Jennifer Thomson

Educational Background

• Ph.D., Harvard University, 2013
• BA, University of California, Berkeley, 2002

Teaching Specialties

• Professor Thomson specializes in the post-1945 history of the United States, with particular concentrations in leftist politics, health and the environment, and structural inequality.

Research interests

• Environmental history; post-1945 American politics; health activism.

Podcast & Links

Poisoned Ground documentary

The toxic tale of the Love Canal fail

Interview at the New Books Network

University of Washington Earth Day 2020 Lecture

Selected Publications

Books

The Wild and the Toxic: Health and American Environmental Politics, University of North Carolina Press in May 2019.

Peer Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters

“Bring Money”: The Environmental Protection Agency, Sewer Infrastructure, and the Racialized Geography of the United States,” Journal of American History (2024): 71-90.
https://academic.oup.com/jah/article-abstract/111/1/71/7695574?redirectedFrom=PDF

“Environmental Health Against the State,” in Companion to the Politics of American Health, eds. Martin Halliwell and Sophie Jones (Edinburgh University Press, 2022).

“Civil Rights Enforcement and Fair Housing at the Environmental Protection Agency,” Environmental Justice, 2021.

“FORUM: Discovering the Environment. The Fallout from Residential Segregation,” Modern American History 1, 3 (Fall 2018): 1-4.

"Surviving the 1970s: The Case of Friends of the Earth," Environmental History 22, 2 (2017): 235-256.

“Toxic Residents: Health and Citizenship at Love Canal,” Journal of Social History 49, 5 (2016): 204-223.

"A History of Climate Justice," Solutions Journal Volume 5, Issue 2 (March-April 2014): 89-92.

"Health and Environmental Politics in the United States: A Historical Perspective". In Maya K. Gislason, (Ed.) Ecological Health: Society, Ecology and Health (United Kingdom: Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 2013): 127-146.