In Fall 2022, I am a TA of HIST 17A. My office hours are Wednesdays between 12-2pm or by appointment on Zoom.

My dissertation “White Roots, Redwoods: Racializing German and US Conservation, 1920-1945” analyzes how environmental conservation and eugenics became entangled in Germany and the U.S. in the first half of the twentieth century through the use of Coast Redwoods (Sequoia sempervirens) and Giant Sequoia (Sequoiadendron gigantea), collectively known as Big Trees at this time. I argue that specific transnational conservation groups–the U.S. Save-the-Redwoods League and Sierra Club and the German Bund Heimatschutz (League for Homeland Protections) and Artamenen-Gesellschaft (Artaman League)–racialized conservation during 1920 to 1945 by intentionally white-washing nature and displaying it for both German and U.S. publics. Racialized conservation popularized eugenics, making the movement appear natural and scientifically-sound. To accomplish this study, I identify how German and U.S. conservation movements produced conservation and eugenic knowledge together, even collaborating during the second world war, and analyze how racialized conservation entwined the concepts of ecological and racial management in both countries. This promulgated white supremacy and white nationalism—a legacy which continues today. “White Roots, Redwoods” deepens and expands prior histories of museums and parks as spaces of political meaning-making and world-building in the early to mid-twentieth century, showing that these public-facing sites were focused on saving whiteness as much as saving.

"White Roots, Redwoods: Racializing German and US Conservation, 1920-1945"