Bathsheba R. Demuth is an assistant professor of History and Environment & Society at Brown University where she teaches classes such as “Powering the Past: Environmental Histories of Energy Use and Social Change” and “The Arctic: Global History from the Dog Sled to the Oil Rig.” Prof. Demuth got a masters from Brown in International Development and a masters and PhD from UC Berkeley both in history. Her work and research centers on the environment of the arctic lands and seas, an interest that developed from living in the Yukon for over two years where she was immersed into the unique ecological surroundings. The focus of her work, “from archive to dog sled” as she puts it, is to observe and analyze the intersections of people, ideas, places, and non-human species in history.

Alongside works in the American Historical Review, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic, Dr. Demuth published her book Floating Coast: An Environmental History of the Bering Strait in 2019. It has been called “a historian’s Moby Dick” and has won six prizes and two awards including the 2021 John H. Dunning Prize. In her book, the focus is on the Bering Strait as its own ecosystem shows that human actors are only one factor of its history. She explores the cost changing forms of energy have had on this complex environment. Her emphasis on these intersections is echoed in the book’s structure: Sea, Shore, Land, Underground, and Ocean. The book exhibits Dr. Demuth’s approach to environmental history, her talent as a story-teller, and her thoughts on the relationship between humans and non-human nature.

As a scholar, Dr. Demuth explores such questions as: What does it mean to give rights to entities that aren’t human? How have we gained the right to “give” rights and how would the world look different? Do rights give us a useful method for looking at the relationship between human and non-human nature? An essential part of this work is making sure to highlight how instrumental indigenous groups in the Arctic, specifically along the Yukon, have been to its environmental history. (Written by Ana Aguilar, Class of 2023)

Demuth, Bathsheba. “Bathsheba Demuth.” Bathsheba Demuth, 2014. http://www.brdemuth.com

“Demuth, Bathsheba.” Brown.edu, 2019. https://vivo.brown.edu/display/brdemuth

“A View of the Bering Strait That’s Anything but Narrow (Published 2019).”

The New York Times, 2022.https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/27/books/review/floating-coast-bathsheba-demuth.html.

Jack E. Davis is an award winning author and professor of environmental history and sustainability studies at the University of Florida where he holds the Rothman Family Endowed Chair in the Humanities. Professor Davis received his BA in 1985 and MA in 1989 from the University of South Florida, and a Ph.D. in 1994 from Brandeis University. Prior to joining the faculty at the University of Florida in 2003, Prof. Davis taught at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where he was director of environmental studies. He also previously taught at Eckerd College. In 2002, Prof. Davis was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Jordan in Amman. After joining the faculty at the University of Florida, he founded the history department’s student journal, Alpata: A Journal of History.

Prof. Davis has written multiple books, and in 2014, he was a fellow at the MacDowell Colony, where he worked on his 2018 Pulitzer Prize winning book: The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea. The Gulf is a history of the American Sea, from the sportfish that brought the earliest tourists to the Gulf to Hollywood’s engagement with the first offshore oil wells. The Gulf was a New York Times Notable Book for 2017 and made several other “best of” lists for the year, such as those of the Washington Post, NPR, Forbes, and the Tampa Bay Times. In addition to winning the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for History, The Gulf was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction and winner of the Kirkus Prize for nonfiction. Lastly, The New York Times Book Review called his book a “beautiful homage to a neglected sea.”

Other books written by Prof. Davis include An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century which received a gold medal from the Florida Book Awards, and Race Against Time: Culture and Separation in Natchez Since 1930 which won the Charles S. Sydnor Prize for the best book in southern history. In April 2019, Prof. Davis was one of the thirty-two fellows who were awarded the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Fellowship. (Written by Bela Tinaj, Class of 2023)