Dave Strickler is a PhD candidate who studies race, place-making, and power in American environmental and agricultural history during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. His dissertation considers these themes in the life and writings of W. E. B. Du Bois, clarifying how Du Bois’s analysis of the global “color line” was inseparable from his engagement with “Nature.” Dave’s research demonstrates the place of ecology in Du Bois’s examinations of slavery, post-emancipation agriculture, city planning, political economy, and racial violence, while also illuminating Du Bois’s reflections on natural beauty, natural disasters, human nature, belonging, and home-making. Building upon a growing field of interdisciplinary scholarship that bridges the methods of Black Geographies and Black Ecologies with environmental history, this study reframes Du Bois’s place within the key crises of his time and elucidates his bearing upon a longer, broader history of environmentalism and environmental justice.

With experience as a middle and high school history teacher and as an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA), Dave aims to confront the harmful legacies of educational and religious institutions while also cultivating their potential for organizing grassroots movements.

Research Interests: 19th and 20th Century Environmental History, Race, Labor, Empire