@haydenlnelson
PhD, University of Kansas | Writing an Environmental History of the North Woods | Research Historian @ the Minnesota Historical Society | Adjunct @ the University of Central Missouri | WI➡️MT➡️KS➡️MN haydenlnelson.com
A green and gold book cover with the title Beer Ghosts: In Search of Lost Hops and the Women Who Grew Them, with a ghostly photo of hop pickers in the background.
Beer Ghosts has a cover! Pageproofs and index almost done, coming your way in October. press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/bo...
Uhhh, holy shit??? This is an incredible find!
No problem! I took a Readings in Global Borderlands course with Drew and it was one of the foci for my primary field, so I have dozens more if you’d like. Just let me know and I can email them to you. But these are the ones I found particularly influential.
Hogue, Métis and the Medicine Line (2015)
Reséndez, Changing National Identities at the Frontier (2004)
Jacoby, Strange Career of William Ellis (2017)
Schlereth, “Privileges of Locomotion,” JAH (2015)
Lee, “Enforcing the Borders,” JAH (2002)
Taylor, “The Divided Ground,” Journal of the Early Republic (2002)
Molina, “The Long Arc of Dispossession,” (2014)
Graybill, “Boundless Nature,” in Oxford Handbook of Env. Hist. (2014)
Zappia, “Indigenous Borderlands,” PHR (2012)
Gutiérrez and Young, “Transnationalizing Borderlands History,” WHQ (2010)
Kelly Lytle Hernández, “Borderlands and the Future History of the American West,” WHQ (2011)
Adelman and Aron, “From Borderlands to Borders,” AHR (1999)
Hämäläinen and Truett, “On Borderlands,” JAH (2011)
Michiel Baud and Willem van Schendel, “Toward a Comparative History of Borderlands” Journal of World History (1997)
Andrew C. Isenberg, The Age of the Borderlands (2025)
Thomas Richards Jr., Breakaway Americas (2020)
Isenberg and Richards Jr., “Alternative Wests” PHR (2017)
We did portfolio exams at KU, but for funsies, mine were in
1. US History to 1900 (emphases on borderlands, the environment, and the North American West)
2. US History since 1900
3. Indigenous History
The episode features guest experts Jim Rock (a Dakota archaeoastronomer), Dr. Cindy Blaha (a retired professor of physics and astronomy at Carleton College), and Ron Schmit (science educator and Observatory Coordinator at Jackson Middle School).
The newest Minnesota Unraveled episode just dropped! “All You See is Past: Histories of Star Knowledge” explores the diverse histories of knowing the night sky in Mni Sóta Makoce and the North Star State. I was really proud to have worked as lead researcher on this episode. Check it out!
The session will focus particularly on English, Spanish, and Chinese, but I imagine will speak broadly to the necessity of translation in general. Featuring John McNeill, Sarah Hines, Lisa Brady, Adrian Gustavo Zarrilli, and Xiaohui Liu.
For anyone attending @aseh.bsky.social this year, there will be a session on the necessity of translation in the field of environmental history on the late-afternoon timeslot on Thursday.
At its height, the company’s flagship sawmill at Virginia had occupied one square mile, with seven band saws running 24/7... via MNopedia
@minnpost.bsky.social featured my MNopedia article on the Virginia and Rainy Lake Company a couple of days ago. Pretty cool to see my work gaining traction and reaching new audiences!
www.minnpost.com/mnopedia/202...
A newspaper clipping titled “Santa Claus a State Menace” on top of other forestry-related newspaper clippings.
What am I working on today? A snapshot clue:
I had a “Writing Women’s Lives” course with Anya during my MA at Montana. She’s wonderful!
Today’s Women’s History Month interview: Anya Jabour on Progressive Era reformers, “researching around” your subject, and why librarians deserve capes.
Also: a question for me about my chaotic TBR habits.
Read here: https://tinyurl.com/3wrf4jvt
More tomorrow. 🗃️
I’ve been assigning my students “History in the Present” readings to cap off their weekly primary source readings. There is unfortunately a lot of usable material on the WH website due to A250. It’s all batshit, but allows students to see how history is a weapon and informs our present and future.
As a historian of the American West, I winced to hear Trump blatantly ignored all our scholarship in his SOTU, prattling on about an "unforgiving wilderness" and "empty" landscapes-- without the slightest acknowledgment of the Indigenous and Mexican presence on these same lands.
A black border collie gently resting her head on a crocheted decorative orange pumpkin.
“If not pillow, why pillow-shaped?”
I’m proud to share that I’ve won this year’s Public History Grant from the Agricultural History Society! I plan to use this support to spend a week in Chicago this summer at the NARA branch and the Chicago History Museum. Thankful for the generous support from the AHS and their belief in my work!
An old piece of wood used as a coffee counter. A small golden sign affixed to the front reads: “This wood is 300-400 year old white pine reclaimed from the Globe Grain Elevators built in Superior, WI in 1887.”
Pretty cool find at my hotel in Duluth.
Some places up north got anywhere between 1-3 feet of snow in 24 hours lol
Would it really be a wintertime research trip up to northern Minnesota if you don’t have to drive through a blizzard to get there?
Falcons/Patriots 28-3 and Yankees 3-0 immediately came to my mind, but to your point this is an individual collapse and those were team sports. Tyson-Douglas? Rory’s 2024 U.S. Open collapse?
I was going to ask: how does this rank? I’m not sure of the odds, but he seemed the HEAVY favorite from the outset.
We’re getting into the Boston Massacre this week and students are independently making connections like “Wait, a minute, this sounds really familiar…” (!!!)
Not going to make it, but I encourage all viewers to take a look at the wonder University of Idaho Library Digital collections on Forests (including logging history and the Big Burn) #envhist They are tremendous teaching/research resources
www.lib.uidaho.edu/digital/home...
No state can take Wisconsin’s crown in beer, cheese, or sausages.
A gold can of Castle Cream Ale by Castle Danger Brewery (out of Two Harbors, Minnesota).
As a Wisconsinite it pains me to say this, but Minnesota has some good beers, too.