Juliana Chow 2025-2027 EH Research Professor
“Middle West” is a series of creative non-fiction essays that revise the Lewis and Clark Trail to posit diasporic decolonial and feminist practices of routing/rooting ecological thought. Blending historical research on diasporic figures with metaphorical and literal connections to the landscape in Utah, this work attempts to theorize and enact diasporic ways of making nature home and its complicated connection to the labor of caregiving. I hope to emulate the work of Lauret Savoy, Camille Dungy, and Jamaica Kincaid to trace a diasporic environmental history and cultivation of place.
Previous recipients:
M. Christoper Low, History (2023-25)
- The Well and the Water Machine: Desalination, Carbon Infrstructures, and Climate Risk in the Arabian Peninsula
Rachel Mason Dentinger, History (2021-22)
- Natural Insecticides & Evolutionary Warfare in the History of Coevolutionary Studies (1940s-2000s)
Katharina Gerstenberger, WLC (2019-2021)
- Disturbed Places and Troubled Times: Narrating Bikini Atoll, Chernobyl, Fukushima
Carlos Gray Santana, PHIL (2017-19)
Benjamin Cohen, HIST (2015-17)
Kevin Deluca, COMM (2012-14)
-
Out of the Woods: Seeing Nature in the Every Day, winner of the Reading the West Book Award in Nonfiction for 2018 from the Mountain and Plains Independent Booksellers Association
Danielle Endres, COMM inaugural term (2006-2007)
Research Professorship Benefits:
- One course-release per year
- Annual research funding of $1,500
- Engagement with the intellectual life of the EH community
- A public presentation and opportunity to celebrate your research at the end of your term
The EH Research Professor is supported by generous funding from the Kendeda Fund. All faculty members from the College of Humanities who wish to pursue environmental research from humanities perspectives are encouraged to apply. Our next application cycle will open during Fall 2026.