William J. Cronon

William J. Cronon, "is a historian of American environmental history and of the American west. In 1991, his book, Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West, was awarded the Chicago Tribune's Heartland Prize; in 1992 the Bancroft Prize; and in 1993, the George Perkins Marsh Prize as well as the Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Award. He co-edited Under an Open Sky: Rethinking America's Western Past, a collection of essays on the prospects of western and frontier history in American historiography, and edited Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, which examines the implication of different cultural ideas of nature for modern environmental problems. Currently he is working on a history of Portage, Wisconsin, which will explore how people's sense of place is shaped by the stories they tell about their homes, their lives, and the landscapes they inhabit. Professor Cronon is also completing a book entitled Saving Nature in Time: The Past and the Future of Environmentalism, on the evolving relationship between environmental history and environmentalism and what the two might learn from each other. In 1992, he became the Frederick Jackson Turner and Vilas Research Professor of History, Geography, & Environmental Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He was previously a member of the Yale History Department. He is past President of the American Society for Environmental History, serves on the Governing Council of The Wilderness Society and is general editor of the Weyerhaeuser Environmental Books Series. He received a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin, Madison; an M.A., M.Phil. and a Ph.D. from Yale, and a D.Phil. from Oxford University. He has been a Rhodes Scholar, Danforth Fellow, Guggenheim Fellow, and MacArthur Fellow."


 * Director, Trust for Public Land
 * Governing Council, Wilderness Society (US)
 * Advisory Committee, Environmental Leadership Program