Series, November “The Greatest Good?: German Forestry and Sustainability at the Biltmore Estate, 1898-1909.”

Southeast German Studies Workshop, College of Charleston, March Keynote Speaker: "The Last Refuge: A 'Strange German' Quest to Save the Serengeti."

University of South Carolina History Center, January Faculty Spotlight Lecture "The Last Refuge: A 'Strange German' Quest to Save the Serengeti."

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2016: University of Oklahoma Humanities Forum: The Humanities and the Environment, November Lecture: “The End of the World as We Know It: Environmental Histories in/of the Anthropocene.” Lunchtime Seminar: “Serengeti Shall Not Die: Tourism, Conservation and the Cold War in East Africa.”

Southeast German Studies Workshop, College of Charleston, March "Mourning the Dodo: On Multispecies Mourning in the Anthropocene."

2015: USC History Center/USC Provost Visiting Scholars Institute/Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, February Workshop Convener: “After Nature: Politics and Practice in Dipesh Chakrabarty’s Four Theses of Climate History.”

2014: Social Movements in Global Perspectives: Past—Present—Future, Summer School, Ruhr Universität Bochum, September “Thinking Locally, Acting Globally: The Problem of Environmentalism in the Age of Asymmetry.”

Southeast German Studies Workshop, Davidson College, Davidson, NC, March “Humans, Nonhumans, Posthumans: From Discourse Analysis to the New Materialism in the Environmental Humanities.”

PROFESSIONAL SERVICE AND ACTIVITIES

Professional Service

2018-2020: German Studies Association Executive Board Representative, History and Social Sciences Search Committee, GSA Executive Director (2019)

2012-2014: Convener (with Katharine Gerstenberger) German Studies Association Environmental Humanities Network

Transnational Environmental Humanities Network Sponsored by Alexander von Humboldt Foundation

2010-2012: National Humanities Center Fellowship Reviewer

2010: Swarthmore College Honors Program Examiner, “Fascist Europe,” May 2010.

2008: German Studies Association DAAD Article Prize Committee

2007-2009: Steering Committee Chair and Conference Organizer Southeast German Studies Workshop

2002-2009: Faculty Consultant

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Educational Placement Service Advanced Placement Program

2005-2007: Faculty Consultant Museum of Life and the Environment York County, South Carolina

2004-2005: Chair, Alice Hamilton Prize Committee American Society for Environmental History

University 2016-2018: Provost Selection Committee for Michael J. Mungo Undergraduate Award 2014-2016: Provost’s Visiting Scholars Grant Selection Committee 2011-2013: Provost Committee: Carolina Core Specialty Team Content Chair, Spring 2011-2012: Provost’s Humanities Grant Selection Committee 2011-2012: Chair, Russell Research Award in the Humanities and Social Sciences Chair Office of Undergraduate Fellowships, Fulbright Evaluation Committee 2008-2009: PLACE (Paradigms for Landscape and Cultural Explorations): Interdisciplinary USC Reading Group. 2005-2008: Selection Committee: Golden Key Faculty and Student Awards Morris K. Udall Scholarship Committee 2004-2005: McKissick Museum, Faculty Consultant for Proposed Natural History Exhibition 2003-2005: Faculty Senator 2002-2005: USCycle, Committee Promoting Bicycle and Pedestrian Issues in USC Community 2003-2004: Office of Research, Ad Hoc Committee on Proposed Office for Undergraduate Research 2001: Nominating Committee for NEH Summer Stipends

College 2017-2018: Interim Coordinator, Ann Johnson Institute for Science and Technology Studies 2013-2015: Director, College of Arts and Sciences History Center 2007-2008: Interdisciplinary Jewish Studies Search Committee 2005-2006: CAS Academic Grievance Committee 2000-2001: Organizing Committee for Townsend Lecturer Prof. Robert Proctor

Department: History 2017-2019: History Department Tenure and Promotion Committee (elected) 2016-2018: History Department Executive Committee (elected) 2005-2006: History Department Graduate Committee 2016-17: History Department Undergraduate Committee (also 2009; 2011; 2004-2005) 2003-date: Warwick University Exchange Committee Co-Chair Co-organized successful fundraising campaign for Warwick Scholars Endowment with initial gifts and pledges totaling $110,000; new gifts brought this total to over $1 million through the Sherman F. Smith Warwick Exchange Fund. 2014-2015: South Asian History Search Committee 2011-2012: Modern China Search Committee 2007-2008: Eastern European History Search Committee 2008-2009: Strategic Planning Committee 2004-2005: Eastern Europe/Russian History Search Committee

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2000-2001: Search Committee for European Gender Historian, USC History Department. Wienefeld Graduate Essay Prize Selection Committee, USC History Department.

Department: SEOE 2017-2018: Search Committee: Water and Society 2016-2017; 2019: SEOE Programs Faculty Advisory Committee 2015-2017: Tenure and Promotion Committee

Community Friends of Midlands Public Transportation Committee Member Carleton College Alumni Admissions Representative Sustainable Midlands

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS American Historical Association German Studies Association American Society for Environmental History European Society for Environmental History Urban History Association Fulbright Alumni Association

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