William Cronon

William, Bill 'J. Cronon ( born September 11, 1954 in New Haven, Connecticut) is an American environmental historian.

He is a full professor since 1992 named after Frederick Jackson Turner Chair in History, Geography and Environmental Studies, and since 2003 the Vilas Research Professor at the University of Wisconsin- Madison. In 2012 he was president of the American Historical Association in 2013 and as Past President in the leadership circle.

Training

He earned his doctorate at Jesus College, Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar. Cronon had a BA ( 1976) from the University of Wisconsin- Madison, and his MA (1979 ), M.Phil. (1980) and PhD (1990 ) at Yale University acquired.

In July 1985, he was awarded a MacArthur and Guggenheim Fellowship in 1994. Cronon was in the 1980s advisor Wayne Pacelles at Yale University. He serves on the Board of Directors of the Public Land Trust and advises the Wilderness Society. Cronon 1999 was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society, followed in 2006 to join the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Research

Cronon is best known as the author of Changes in the Land: Indians known, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. The book is based on a seminar paper for Edmund S. Morgan at Yale. Cronon sees here the concept of property as a central factor for economies and ecosystems and the Indians has an active role in shaping their environment.

His essay The Trouble with Wilderness, in the New York Times followed the idea of ​​wilderness in the entire American history. According to Cronon it is an ideal, a longing of people who never had to earn their living directly from nature. He pointed out that almost all so-called wilderness areas were used at all times of people and more or less strongly influenced. In this respect, in his view, a categorical separation between man and nature is a dangerous ideology for the future of conservation. A policy of total reserves would alienate the people more of the nature and prevent to develop an ethical and environmentally correct and sustainable use of the wildlife.

With the book Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West ( 1991) he won the 1992 Bancroft Prize It is considered groundbreaking work of American environmental history. He extended the perspective of the subject of consideration by fields and forests to intensive urban and rural context. According to Cronon of the Chicago capitalism has reshaped the entire agrarian Midwest. He describes, among other things, such as wheat was first offered as a cargo in handmade bags of farm families and finally a standardized commodity was as visible as silos. The associated changes had profound changes in urban landscape as a result.

Controversy Blog to austerity measures

2011 there had been significant protests to budget cuts in the state of Wisconsin. Cronon started a blog called Scholar as Citizen ( The scholar as citizens ). He criticized, among others, the American Legislative Exchange Council ( ALEC ), who had served the Governor as a lobbying organization against the public sector unions. The Wisconsin Republican Party requested a FOIA request emails from Cronons University account to obtain. A portion of the filtered by keywords mails were handed over by the university. Cronon complained among other things, in a commentary for The New York Times about the actions of Governor Scott Walker and called for better protection of academic freedom. The internet news and entertainment magazine Salon described him ironically as dangerous professor Wisconsin.

Publications (excerpt)

• Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England, 1983; 20th anniversary edition, Hill & Wang, 2003.
• Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, WW Norton, 1991 ISBN 978-0-393-30873-0.
• Telling Tales on Canvas: Landscapes of Frontier Change. In: Discovered Lands, Invented Pasts: Transforming Visions of the American West ( New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).
• A Place for Stories: Nature, History and Narrative. Journal of American History 78:4 ( March, 1992), pp. 1347-1376.
• The Uses of Environmental History. ( Presidential Address, American Society for Environmental History), Environmental History Review, 17:3 (Fall 1993), pp. 1-22.
• Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature. W. W. Norton, 1995, ISBN 978-0-393-31511-0.
• The Trouble with Wilderness: Or, Getting Back to the Wrong Nature. Environmental History, 1 ( 1) (Jan. 1996), pp. 7-28.
• Only Connect ...: The Goals of a Liberal Education. The American Scholar ( Autumn, 1998), pp. 73-80.
• Why the Past Matters. Wisconsin Magazine of History, 84:1 ( Autumn 2000), pp. 2-13. Awarded the William Best Hesseltine 2000-2001.
• The Riddle of the Apostle Islands: How Do You Manage a Wilderness Full of Human Stories? . Orion ( May- June 2003), 36-42.
• The Densest, Richest, Most Suggestive 19 pages I know. Environmental History, 10 ( 4) (Oct., 2005), pp. 679-681.
• Storytelling. (AHA Presidential Address ), The American Historical Review (2013 ) 118 ( 1): 1-19.