Robert Wilson
Associate Professor, Geography and the Environment
Degree
Ph.D., University of British Columbia, 2003
Specialties
Environmental history, historical geography, environmental humanities, animals and society, climate change history and politics
Courses
GEO 103 Environment and Society
GEO 354/HST 384 American Environmental History
and Geography
GEO 358 Animals and Society
GEO 423 Urban Political Ecology and
Environmental History
GEO 603 Development of Geographic Thought
GEO 605 Writing Geography
GEO 752 Climate Change: Geography, History, Politics
GEO 754 Seminar in Environmental History
Publications
Books
Wilson,
Robert M. Seeking Refuge: Birds and Landscapes of
the Pacific Flyway. Weyerhaeuser
Environmental Books Series, William Cronon, ed. Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 2010.
Articles and Chapters
Wilson, Robert M. “Relinquished.” GeoHumanities (forthcoming)
Wilson, Robert M. “Authoritarian Environmental Governance: Insights from the Past
Century.” Annals of the American Association of
Geographers 109, no. 2 (2019): 314–23.
Wilson, Bob. “From Noble Stag to Suburban Vermin: The Fall and Rise of
White-Tailed Deer in the Northeastern United States.” In American Environment
Revisited, edited by Geoffrey Buckley and Yolanda Youngs, 39-55. Lanham, MD:
Rowman & Littlefield, 2018.
Wilson, Robert M. “Faces
of the Climate Movement.” Environmental History 22, no. 1
(2017): 128–39.
Wilson, Robert M. “Wildlife” and “Wildlife
Management.” In Humans
and Animals: A Geography of Coexistence, edited by
Julie Urbanik and Connie L. Johnston, 351–53, 355-57. Laham, MD: ABC-Clio,
2017.
Wilson, Robert M. “Bookshelf: The Troubled
History of Environmentalism.” Seeing the Woods: A Blog by the Rachel Carson
Center, September 22, 2016.
Wilson, Robert M. “Making Tracks: Scholar
Activist?” Seeing the Woods: A Blog by the Rachel Carson Center, August,
25, 2016
Wilson, Robert M.
“Will the End of the World Be on the Final Exam? Emotions, Climate Change, and
Teaching an Introductory Environmental Studies Course.” In Teaching Climate Change in the
Humanities,
edited by Stephanie LeMenager Stephen Siperstein, Shane Hall, 53–58. New York:
Routledge, 2016.
Wilson, Robert M. “Environmental History,”Oxford
Bibliographies in “Geography,” Ed. Barney Warf. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2016.
Wilson, Robert M. “Mobile Bodies: Animal Migration
in North American History.”Geoforum 65 (2015): 465–72.
Wilson, Robert M.
“Animals and the American Landscape.” In North American Odyssey: Historical
Geographies for the Twenty-First Century, edited by Craig E. Colten and
Geoffrey L. Buckley, 195–206. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2014.
Wilson, Robert
M. “Historical
Geography.” Oxford
Bibliographies in “Geography,” Ed. Barney Warf. New York: Oxford
University Press, 2014.
Wynn, Graeme, Craig Colten, Robert M. Wilson, Martin V. Melosi,
Mark Fiege, and Diana K. Davis. “Reflections on the American Environment.” Journal of Historical
Geography 43 (January 2014): 152–68.
Wilson, Robert M. “Commentary 2: The state of the humanities in geography – a
reflection,” Progress in Human Geography 37,
no. 2 (2013): 310-313.
Wilson, Robert M. “Environmental Histories.” The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Cultural
Geography, edited by Nula Johnson,
Richard Schein, and Jamie Winders, 355–370. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell,
2013.
Wilson, Robert. “The Necessity of Activism,” Solutions Journal 3, no. 4 (2012):
75-79.
Wilson, Robert M. "Landscapes of Promise and Betrayal:
Reclamation, Homesteading, and Japanese American Incarceration," Annals of the Association of
American Geographers 101 no. 2 (2011): 424-444.
Wilson, Robert M. “The Ugly Duckling,” Environmental History 16, no. 2 (2011): 439-445
"Birds on the Home Front: Wildlife Conservation in the
Western United States during World War II." In War and the Environment: Military
Destruction in the Modern Age, edited by Charles E. Closmann, 132-49. College Station: Texas
A&M Press 2009.
Wilson, Robert M. "Directing the Flow: Migratory Waterfowl,
Scale, and Mobility in Western North America." Environmental History 7, no. 2 (2002): 247-266.
Book Review Essays and Book Reviews
Wilson, Robert M. Review of Richard L. Nostrand’s The Making of
America’s Culture Regions, in Journal of Historical Geography 63
(2019): 109–10.
Wilson, Robert M. Review of Serpil
Oppermann and Serenella Iovino, eds., in Environmental Humanities: Voices
from the Anthropocene, in Environmental Ethics 40, no. 2 (2018):
185–87.
