Chris Sellers

I'm an American environmental and health historian who also trained as a physician. My work as an historian has concentrated on less obviously natural places--factories and firms, cities and suburbs, also our own bodies--whose nature has historically been harder to see. Over the last few years, I've taken up questions of how environmental politics fits into questions of political economy, about inequality and democracy. Among my books are RACE AND THE GREENING OF ATLANTA; INEQUALITY, DEMOCRACY, AND ENVIRONMENTAL POLITICS IN AN ASCENDANT METROPOLIS; CRABGRASS CRUCIBLE: SUBURBAN NATURE AND THE RISE OF ENVIRONMENTALISM IN TWENTIETH-CENTURY AMERICA; DANGEROUS TRADE: HISTORIES OF INDUSTRIAL HAZARD ACROSS A GLOBALIZING WORK (co-edited with Joseph Melling); and HAZARDS OF THE JOB: FROM INDUSTRIAL DISEASE TO ENVIRONMENTAL HEALTH SCIENCE.

The first part of my career I studied the histories of industrialization and of institutional bulwarks such as medicine and the corporation; more recently I've also taken up questions about sub/urbanization, globalization, and inequality. All the while, I've also sought to illuminate experiences, movements, expertise and politics that were or became more identifiably "environmental" in character. While initially I concentrated on the United States, more of my work over the couple of decades and a half has sought to situate American experiences alongside others beyond our borders, most notably in Mexico, while also developing a transnational perspective especially on the the American South. Among my recent extracurricular activities, I've helped found the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative, and am currently co-moderator of its Policy Monitoring and Interviewing Working Group.