Matthew Booker

Associate Professor

Ph. D., History, Stanford University, 2005

M.S., Environmental Science, University of Oregon, 1997

B.A., History, University of California, Berkeley, 1991

Personal Introduction

My work examines the intersection between human beings and the natural world in North America, with a particular focus on the coastal regions. My dissertation “Real Estate to Refuge: Transforming San Francisco Bay’s Tidal Wetlands, 1846-1972” (Stanford University, 2005) investigated ownership and ecology in a contested urban and natural space. I am presently working on the manuscript for publication with University of California Press. I am also researching the history of the oyster industry in the United States during the industrial and urban revolutions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

I joined the N.C. State History Department in August 2004. I have offered courses in modern U.S. history, American environmental history, the history of American suburbs, and a graduate writing seminar.

A native of Northern California, I descend from Maine businesspeople (by way of Bellingham, Washington) on my mother's side and Virginia tobacco farmers (by way of Independence, Texas) on my father's side. I have been through a variety of educational institutions, including an inner-city nursery school, grades K-8 in a tiny rural school, a suburban Catholic high school, the University of California at Berkeley, Hindu College at the University of Delhi, India, the University of Oregon in Eugene, the University of Washington in Seattle, and Stanford University. Before, during and between schools, I have worked with varying success as a bus driver, wine server, carpenter, landscaper, tile-setter's assistant, title insurance examiner, field ecologist, and newspaper editor.

Teaching Interests

Environmental History, History of the American West, Twentieth Century United States, Urban History, Food History

Course repertoire

• HI 252
  Modern American History
  
• HI 440
  American Environmental History
  
• HI 598
  Historical Writing