Dr. Joshua Nygren

Education

Ph.D. University of Kansas

B.A. University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Areas of Interest

Joshua Nygren’s research explores how and why Americans and their government have used and conserved natural resources in the past. His current book project examines the history of soil (and water) conservation and state-building in the twentieth-century United States. It brings together insights from environmental history, political history, agricultural history, and the history of technology to explain how and why a vast network of parties and institutions came together over time to support agricultural conservation—and the lessons this history holds for present-day pursuits of “sustainability.”

Professor Nygren enjoys teaching a number of courses at UCM, including US History since 1877 (HIST 1351), The Historian’s Craft (HIST 3010), History of the American West (HIST 4320), US History since 1945 (HIST 4322), North American Environmental History (HIST 4337), and graduate courses in these areas.