James C. Giesen

Education
Research Interests
Publications
Presentations
Other Publications & Presentations
Professional Service & Awards
Courses Taught

Education:

• Ph.D., University of Georgia, 2004
  
• M.A., University of North Carolina, Greensboro, 1998
  
• B.A., DePauw University, 1995

Research Interests:

My interests are the agricultural, rural, and environmental histories of the U.S., with a particular focus on the South in the twentieth century.

Publications:

• Book & Refereed Articles
  
  Boll Weevil Blues: Cotton, Myth, and Power in the American South (University of Chicago Press, 2011)
  
  "'The Herald of Prosperity:' Tracing the Boll Weevil Myth in Alabama," Agricultural History (forthcoming Winter 2011).
  
  James C. Giesen and Mark Hersey, "The New Environmental Politics and Its Antecedents: Lessons from the Early Twentieth Century," The Historian 72, no. 2 (Summer 2010): 271-298.
  
  "'The Truth about the Boll Weevil': The Nature of Planter Power in the Mississippi Delta," Environmental History 14, no. 4 (October 2009): 683-704.
  
  "Creating 'Nate Shaw': The Making and Re-Making of All God's Dangers," in Richard Godden and Martin Crawford, ed., Reading Southern Poverty Between the Wars, (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006)
  
  

Presentations

"King Cotton, the Enemy: The Strange Career of the South's Most Vaunted Crop," Southern Forum on Agricultural, Rural, and Environmental History, Savannah, Georgia, April 8-9, 2011.

"From Cotton Weevils to Cotton Logos: The Environmental History of the Yazoo-Mississippi Delta," Delta State University's "Year of the Green" Keynote Environmental History Lecture (Invited), March 28, 2011.

"Cotton and Agricultural History," Invited lecture for the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institute, Mercer University, June 29, 2010.

"The Fabric of Our Lives: The Historical Memory of Cotton in the South," Agricultural History Society, Annual Meeting, Winter Park, Florida, June 10-12, 2010.

"From Crop to Fabric: Cotton's Long Historical Memory," Southern Forum on Agricultural, Rural, and Environmental History, University of South Carolina, April 10, 2010.

"Plantation as Labratory: Pesticides and the Industrialization of Cotton Farming in the Rural New South," Southern Industrialization Project Panel at Annual Meeting of the Southern Historical Association, Louisville, Kentucky, November 6, 2009.

"Cotton as Memory," The Workshop on the History of the Environment and Agriculture in the New South, Institute for Southern Studies, University of South Carolina, July 24-25, 2009.

"The Herald of Prosperity: Testing the Boll Weevil Myth in Alabama," invited presentation to the Georgia Workshop on the History of the Environment and Agriculture, University of Georgia, November 14, 2008.

"The South's Greatest Enemy? The Boll Weevil in Agricultural and Environmental Contexts," Agricultural History Society, Annual Meeting, Ames, Iowa, June 21-23, 2007.

"'You Will Be Poor and Ignorant and Your Children Will Be the Same': The Cotton Boll Weevil and the Failure of Diversification in Alabama, 1915-1930." Annual Meeting of the Southern Historical Association, Atlanta, Georgia, November 2-5, 2005.

"'The Boll Weevil Works While the Darkies Play': Labor, Race, and the Environment." American Society for Environmental History Conference, Houston, Texas, March 17, 2005.

"The Making of an Autobiography: Rethinking the Relationship Between Nate Shaw and Ned Cobb," Seventh Annual Graduate Conference on History, University of Mississippi, March 1-2, 2002.

Other Publications & Presentations

Moderator, "What Southern Environmental History Suffers to Groe: The State of Southern Environmental History on the Fifteenth Anniversary of the Publication of Mart A. Stewart's What Nature Suffers to Groe,  Agricultural History Society Annual Meeting, Springfield, Illinois, June 18, 2011.

Moderator, "Farmers, Markets, and Farmers' Markets: What Agricultural History Can Tell Us about the Local Foods Movement," Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians, Houston, Texas, March 19, 2011.

Entries in Mississippi Encyclopedia, Encyclopedia of American Environmental History, The New Georgia Encyclopedia

Book Reviews in Journal of Southern History, Agricultural History, Register of the Kentucky Historical Society, H-North Carolina, Civil War History, American Communist History, North Carolina Historical Review, Film & History.

Professional Service & Awards

Director, The Center for the History of Agriculture, Science, and the Environment in the South (CHASES), 2011-present

Will Clark/State Pride Faculty Award for excellence in research and teaching, 2010

Executive Secretary, Agricultural History Society, July 2010-present

Membership Committee, Southern Historical Association, 2009-10

Nominating Committee, Agricultural History Society, 2009-10

Program Committee, Agricultural History Society, 2008-09

Interviewed as expert on agricultural history by Los Angeles Times (August 24, 2010; July 22, 2010), Memphis Commercial Appeal (Nov. 4, 2007), Wall Street Journal (Oct. 24, 2008), Cleveland (MS) Current (April 14, 2011).

Refereed scholarly manuscripts for Mississippi Quarterly, Journal of Economic History and Southern Quarterly

Conceived and organized inaugural Forum on Agricultural and Rural History at Mississippi State (FARhMS), held April 4-5, 2008

Interviewed for and appear in Game of Change (Pathway Productions, 2008), a documentary about the 1963 Mississippi State University basketball game against Loyola University

Interviewed for The Secret to a Happy Ending (Barr Weissman, 2010), a documentary about the legendary southern rock band The Drive-By Truckers

Historical Consultant, Shields-Ethridge Heritage Farm, Jefferson, Georgia, 2005

J.C. Hyde Oral History Project, Richard B. Russell Political Library, University of Georgia, 2003-2004

Research Fellow, Race and Slavery Petitions Project, University of North Carolina, Greensboro; Loren Schweninger, director, 1996-98

Morgan and Jeanie Sherwood Grant, American Society for Environmental History, 2005

Teaching Fellowship, University of Georgia, 1998-2004

President, History Graduate Student Association, University of Georgia, 2001

Carl Vipperman Outstanding Teaching Award, University of Georgia, 2000

Beveridge Fellowship for Graduate Study in History, awarded by DePauw University, 1998-1999

Courses Taught:

HI 8953: US, 1877-1945
HI 8883: US Agricultural History, 1500-2000 (Seminar)
HI 4193/6193: U.S. Environmental History, 1500-2000
HI 4313/6313: The New South
HI 3333: Mississippi History
HI 1073: Modern U.S. History