Donald E. Worster

Office: 3608 Wescoe Hall
Phones: 864-9474
or 864-7828
Email: dworster@ku.edu

Joyce and Elizabeth Hall Prof. of U.S. History, Environmental Studies, Dir. Graduate Program (Ph.D. Yale, 1971). Environmental history of North America and the world; U.S. West; U.S. cultural and social history.

Professor Worster came to KU in 1989 to occupy the Hall Chair in American History, thus returning to his undergraduate institution and his home region. His most recent book, A River Running West: The Life of John Wesley Powell, is published by Oxford in 2001. Earlier books include The Wealth of Nature, Under Western Skies, Rivers of Empire, Dust Bowl, and Nature's Economy (now available in 5 languages). He is former president of the American Society for Environmental History and a member of the Western History Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the American Historical Association. Over the past two decades he has lectured extensively in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America, as well as throughout North America.

Professor Worster is primarily interested in the emerging field of environmental history-the changing perception of nature, the rise of conservation and environmentalism, but especially the ways that the natural world has impinged on human society and provided the context for human life over time. He also has strong interests in comparative history (esp. U.S. and Canada), in American regionalism (particularly the West), in agriculture, and in science and technology.