Adam Sowards
College of Letters, Arts & Social Sciences
Department of History
Associate Professor
Director, Institute for Pacific Northwest Studies
Home Town:
Greater Seattle Area
With UI Since 2003
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Ph.D., History, 2001, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
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M.A., History, 1997, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ
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B.A., (with honors), History, 1995, University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA
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North American Environmental History
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History of the North American West
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History of Exploration
Adam M. Sowards is an environmental historian who focuses on North America, especially the West and is adjunct faculty with Environmental Science, Water Resources and American Studies. A prize-winning historian, he has primarily focused on the American conservation movement and forest history. Currently, Sowards is interested in how environment and culture affect scientific inquiry and is studying Arctic exploration to examine this dynamic. Sowards has been at the University of Idaho since 2003 and has been active in interdisciplinary teaching, research, and service. He has worked with dozens of graduate students in many academic programs, besides the hundreds of undergraduates who have passed through his classroom.
Books
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United States West Coast: An Environmental History. Nature and Human Societies Series, ed. Mark Stoll (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2007). Named 2008 Choice Outstanding Academic Title
- The Environmental Justice: William O. Douglas and American Conservation. (Corvallis: Oregon State University Press, 2009). Named 2010 Association of American University Presses Books for Understanding (US Supreme Court)
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Idaho’s Place: Rethinking the Gem State’s Past (current editing project, expected completion 2010).
Selected Articles
- “Modern Ahabs in Texas: William O. Douglas and Lone Star Conservation.” Journal of the West. 44 (Fall 2005).
- “William O. Douglas’s Wilderness Politics: Public Protest and Committees of Correspondence in the Pacific Northwest.” Western Historical Quarterly 37 (Spring 2006).
- “From Virgin Forest to Modern Farm: Picturing Ecological Change in Northern Idaho’s Cutover Land.” Idaho Yesterdays 50 (Fall 2009).
- We’re All Kinda Crazy’: Smokejumpers and the Western Environment.” Oral History Forum d’histoire orale. Special Issue: Talking Green: Oral History and the Environment. [forthcoming]
- With Paul Hirt. “The Past and Future of the Columbia River.” In Transboundary Governance in the Face of Uncertainty: The Columbia River Treaty, 2014. [forthcoming in edited book]
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Waters of the West work in local communities.
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Sponsored lecture series through the Institute for Pacific Northwest History.
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American Society for Environmental History, serving on several professional committees.
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Advisory council for the Sustainable Future History Project Book Series with MIT Press.
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Outstanding Academic Title, 2008, for United States West Coast: An Environmental History, from Choice.
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Award for Faculty Excellence, 2008, University of Idaho Alumni Association.
- 2009-10 Outstanding Faculty Member, Environmental Science Program
