David Kinkela
Assistant Professor
Director of the Honors Program
New York University, Ph.D., 2005
E314 Thompson Hall
Office Phone: 716/673-3876
E-mail: david.kinkela@fredonia.edu
Research Interests
My research focuses on the history of U.S. environmental politics in a global age. My book, DDT and the American Century: Global Health, Environmental Politics, and the Pesticide That Changed the World (UNC Press, 2011, http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-9301.html) examines the interconnections between U.S. environmentalism and U.S. foreign policy. Currently, I am starting a new book project called, An Island of Plastic: A History of Waste, Water, and Petrochemicals. This project attempts to historicize the multifaceted and transnational history of the largest environmental wasteland in the world, the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.
Publications:
Book
DDT and the American Century: Global Health, Environmental Politics, and the Pesticide that Changed the World, publication date, November 2011 with UNC Press http://uncpress.unc.edu/books/T-9301.html
Articles
“The Ecological Landscapes of Rachel Carson and Jane Jacobs,” American Quarterly 61.4 (winter 2009): 905-28.
“’One Man’s Pesticide Is Another Man’s Poison’: The Paradox of U.S. Environmental Pesticide Policy during the Environmental Decade” for edited volume, The Nation-State and the Transnational Environment (under contract with Oxford University Press)
“The Question of Success and Environmental Ethics: Revisiting the DDT Controversy from a Transnational Perspective, 1967-1972,” Ethics, Place, and Environment vol. 8, no. 2, June 2005, 159-79.
Edited Volumes
Co-Editor, with Neil Maher, “Transnational Environments: Rethinking the Political Economy of Nature in a Global Age,” special issue Radical History Review, 107, spring 2010
Co-Editor, with Mark Lawrence and Erika Bsumek, The Nation-State and the Transnational Environment, under contract with Oxford University Press
Fellowships
The Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, Harvard University, Research Fellow, 2010
Institute for Historical Studies, University of Texas-Austin, 2008-09
Teaching Interests
My teaching interests explore many of the same themes as my research. I am interested in exploring the connections and relationships between U.S. history and the world. I often teach the survey course, "U.S. History since 1877" with a global focus. I also teach the "American Century" course that explores the intersection between foreign politics, culture and power. I teach environmental history as well, offering courses on global and U.S. environmental history. Other courses I have developed or offered in the past include "The History of New York," "History of American Cities," "Post-1945 U.S. History," "Doing History" and the "History Honors Seminar."