Jay Turner
William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Environmental Studies
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Researcher on the recent history of U.S. environmental politics and policy, including climate change, the clean energy transition, and public lands management.
James (Jay) Morton Turner is a historian working on topics including climate change, the clean energy transition, and environmental politics. His public-facing work has appeared in venues including Science, The New York Times, Natural History, Lapham's Quarterly, Literary Hub, and The Conversation. He is currently vice president of the American Society for Environmental History.
Turner's most recent book, Charged: A History of Batteries and Lessons for a Clean Energy Future, unpacks the history of batteries to explore why solving the battery problem is crucial to a clean energy transition. In 2023, Charged won the Glasscock Book Award from Texas A&M University and was a finalist for the Cundill History Prize administered by McGill University.
Turner's previous books include The Republican Reversal: Conservatives and the Environment from Nixon to Trump (2018), co-authored with Andrew C. Isenberg, and The Promise of Wilderness: American Environmental Politics since 1964 (2010). These books explore the landscape of U.S. environmental politics, considering changes in environmental advocacy, conservative opposition, and the role of science in policy making. In 2013, The Promise of Wilderness won the Weyerhaeuser Book Award from the Forest History Society.
Turner teaches courses on topics including climate change, energy policy, environmental politics, and environmental history. Turner received a B.S. from Washington and Lee University in 1995, an A.M. in American Civilization from Brown University in 1996, a Ph.D. in History (History of Science) from Princeton University in 2004, and a certificate in Science, Technology, and Environmental Policy from the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs. His research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Education
- B.S., Washington and Lee University
- M.A., Brown University
- Ph.D., Princeton University
Current and upcoming courses
Tax carbon? Label genetically modified crops? Ban endocrine disruptors? In this course, an interdisciplinary capstone experience for the ES major, we will engage with such questions and related environmental sustainability issues as public writers. Students will choose one environmental issue, which will be the focus of their environmental “beat” during the semester. They will draw on an interdisciplinary toolset from environmental studies to analyze and communicate the scientific, economic, political, and ethical dimensions of pressing policy issues. Students will conduct independent research to produce weekly articles, such as op-eds, blog posts, press releases, book reviews, policy memos, and interviews with environmental professionals. Class sessions will be organized as writing workshops focused on the interdisciplinary analysis and content of student work.
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This course offers an interdisciplinary introduction to Environmental Studies, with a focus on climate change. Major concepts that will be examined include: the state of scientific research, the role of science, politics, and economics in environmental decision-making, and the importance of history, ethics, and justice in approaching climate change. The central aim of the course is to help students develop the interdisciplinary research skills necessary to pose questions, investigate problems, and develop strategies that will help us address our relationship to the environment.
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The humanities, the social sciences, and the natural sciences are indispensable to understanding the climate crisis. Drawing on perspectives from across the liberal arts, the course instructors will plumb the depths of the climate crisis and imagine the possible ways of responding to it. What can the role of climate in human history reveal about our uncertain future? How do social constructions, including race and gender, shape our understanding of this problem? How have diverse cultures of the world related to nature and climate and how can our own relationships to nature and climate inform our responses? Can the arts help us to reconceive the crisis? How can the sciences help us assess and adapt to our future climate? Can we leverage psychological processes to change individual attitudes toward the environment? By examining such questions, we aim for deeper knowledge, both of the climate crisis and of the power of liberal arts education. (ES 125H and PEAC 125H are cross-listed courses.)
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This course examines the relationship between nature and society in American history. The course will consider topics such as the decimation of the bison, the rise of Chicago, the history of natural disasters, and the environmental consequences of war. There are three goals for this course: First, we will examine how humans have interacted with nature over time and how nature, in turn, has shaped human society. Second, we will examine how attitudes toward nature have differed among peoples, places, and times, and we will consider how the meanings people give to nature inform their cultural and political activities. Third, we will study how these historical forces have combined to shape the American landscape and the human and natural communities to which it is home. While this course focuses on the past, an important goal is to understand the ways in which history shapes how we understand and value the environment as we do today. (ES 299 and HIST 299 are cross-listed courses.)