Mark D. Hersey

U.S. South, Environmental and Agricultural History, Rural America, African American

228 Allen Hall
Mississippi State University
Mississippi State, MS 39762
Phone: 662-325-3604
E-mail: mhersey@history.msstate.edu

Education
Publications
Recent Presentations
Public History Experience
Honors and Awards
Professional Activities

My principal research interests lie in the fields of environmental, rural, and agricultural history, with a particular emphasis on the American South, most especially on Alabama and Mississippi. My first book, My Work Is That Of Conservation: An Environmental Biography of George Washington Carver (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011), situated the agricultural and environmental work of George Washington Carver in the context of both the conservation movement of the early twentieth century and the environmental history of Alabama's Black Belt. The research for the book touched off the two projects that currently have my attention. The first centers on the physiographic Black Belt of Alabama and Mississippi and seeks to examine the connections between land use, race, and poverty in the region from its time as Creek and Choctaw country through the end of the twentieth century. The second focuses on the long-neglected connections between ecology and agronomy in the Progressive Era, tracing the ways in which practitioners of the nascent science conceived of their work, especially its practical applications. I also have a broad interest in the rather amorphous field of public history, having served as the director of two public history projects in Kansas.

Education:
    PhD with Honors in U.S. Environmental History, University of Kansas, 2006.

    Dissertation: “My Work is That of Conservation”: The Environmental Vision of George Washington Carver Major Advisor: Donald Worster.
    Bachelor of Arts in History, University of Alabama, 1997.

Publications:

    Refereed

    " My Work is that of Conservation: An Environmental Biography of George Washington Carver (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011).
    " "'What We Need Is a Crop Ecologist': Ecology as an Agricultural Science in Progressive Era America," Agricultural History 85 (Summer 2011), 297-321.
    " "The New Environmental Politics and Its Antecedents: Lessons from the Early Twentieth Century South," The Historian 72 (Summer 2010): 271-298. (Coauthored with James C. Giesen.)
    " "The Transformation of George Washington Carver's Environmental Ethic, 1896-1918" in Jeffrey Jordan, ed., Black Environmental Thought: Land, Power, and Sustainability (Washington, D. C.: Sustainable Agricultural Network and Natural Resources, Agriculture, and Engineering Service, 2009), 57-76.
    " "Hints and Suggestions to Farmers: George Washington Carver and Rural Conservation in the South," Environmental History (April 2006): 239-268.

    Solicited

    " "Fortieth Anniversary of Earth Day," Chinese Social Science (April 2010), translated into Chinese.
    " "'Their plows singing beneath the sandy loam': African American Agriculture in the Late-Nineteenth-Century South," in Dixie Ray Haggard, ed., African American Agriculture in the Nineteenth Century: People and Perspectives (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2010), 133-147.
    " Encyclopedia entries on George Washington Carver for Modern American Environmentalists: A Biographical Encyclopedia, The Encyclopedia of American Environmental History, and BlackPast.org.
Recent Presentations:

    Refereed

    " "The Cowboy South: Cotton, Cattle, and Culture in Alabama's Black Belt during the New Deal Era." Annual Meeting of the European Society for Environmental History, Turku, Finland, June 29, 2011.
    " "Noah B. Cloud and the Forgotten Era of Antebellum Agricultural Reform." Southern Forum on Agricultural and Environmental History, Savannah, Georgia, April 8, 2011.
    "Cotton, Cattle, and Camo: The Nature of Southern Identity in Alabama's Black Belt Prairies." Southern Forum on Agricultural, Rural, and Environmental History, Columbia, SC, April 10, 2010.
    " Comparative Rural Histories.  Part of a Roundtable at the Annual Meeting of the Agricultural History Society, Little Rock, Arkansas, June 20, 2009.
    " "Black Belt Nightmares, Black Belt Dreams: The Nature of Land Use, Race, and Poverty in a Southern Backwater." Annual Meeting of the ASEH, Portland, Oregon, March 11, 2010.
    " "Scientific Agriculture and the Roots of Ecology." Annual Meeting of the American Society for Environmental History, Boise, Idaho, March 12-16, 2008.
    " "Noah B. Cloud, the Ruthless Hand of Mr. Carenot, and Antebellum Agricultural Reform." Annual Meeting of the American Society for Environmental History, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, March 2007.
    " "The Care of the Earth: Ecology's Roots in Scientific Agriculture." Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting, Minneapolis, Minnesota, March 2007.

    Invited

    " George Washington Carver.  Kansas City Public Library, Kansas City, Missouri, May 24, 2011. Listen to his talk at http://ia700607.us.archive.org/30/items/GaryKremerAndMarkHerseyGeorgeWashingtonCarver/2011-5-24_Gary-Kremer_Mark-Hersey.mp3
    "'My Work Is That of Conservation': The Conservation Legacy of George Washington Carver." George Washington Carver National Monument, Diamond, MO, July 10, 2010.
    " "Making History Public." Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China, December 11, 2008.
    " "Environmental History, the American South, and the Transformation of Macon County, Alabama." Beijing Normal University, Beijing, China, December 10, 2008.
    " "George Washington Carver, Ecological Agriculture, and the Future of Rural Reform." China's Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China. December 9, 2008.
    " "What Dreams Might Die: The Collapse of George Washington Carver's Campaign on Behalf of Impoverished Sharecroppers." Georgia Workshop in the History of Agriculture and the Environment, Athens, Georgia, November 14, 2008.
    " "George Washington Carver: Myth and Memory." Inaugural Carver Lecture Series, Franklin Institute Science Museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. February 2008.

Public History Experience:
    Adviser to Iowa Public Television's George Washington Carver documentary, July 2008-present.

    Interim Project Director for Kansas History Online and This Week in KU History, 2006-2008 Kansas History Online and This Week in KU History

    Associate Editor and Writer for Kansas History Online and This Week in KU History, 2001-2006.

    Listen to Dr. Hersey on PRI's Living on Earth here

Honors and Awards:
    2008 ASEH Travel Grant for the annual meeting of the ASEH

    2007 Dorothy Haglund Prize for an Outstanding Doctoral Dissertation, given by the Graduate School of University of Kansas for the best dissertation in any academic discipline.

    2007 George L. Anderson Award for Excellence in History, given for the best doctoral dissertation, History Department, University of Kansas.

    2006-2007 State Historical Society of Iowa Research Grant

Professional Activities:

    " Member of the Agricultural History Society's Sites Committee (2010-2013).
    " Member of the Agricultural History Society's Program Committee (2010-2011).
    " Member of the Environment and Sustainability Certificate Program (formerly Environmental Science) Advisory Committee (MSU), September 2009-present.
    " Head of the CHASES Lecture Series (formerly the Nature and Culture Lecture Series), January 2009-present.
    " Book reviews for Alabama Review (2010), Organization and Environment (2010), Virginia Magazine of History and Biography (2011), Agricultural History (2011), World History (forthcoming), and the Journal of Southern History (forthcoming).