Articles and other work in popular and academic media

“Brushes with History: The Great Wall Demurrals of Judy Baca and Ana Teresa Fernández.” California History. November (Winter 2024): 82-108. (In a special issue “Commemorating a Century of Border Control, 1924-2024,” edited by Benny Andres and José Alamillo.)

“The Ghosts in the Machine in the Garden.” Review essay on Richard White, California Exposures, Gordon Chang, Ghosts of Gold Mountain, and Chang and Shelley Fishkin, eds., The Chinese and the Iron Road. Reviews in American History 49 (2021):  268–293.

Review essay: Benny Andrés, Power and Control in the Imperial Valley: Nature, Agribusiness, and Workers on the California Borderland, 1900–1940. Southern California Quarterly. Vol. 97, No. 4 (Winter 2015): 424-427.

“Guano and the Explosion of Pacific Worlds.” Review essay: Gregory T. Cushman, Guano and the Opening of the Pacific World: A Global Ecological History. In Reviews in American History (December 2014): 705-711.

“Trafficking Nature and Labor across Borders: The Transnational Return of U.S. Environmental History.” International Labor and Working-Class History (Spring 2014): 177-193.

 “A Promise both Fulfilled and Deferred.” Review essay: James Turner, The Promise of Wilderness: American Environmental Politics since 1964. H-Environment, H-Net Review(https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=32199). July 2013: 1-4.

 “Food.” Book chapter in Sackman, ed., A Companion to American Environmental History (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010): 529-550.

“Gender.” Book chapter co-authored with Susan R. Schrepfer, in Sackman, ed., A Companion to American Environmental History (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010): 116-145.

“Introduction.” In Sackman, ed., A Companion to American Environmental History (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010): xiii-xxi.

Contributor, “Teaching the American History Survey at the Opening of the Twenty-First Century: A Roundtable Discussion.” In Gary Kornblith and Carol Lasser, eds. Teaching American History (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009). A revised version of the roundtable discussion that originally appeared in the Journal of American History (March 2001): 1409-1441.

“Nature and Conquest: After the Deluge of ’49.” Book chapter in William Deverell and David Igler, eds., A Companion to California History (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008): 175-191.

“The Gender Trouble with Wilderness.” Review essay on Susan R. Schrepfer, Nature’s Altars: Mountains, Gender, and American Environmentalism, in Reviews in American History (June 2006): 208-213.

“A Garden of Worldly Delights.” Book chapter in Land of Sunshine: The Environmental History of Greater Los Angeles, Greg Hise and William Deverell, eds. (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005): 245-266, 329-334.

“Consumption and the Angel of History.” Environmental History (January 2005): 90-92. Included in the 10 year anniversary issue forum on “What’s Next for Environmental History?”

“Putting Gender on the Table: Food and the Family Life of Nature.” Book chapter in Seeing Nature through Gender, Virginia Scharff, ed. (University Press of Kansas, 2003): 169-193.

“Charles Alexander Eastman” (and the section on teaching Eastman). In Heath Anthology of American Literature, 4th Ed. (Houghton Mifflin, 2002).

Review Essay: William de Buys, Salt Dreams: Land and Life in Low-Down California. New Mexico Historical Review (April 2001): 189-193.

Foreword and Bibliographical Essay, Carey McWilliams, Factories in the Field: The Story of Migratory Farm Labor in California (1939; reissue by the University of California Press, 2000): ix-xviii, 335-342.

“‘Nature’s Workshop’: The Work Environment and Workers’ Bodies in California’s Citrus Industry.” Environmental History (January 2000): 27-53.

“Inside the Skin of Nature: The Scientific Quest for the Golden Orange.” Science, Values and the American West, Stephen Tchudi, ed. (University of Nevada Press, 1997): 117-145.

“Allegories of Life: Gender, Labor and Bio-Technology in the Murals of Diego Rivera.” Human Ecology Review (Autumn 1996): 115-126.

“‘By Their Fruits Ye Shall Know Them’: ‘Nature Cross Culture Hybridization’ and the California Citrus Industry, 1893-1939.” California History (Spring 1995): 82-99, 139-140.

articles in popular media

‘These people do it naturally’: President Trump’s views on immigrant farmworkers reflect a long history of how farming has been idealized and practiced in America. The Conversation. August 21, 2025.

Bizarre DHS Social-Media Strategy: Something to White Home About. The Bulwark. August 1, 2025

“Rolling on the Rivers: Tyre Nichols’ love for the Sacramento River carried into his life and legacy.” Sacramento News and Review. March 7, 2023. 

“Tales of Jedediah Smith in the Sacramento Valley and high Sierra ignore a grim reality.” Sacramento News and Review. June 15, 2021. 

“Misremember the Alamo.” History News Network. January 24, 2021. 

“In the ‘Bramble’ of Central Park, a Showdown Over Nature and Race.” History News Network. June 28, 2020. 

“The Right to Breathe Free: A Showdown Over Race and Nature (Part II).” History News Network. July 12, 2020. 

“Ad Men Dons: A Tale of New York and California, Coca-Cola and Sunkist, the American Dream and Nirvana, and Two Men Who Sold the World.” Arches (Winter 2016): 20-27

“A historian’s take on the new ‘Paint Your Wagon.’” Crosscut.com. June 21, 2016

 “Unforgivable? A Great Director Crosses the Line.” Vashon-Maury Island Beachcomber. September 11, 2012.

“Eugenic Landscapes: Burbanking Plants and Pasts.” Video lecture. Included in the website “The History of Eugenics at Puget Sound and Beyond.”