Wilson, Robert M. Review of Gregory J. Dehler’s The Most Defiant Devil: William Temple Hornaday and His Controversial
Crusade to Save American Wildlife, in The AAG Review of Books, 2, no. 4 (2014): 48–50.
Wilson, Robert M. “Maps with a Message.” Reviews in
American History 43 (2015): 484–89.
Wilson, Robert M. Review of A Storied Wilderness: Rewilding the
Apostle Islands in Environmental History 18, no. 1
(2013): 232-34.
Review of Wired Wilderness: Technologies of
Tracking and the Making of Modern Wildlife in H-Environment Roundtable Reviews 3,1 (2013): 12-14.
Wilson, Robert M. "Nature's Prophet." Review of A Passion for Nature: The Life of
John Muir, H-HistGeog, (2009).
Wilson, Robert. "Retrospective Review: Man's Role in
Changing the Face of the Earth," Environmental
History 10, no. 3 (2005).
“Supersize History,” Journal of Historical Geography 31 (2005): 563-567.
- A review essay of
three books in world environmental history: David Christian, Maps of Time: An Introduction to
Big History, John Richards, The
Unending Frontier: An Environmental History of the Early Modern World, and
John C. Weaver, The Great Land
Rush and the Making of the Modern World, 1650-1900.
Advising
Prospective Students
I welcome applications from students interested in historical
geography-environmental history, environmental social movements, and animal
geography. While I serve on committees of students who do work outside North
America, I generally do not supervise MA or PhD students who hope to undertake
research in places other than the United States or Canada. Those interested in
environment-society research outside North America, especially in the Global
South, might consider contacting my colleagues Tom Perreault or Farhana Sultana, both of whom do research outside North America and supervise students
who do work there.
Current Advisees
Tina Catania (Ph.D.)
- Research
Interests: political geography, race and migration, gender and the body,
identity, feminist geography, Italy.
Pam Sertzen (Ph.D.)
- Research
Interests: collective memory, urban geography, activist research and
public ethnography, Brazil.
Jared Whear (Ph.D.)
- Research
Interests: water management and policy, environmental social movements,
western United States.
Dominic Wilkins (Ph.D.)
- Social movements, political ecology, religion, the
environmental humanities.
Past Advisees
Jeremy Bryson (Ph.D., 2010),
Assistant Professor, Weber State University
- Dissertation: “The Nature of Gentrification: Urban
Environments and Redevelopment in the Inland Northwest”
Kristin Culter (M.A. 2014), Academic
Advisor, Newhouse School, Syracuse University
- Thesis: “Pets in the City: Managing Surplus Dogs in
Syracuse, New York”
Jon Erickson (M.A. 2018)
- Thesis: “Remaking the Rural: National Land for People,
Reclamation Law, and Agricultural Reform in California, 1976–1982”
Heather Ipsen (M.A. 2018), Innovation
and Performance Specialist, City of Schenectady
- Thesis: “Catching the Cloud and Pinning it Down: The Social
and Environmental Impacts of Data Centers”
James Lindberg (M.A. 2020)
- Thesis: “The Road that Made Mountains: Highway Design and
the Production of Landscape in Vail, Colorado”
Brent Olson (Ph.D., 2012),
Associate Professor, Environmental Studies, Westminster College
- Dissertation: “Recreation Capital: Amenity Development,
Resource Management, and Outdoor Recreation in Bend, Oregon”
Dominic Wilkins (M.A. 2019), PhD student, Syracuse University,
Department of Geography and the Environment
- Thesis: “Building an Ecological Church: Laudato Si’,
Climate Change, and Clergy in the Roman Catholic Diocese of Syracuse”
Teaching Appointments
Associate
Professor, Department of Geography, Syracuse University (2011-present)
Assistant Professor, Department of Geography, Syracuse University (2005-2011)
Visiting Appointments
Carson
Fellow, Rachel Carson Center, Munich, Germany,
2016
Visiting
Scholar, Bill Lane Center for the American West, Stanford
University (2008-2009)
NSF Post-Doctoral Fellow, Department of History and
Philosophy,
Montana State University-Bozeman (2004-2005)
Professional Service
Organizer, “Environmental Humanities Symposium,” CNY Humanities
Corridor, March 2020
Series Advisor,
Syracuse Studies in Geography, Syracuse University Press (2012-present)
Editorial Board, Journal of Historical Geography, (2015-present)
Editorial
Board, Historical Geography, (2014-present)
Chair, AAG
Historical Geography Specialty Group (2011-2014)
Coordinator, SU
Environment and Society Minor (2011-2014)
Undergraduate
Director, Department of Geography (2010-2011, 2013-2014)
Book Review Co-Editor,
H-HistGeog (2010-2014)