Biography

James C. Giesen is a historian specializing in the environmental and agricultural history of the United States South. His book Boll Weevil Blues: Cotton, Myth, and Power in the American South (University of Chicago Press, 2011) was awarded the Deep South Book Prize and the Francis B. Simkins Award. His journal articles have won awards from the Agricultural History Society and the Southern Historical Association. He is currently working on a cultural and environmental history of cotton in the South. Giesen has been named a Gulmon Eminent Scholar by the College of Arts and Sciences at MSU and a John Grisham Master Teacher, the university’s highest teaching honor. He also serves as the editor of the “Environmental History and the American South” book series at the University of Georgia Press. In 2020 he was appointed as a Fellow of the Agricultural History Society.