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 Lekan, Curriculum Vitae, 2 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 Tanzania 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.” Lekan, Curriculum Vitae, 3 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 Lekan, Curriculum Vitae, 4 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 Lekan, Curriculum Vitae, 5 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