#

Sustaining Lake Superior How can communities sustain the health of Lake Superior in the face of climate change, mining, invasive species, and emerging chemicals of concern?

The challenges facing Lake Superior are many--yet local, regional, and international communities overcame enormous threats to the lake's ecosystems in the past century. My research asks: what can we learn from the extraordinary conservation recoveries of Lake Superior over the past century, as we face new interconnected challenges?

#

Toxic Bodies


Toxic Bodies explores why our environment has become saturated with synthetic chemicals that disrupt hormones, and asks what we can do to protect human and environmental health. Since World War II, these chemicals have penetrated into every aspect of our bodies and ecosystems, yet our government has largely failed to regulate them.

Toxic Bodies explores how scientific uncertainty has been manipulated to delay regulation, and shows how we can use history to make better policy.

#

Teaching My undergraduate teaching includes ENVS 113: Environmental Studies-The Humanistic Perspective, and ENVS 452: World Forest History

My graduate students all integrate historical perspectives into management and conservation questions. I only accept students who wish to train in some aspect of forest or environmental history; students who intend to design projects in restoration ecology or wildlife management should contact other potential advisors. .

Nancy Langston

Nancy Langston, environmental historian

I am an environmental historian who examines the shared histories of people and watersheds. My current research, Sustaining Lake Superior, explores the connections between landscape change and environmental health in northern watersheds. The primary focus will be on Lake Superior, with comparisons to other boreal watersheds.

During 2012-2013, I am the King Carl XVI Gustaf Professor of Environmental Science, in residence in the Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious studies at Umeå University. 

Beginning July 2013, I will be a professor at Michigan Technological University, part of the new Great Lakes Research Center and the Department of Social Sciences.

My most recent book, Toxic Bodies: Hormone Disruptors and the Legacy of DES,  was published by Yale University Press in 2010. Toxic Bodies examines the history of synthetic chemicals that disrupt hormones and the struggle for a precautionary principle to protect human and environmental health.