Participant Info
- First Name
- Willa
- Last Name
- Brown
- Country
- United States
- State
- MA Massachusetts
- Willabrown@fas.harvard.edu
- Affiliation
- Harvard University
- Website URL
- www.willahammittbrown.com
- Keywords
- gender, masculinity, environment, forest, western, American West, lumberjacks, myth, memory
- Availability
- Media Contact
- Additional Contact Information
- PhD
- PhD
Personal Info
- Photo
- About Me
I focus Gilded Age and Progressive Era cultural, gender, and environmental history. My current research focuses on the lumberjacks of the Northwoods of of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan at the close of the nineteenth century, and of the powerful mythology that grew up in their wake. My overarching interests are in the history of American masculinity, and especially of the relationship between gender and the environment in the American West. My next project focuses on American ideas of “authentic” wilderness, examining how race, gender, class, and geography affect that relationship.
- Recent Publications
Review of Daughters of Israel, Daughters of the South by Jennifer A Stollman, American Jewish History, January, 2014
”Lumbersexuality and its Discontents” The Atlantic, 10 December 2014,
”Dishonor Code: Rape, Reputation and Repercussion at the University of Virginia,” Quite Irregular, 23 November 2014,
PROJECTS IN PROGRESS
Gentlemen of the Woods: Manhood, Myth and the American Lumberjack (Book manuscript in progress)
“Thirty Miles to Town: Itinerancy and the culture of resistance among Northwoods lumberjacks, 1880-1900” (article in progress, submitting Fall 2018)
“Half Man, Half Wildcat: Itinerancy and Frontier Manhood” (article in progress for Environmental History forum on forest history, submitting Summer 2018)
- Media Coverage
- ''Introducing the Lumbersexual” WVTF Radio IQ, December 2014; “Why 'Lumbersexuals' are coming out of the woodwork,"' interview with Q, CBC Radio, 12 December 2014; “Behind the Headlines,” Interview with HearSay, WHRV radio, 26 November 2014
- Social Media
- hammitt
- Country Focus
- United States
- Expertise by Geography
- United States
- Expertise by Chronology
- 19th century, 20th century
- Expertise by Topic
- Environment, Gender, Local & Regional, Sexuality
