Paul Gregory Nauert

I research, write, & teach about environmental change & society in global history

A road between burned and unburned forest, Calaveras Big Trees State Park, California / Washoe and Central Sierra Miwok land, April 2021, photo by  Paul G. Nauert

Learn more about the history and present of Indigenous communities where you live through the Indigenous-led Native Digital Lands mapping project

More about who I am and what I do

I am an assistant professor of history at Eastern Oregon University.

My key research areas include: 

I also am involved in community-building and public intellectual work, linking my research to challenges in the wider world.

1936 map by Richard Edes Harrison showing social, ecological, & commodites data overlaid several maps of Japan, from the David Rumsey Center collection

First book project: Climate Crucible

Choices by American foreign policymakers in the 1940s shaped trajectories of climate change and the planetary politics of climate (in)justice. The consequences of their choices are still unfolding. 

By comparing American debates on industrialization and resource use in occupied Germany and Japan, I trace a new story of American global power and responsibility linking the acceleration of climate change and the origins of the Cold War. Learn more.

July 1969 image of a U.S. aircraft spraying chemical defoliant weapons over forest in the Mekong Delta, available from the U.S. National Archive & Records Administration

Teaching

My award-winning teaching has included topics in American, Asian, and global history as well as interdisciplinary study of war, environmental change, and the Anthropocene

Explore some of my teaching materials.

Image of a rainbow taken by Paul G. Nauert

Community-focused work

Community-building, service, mentorship, public history, and paying it forward are integral to my practice as a historian.

Learn more my community-focused work.

1946 map by Paul Sample showing commodities & commodity-production labor connected to each U.S. state, from the David Rumsey Center collection

Other work & current learning

Additional research, teaching, and writing interests of mine focus on intertwined patterns of labor, land use, commodities, race, gender, and class in the twentieth-century U.S. West and the wider Pacific world.

Learn more about what I've worked on and am currently learning.

Interested in my work or exploring a collaboration? 

I'd love to hear from you!