Matthew Booker
Assistant Professor
Ph. D., Stanford University, 2005
Dr. Booker is on leave 2008-2009
274 Withers Hall
Phone: (919) 513-1431
Email: mmbooker@ncsu.edu
Personal Introduction
My work examines the intersection between human beings and the natural world in North America, with a particular focus on the coastal regions. My dissertation “Real Estate to Refuge: Transforming San Francisco Bay’s Tidal Wetlands, 1846-1972” (Stanford University, 2005) investigated ownership and ecology in a contested urban and natural space. I am presently working on the manuscript for publication. I am also researching the history of the oyster industry in the United States during the industrial and urban revolutions of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
I joined the N.C. State History Department in August 2004. I have offered courses in modern U.S. history, American environmental history, the history of American suburbs, and a graduate writing seminar.
A native of Northern California, I descend from Maine businesspeople (by way of Bellingham, Washington) on my mother's side and Virginia tobacco farmers (by way of Independence, Texas) on my father's side. I have been through a variety of educational institutions, including an inner-city nursery school, grades K-8 in a tiny rural school, a suburban Catholic high school, the University of California at Berkeley, Hindu College at the University of Delhi, India, the University of Oregon in Eugene, the University of Washington in Seattle, and Stanford University. Before, during and between schools, I have worked with varying success as a bus driver, wine server, carpenter, landscaper, tile-setter's assistant, title insurance examiner, field ecologist, and newspaper editor.
Teaching Interests
Environmental History, History of the American West, Twentieth Century United States, History of Suburbs
Publications
"Oyster Growers and Oyster Pirates in San Francisco Bay," Pacific Historical Review 75:1 (February 2006): 63-88. Winner of the 2007 W. Turrentine Jackson Prize, American Historical Association-Pacific Coast Branch.
