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Faculty & Staff

Areas of Expertise

Professor Valencius writes and teaches about U.S. environmental history, the history of science and medicine, and the American Civil War. Her recent projects have focused on the history of earthquakes and seismology, the history of the environmental sciences, and journeys of trade and exploration in the American West.

Degrees

PhD (History of Science) Harvard University (1998)
BA (U.S. History) Stanford University (1989)

Professional Publications & Contributions

• “The Health of the Country:” How American Settlers Understood Themselves and Their Land (Basic Books, 2002) Awarded the 2003 George Perkins Marsh Prize and (as a PhD dissertation) the 1999 Allan Nevins Prize.
• The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes (manuscript in progress).
• "Accounts of the New Madrid Earthquakes: Personal Narratives and Seismology over the Last Two Centuries," for a special issue, “Science in Free Fall: Earthquakes and Expertise in Comparative Perspective,” edited by Deborah R. Coen, Science in Context 25.1 (2012): 17-48.
• Co-authored with Peter J. Kastor, "Sacagawea’s 'Cold': Pregnancy and the Written Record of the Lewis and Clark Expedition," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 82 (Summer 2008): 276-310.
• "Chekhov’s Sakhalin Island as Medical Geography." In Michael C. Finke and Julie de Sherbinin, eds., Chekhov the Immigrant: Translating a Cultural Icon (Slavica Press, 2007): 299-314.
• "An Entangled Bank." For “What Books Should Be More Widely Read in Environmental History?” a special section of Environmental History 10 (Oct 2005): 755–757.
• "Gender and the Economy of Health on the Santa Fe Trail." In Gregg Mitman, Michelle Murphy, and Chris Sellers, eds., Landscapes of Exposure: Knowledge and Illness in Modern Environments. Osiris 19 (2004): 79–92.
• "Mudslides Make Good History." Journal of the Early Republic 24 (Summer 2004): 252–9.
• "Americans and Their Environments at the Time of Lewis and Clark." In Alan Taylor, ed., Lewis & Clark: Journey to Another America (The OASIS Institute and Missouri Historical Society Press, 2003): 144-159.
• "The Geography of Health and the Making of the American West: Arkansas and Missouri, 1800-1860." In Nicolaas A. Rupke, ed., Medical Geography in Historical Perspective (Wellcome Institute Trust for the History of Medicine, 2001): 121-145.
• "Histories of Medical Geography." In Nicolaas A. Rupke, ed., Medical Geography in Historical Perspective (Wellcome Institute Trust for the History of Medicine, 2001): 3-30.
• "ISOTYPE and the Project of Universal Graphic Language." In Werner Sollors, ed., Multilingual America: Transnationalism, Ethnicity, and the Languages of American Literature (New York University Press, 1998): 380-388.
• “'A Sister’s Consolations:' Women, Health, and Community in Early Arkansas, 1810 - 1860." Arkansas Historical Quarterly 50 (Autumn 1991): 271-291. Winner of the 1990 Susie Pryor Essay Award in Arkansas Women’s History.

Additional Information

Spring 2013 Office Hours: MW (11 a.m.-12 noon) or by appointment

Conevery Bolton Valencius (CON-a-very va-LEN-chus): I grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas, graduated from Little Rock Central High, took classes at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, then trekked out West to earn a BA in history at Stanford University in 1989. I worked in San Francisco for several years in freelance writing and editing and in social service agencies, then decided I missed academic work and took a Greyhound bus cross country to attend Harvard. In 1998, I earned a PhD in the History of Science. Shortly after, I drove halfway back across the country to Washington University in St. Louis, to take a position as Assistant Professor in the departments of History, American Culture Studies, and Environmental Studies. While at Wash U I published The Health of the Country: How American Settlers Understood Themselves and Their Land (Basic Books, 2002), which won several prizes in writing and environmental history. Wash U was wonderful but I decided to take a hiatus to raise a few children and finish my next book. In 2004, I moved back East, where I worked as a free-range historian under grants from the NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) and the Dibner Institute for the History of Science. I taught several terms at Harvard University and with the NEH Teaching American History program. In 2011, with children and book manuscript both considerably larger, I very happily accepted a teaching position at UMass Boston, where I teach the history of the American Civil War and Reconstruction, U.S. environmental history, and the history of science, technology, and medicine.

Currently, I am finishing a book manuscript entitled The Lost History of the New Madrid Earthquakes, which asks how we know what we know – or what we think we know – about long-forgotten but large earthquakes that rocked the United States in 1811-12. Other current research includes a co-authored reassessment of science in early America, a forthcoming article on the history of seismology, an environmental history of the Blue Hills and Fore River Shipyard (both on the nearby South Shore), and a possible next book project, Seismic America.

Courses Offered

• HIST 266: American History Since 1877
• HIST 375: U.S. Civil War & Reconstruction
• This Land is Your Land: A Survey of U.S. Environmental History
• Sites of Calamity:  Environments of Disaster in U.S. History

Professor Valencius's CV