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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?

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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.

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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 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, examining the shared histories of people and watersheds. I am a professor in the Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology with a joint appointment in the Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies.  My current research, Sustaining Lake Superior, explores the connections between forests, fisheries, toxics, and climate change, focusing on Lake Superior. I am a new member of the Binational Forum, the citizen's group dedicated to protecting and restoring Lake Superior.

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