Benjamin Heber Johnson

Curriculum Vita

Associate Professor of History

Associate Director, Clements Center for Southwest Studies

Southern Methodist University

Clements Department of History

P.O. Box 750176

Dallas, TX 75275-0176

214/768-2709; fax 214/768-2404

bjohnson@smu.edu

Education

Ph.D., Yale University, 2000

M.A., Yale University, 1996

B.A., summa cum laude, Carleton College, 1994

Positions Held

Southern Methodist University, Assistant Professor, 2002-2007

University of Texas at San Antonio, Assistant Professor, 2001-2002

California Institute of Technology, Instructor in History, 2000-2001

Books

“Escaping the Dark, Gray City:” How Conservation Re-made City, Suburb, and Countryside in the Progressive Era (under contract, Yale University Press)

Bordertown:  The Odyssey of an American Place.  With photographs by Jeffrey Gusky. (Yale University Press, 2008)

Revolution in Texas:  How a Forgotten Rebellion and Its Bloody Suppression Turned Mexicans into Americans.  (Yale University Press, 2003)

Edited Volumes

Major Problems in North American Borderlands History (Houghton Mifflin, under contract, 2011 publication expected)

Bridging National Borders in North America.  Co-edited with Andrew Graybill.  (Duke University Press, forthcoming 2010)

Making of the American West:  People and Perspectives (ABC-CLIO, 2007)

Journal Articles and Review Essays

“Problems and Prospects in North American Borderlands History,” History Compass 4 (2006):  1-7

“Engendering Nation and Race in the Borderlands,” Latin American Research Review 37:1 (2002): 259-271

“The Dark Side of American Environmentalism.”  Reviews in American History (June 2001): 215-221

“Subsistence, Class, and Conservation at the Birth of Superior National Forest.”  Environmental History 4:1 (January 1999).  Republished in Louis Warren, ed., American Environmental History (Blackwell, 2003).

Chapters in Anthologies and Encyclopedias

Co-author (with Andrew Graybill), “Borders and Their Historians in North America,” in Graybill and Johnson, eds., Bridging National Borders in North America (Duke University Press, forthcoming, 2010)

“Conservation Reconsidered,” in William Deverell and David Igler, eds., Blackwell Companion to California History (Blackwell, 2008)

“Wilderness Parks and Their Discontents,” in Michael Lewis, ed., American Wilderness (Oxford University Press, 2007)

“Environment and Ecology,” in Mark Busby, ed., The Southwest: The Greenwood Encyclopedia of American Regional Cultures (Greenwood, 2004): 81-109

“The Plan de San Diego and the Making of the Modern Texas-Mexico Borderlands,” in Samuel Truett and Elliott Young, eds., Continental Crossroads: Frontiers, Borders and Transnational History in the US-Mexico Borderlands, 1821-1940.  (Duke University Press, 2004)

“The Drain-o of Higher Education: Casual Labor and University Teaching,” in Benjamin Johnson, Kevin Mattson, and Patrick Kavanaugh, eds., Steal This University: The Labor Movement and the Corporatization of Higher Education.  (Routledge, 2003)

 “Red Populism?  T.A. Bland, Agrarian Radicalism, and the Debate over the Dawes Act.”  In The Countryside in the Age of the Modern State:  Essays in Twentieth-Century Rural Political History, eds. Catherine McNicol Stock and Robert D. Johnston (Cornell University Press, 2001)

Co-author (with Thomas McCarthy), “Graduate Student Organizing at Yale and the Future of the Labor Movement in Higher Education.”  Social Policy 30:4 (Summer 2000)

Co-author (with Thomas McCarthy), “Teaching Assistants and the Casualization of Academic Labor.”  Thought and Action (May 2000)

Awards and Fellowships

Ray and Pat Browne Award for Best Reference work for Bordertown, Popular Culture Association/American Culture Association, 2008

Sam Taylor Fellowship, United Methodist Board of Higher Education and Ministry, 2008

Summer Fellowship, National Endowment for the Humanities, March 2007

Canadian Studies Conference Grant Program, Government of Canada, awarded to support “Bridging National Borders in North America,” March 2007

Finalist, Hiett Prize in the Humanities, the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture, March 2006

University Research Council, SMU, Faculty Travel Award, April 2006

University Research Council, SMU, Faculty Research Award, January 2006

Honorable Mention for Revolution in Texas, Caroline Bancroft Prize for Western History, Denver Public Library, 2004

Haynes Research Fellowship, Huntington Library, May-August 2003

SSRC Area Studies Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies, July-December 2002.

National Endowment for the Humanities, Summer Institute Fellowship, June 2002.

Ralph W. Hidy Award, given by the Forest History Society for the best article in the journal Environmental History, March 2001

[Updated September 2009]