Summary
Cameron B. Strang is an early Americanist who focuses on the history of science, borderlands, Native America and the Atlantic world. His first book, Frontiers of Science: Imperialism and Natural Knowledge in the Gulf South Borderlands, 1500-1850 (winner of the Summerlee Book Prize and the Michael V.R. Thomason Book Award), was published in 2018. He has received support for his research from the Smithsonian Institution, the Library of Congress, the National Science Foundation, the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study and several other institutions. His articles include prize-winning pieces in The William and Mary Quarterly and The Journal of American History, and he is co-editor of a special edition of Early American Studies on the environment in early America. He also co-edited HOSLAC: The History of Science in Latin America and the Caribbean. He is currently working on a new history of American exploration.
Selected publications
- Frontiers of Science: Imperialism and Natural Knowledge in the Gulf South Borderlands, 1500-1850. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press for the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, 2018).
- “Pursuing Knowledge, Surviving Empire: Indigenous Explorers in the Removal Era,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 78, 2 (April 2021), 281-312.
- “Science in Early North America,” in The Routledge Handbook of Science and Empire, ed. Andrew Goss (London: Routledge, 2021), 253-263.
- “Measuring Souls: Psychometry, Female Instruments, and Subjective Science, 1840-1910,” History of Science 50, 1 (March 2020), 76-100.
- “Perpetual War and Natural Knowledge in the United States, 1775-1860,” Journal of the Early Republic 38, 3 (fall 2018), 387-413.
- “Planters and Powerbrokers: George J.F. Clarke, Interracial Love, and Allegiance in the Revolutionary circum-Caribbean,” in Entangled Empires: The Anglo-Iberian Atlantic, 1500-1830, ed. Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018).
- “Scientific Instructions and Native American Linguistics in the Imperial United States: The Department of War’s 1826 Vocabulary,” Journal of the Early Republic 37, 3 (fall 2017), 399-427.
- “The Environment and Early America,” special issue of Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 13, 2 (spring 2015), co-editor.
- “Violence, Ethnicity, and Human Remains during the Second Seminole War,” The Journal of American History 100, 4 (March 2014), 973-994.
- “Indian Storytelling, Scientific Knowledge, and Power in the Florida Borderlands,” The William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 70, 4 (Oct. 2013), 671-700.
- “The Mason-Dixon and Proclamation Lines: Land Surveying and Native Americans in Pennsylvania’s Borderlands,” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 136, 1 (2012), 5-23.
- “Michael Cresap and the Promulgation of Settler Land Claiming Methods in the Backcountry, 1765-1774,” The Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 118, 2 (2010), 106-135.
Courses taught
- U.S. History to 1877 (HIST 101)
- American Experiences and Constitutional Change (CH 203)
- Introduction to Native American History (HIST 260)
- Exploration, Adventure, and Science in America (HIST 313)
- The Civil War in American Culture; Capstone Course (HIST 406D/606D)
- American Intellectual/Cultural History I (HIST 410/610)
- U.S. Colonial Period to 1750 (HIST 411/611)
- Revolution and New Republic (HIST 412/612)
- U.S. History from 1815 to 1877 (HIST 413/613)
- U.S.-Amerindian Relations (HIST 418/618)
- Seminar in 19th Century U.S. History, Graduate Level (HIST 721)
- U.S. Historiography, Graduate Level (HIST 785)
Education
- Ph.D., History, University of Texas at Austin, 2013
- M.A., University of New Hampshire, 2008
- B.A., McGill University, 2004