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Dissertation:
“Resistance, Compromise, and
Acceptance: State Conservation, Environmentalism, and
Anti-Environmental Politics in Parowan, Utah, 1851-2000”
Topham’s dissertation studies several key
episodes in conservation and environmental politics as
they played out in Parowan, Utah – a small Mormon
community located in southwestern Utah’s Iron County –
to illuminate the processes of resistance, acceptance,
and compromise over federal public lands policy. It
examines the arrival of state conservation in the form
of federal agencies, particularly the U.S. Forest
Service, the National Park Service, and the Grazing
Service; the rise of post-World War II environmentalism
and the wilderness movement; and the rise of
anti-environmentalism in the form of the Sagebrush
Rebellion and opposition to the creation of Wilderness
Areas. Responding to recent scholarship that often
depicts state conservation as a monolithic force that
steamrolled over locals and their interests, and
emphasizes its costs, Topham argues that the
relationship between locals and state conservation was
often much more complicated and tangled than this
scholarship suggests. His study shows that the coming of
state conservation often pitted federal land management
agencies against each other, and produced the same
dynamic among the locals. Some residents fought the
implementation of government land-use restrictions,
while others welcomed them openly, recognizing the value
of conservation measures in the preservation of their
livelihoods. Taking a longue durée approach, Topham
further seeks to account for how environmental politics
in the West has changed over time. His dissertation
illustrates that, though townspeople generally came to
accept materialist conservation measures, they balked at
the post-World War II romantic, preservationist form of
state conservation. Over time, a strong
anti-environmental movement formed in the region. Topham
also addresses the role of religion in environmental
practices and politics. Residents of southwestern Utah,
most of whom were members of the Mormon Church, dealt
not only with the federal government’s hierarchical
structure but also that of their church and its leaders,
who, in the decades following settlement in what became
Utah, were heavily involved in land and resource
management. By taking into account the multiple nodes of
power from which ecological policy emanated, his study
offers a more complex, layered analysis than have other
scholars.
Publications
Review of The Nature Study Movement:
The Forgotten Popularizer of America’s Conservation
Ethic, by Kevin C. Armitage, in Montana: The
Magazine of Western History 60 no. 3 (Autumn 2010):
79, 81.
“Rocky Mountain Rivalry: The Hudson’s Bay
Company’s Involvement in the American Fur Trade
Rendezvous System.” Rocky Mountain Fur Trade Journal
1 (2007): 1-24.
“The Rivals.” In Fred R. Gowans and
Brenda D. Francis, eds., The Mountain Men, 5-10.
Special issue of Museum of the Fur Trade Quarterly
42 no. 2 (Summer 2006).
“The Fair of the Wilderness,” in Brenda
D. Francis and Fred R. Gowans, eds., The Fur Trade
and Rendezvous of the Green River Valley
(Pinedale, WY: Museum of the Mountain Man, 2005): 36-53.
Review of Fool’s Gold: Lives, Loves,
and Misadventures in the Four Corners Country, by
Rob Schultheis, in Journal of the West 43 no. 1
(Winter 2004): 92.
“Corporate and International Rivalry in
the Rocky Mountains: The Hudson’s Bay Company’s
Involvement in the American Fur Trade Rendezvous
System.” The Thetean: A Student Journal for Scholarly
Historical Writing 32 (Spring 2003):1-18.
Presentations
“Corporate and International Rivalry in
the Rocky Mountains: The Hudson’s Bay Company’s
Involvement in the American Fur Trade Rendezvous
System.”
American History Association – Pacific
Coast Branch Annual Conference held in Honolulu, Hawaii,
July 2003
“Corporate and International Rivalry in
the Rocky Mountains: The Hudson’s Bay Company’s
Involvement in the American Fur Trade Rendezvous
System.”
Phi Alpha Theta Utah Regional Conference
held at Utah State University, Logan, Utah, March 2003
“Antidote for Difficult Circumstances:
Humor in the Southern States Mission, 1878-1899.” Phi
Alpha Theta Annual Statewide Meeting held at Weber State
University, Ogden, Utah, April 1997
Professional Experience
Instructor, Southern
Methodist University Department of History, summer 2010.
Course: U.S. History since
1877
Teaching Assistant, Southern
Methodist University Department of History, spring 2010.
Course: U.S. History from FDR
to Obama
Assistant to the University
Archivist, Special Collections, DeGolyer Library,
Southern Methodist University, summer 2007, 2008, 2009,
and 2010.
Researcher and Writer for
“Education in Zion,” a historical exhibition at Brigham
Young University, February 2005 – July 2006
Graduate Teaching and
Research Assistant, History Department, Brigham Young
University, 2000-2004. Courses: U.S. History to 1877,
U.S. History from 1877, Nineteenth-Century U.S.
West, Twentieth-Century U.S. West, Utah History, and
U.S. History, 1890-1945.
Teaching and Research
Assistant, History Department, Brigham Young University,
1996 1999. Courses: U.S. History to 1877, U.S. History
from 1877, Historian’s Craft, Utah History
Other Activities
Peer reviewer for The Rocky Mountain
Fur Trade Journal (published annually by the Museum
of the Mountain Man in Pinedale, Wyoming), 2007 to
present.
A research paper written for a graduate
course in environmental history – “Barge Canal versus
River: A Nascent Environmental Vision Challenges the
Decades-Long Efforts of Dallas Business and Civic
Leaders to Transform the Trinity River into a Navigable
Waterway” -- became the backbone of “Living with the
Trinity” a documentary directed by Rob Tranchin which
aired on KERA TV in Dallas, Texas on November 23, 2009.
(In the end credits, I am credited with having conducted
the “original research” for the documentary.)
Grants and Awards
Bill Clements Dissertation Fellow,
William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies,
Southern Methodist University (2011-2012).
Clements Center Advisory Panel Research
Travel Grant, William P. Clements Center for Southwest
Studies, Southern Methodist University (Spring-Summer
2010)
Brigham Young University Travel and
Conference Grant, summer 2003.
The graduate-level William J. Snow Award
for best paper written on Western or Mormon History at
Brigham Young University, 2003, for “Corporate and
International Rivalry in the Rocky Mountains: The
Hudson’s Bay Company’s Involvement in the American Fur
Trade Rendezvous System.”
The Best Graduate Student Paper Award at
the Phi Alpha Theta Regional Conference held at Utah
State University March 2003, for “Corporate and
International Rivalry in the Rocky Mountains: The
Hudson’s Bay Company’s Involvement in the American Fur
Trade Rendezvous System.”
Helen Carter Warr Award for Excellence,
Brigham Young University, 2001-2002
The William J. Snow Award for best paper
written on Western or Mormon History at Brigham Young
University, 1999, for “Antidote for Difficult
Circumstances: Humor in the Southern States Mission,
1878-1899.”
Listed on the 1998-1999 National Dean’s
List
Professional Affiliations
Phi Alpha Theta, the National History
Honor Society
Golden Key International Honor Society
Western History Association
Utah State Historical Society
Last
updated 10/11. |
