Michael J. Rawson

Historian

• Born: 1965
• Place of Birth: Stoneham, Massachusetts

Contribution: Michael J. Rawson is an award-winning historian, educator, and author best known for his study of American cultural, urban, and environmental history.

Background

Michael J. Rawson was born in 1965 in Stoneham, Massachusetts. He completed his undergraduate degree in European history in 1987 at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. He continued his postgraduate education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he earned his master’s degree in American history in December 1999. Under his adviser, historian William Cronon, Rawson completed his dissertation, “Nature and the City: Boston and the Construction of the American Metropolis, 1820–1920,” and received his PhD in American history with a minor in environmental studies in May 2005.

While pursuing his master’s and PhD degrees, Rawson served as a teaching assistant at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He taught a variety of US history courses, concentrating on the nineteenth century and environmental history. He was also a lecturer and instructor for the university during this time.

Throughout his early career, Rawson found time to serve on various committees and panels tied to the University of Wisconsin–Madison. In 2000 he served as a member of the US Diplomatic History Search Committee. From 2001 to 2003, he served as a member of the Harassment and Discrimination Committee. In 2003 he was a panelist at the Teaching Assistant Training Workshop. He has also acted as a preservation consultant for the planning department of Lansing, Michigan.

Career

Shortly after receiving his PhD in 2005, Rawson was awarded a humanities fellowship at Stanford University in Stanford, California. There, he taught courses on the environmental history of urban America. Also in 2005, Rawson received the Michael Robinson Award for historical analysis from the Public Works Historical Society. In 2007 Rawson joined the faculty of Brooklyn College, a senior college of the City University of New York (CUNY), as an associate professor of history.

In 2010, Rawson’s book Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston was published by the Harvard University Press. In the book, Rawson examines the environmental history of Boston, Massachusetts, and how it affected the city’s development. Rawson explores how Bostonians of different classes and ethnic groups implemented their opposing ideas of urban development during the construction of Boston in the early nineteenth century. The history of the city and its process of urbanization are also used to address the environmental relationships that define the majority of urban areas in the United States.

Eden on the Charles was critically acclaimed and won Rawson several scholarly awards. He won the 2011 Abel Wolman Award, which is presented by the Public Works Historical Society to the author of the book judged to have made the most significant contribution to the field of public works. The book was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for History in 2011 as well as for the 2011 Julia Ward Howe Book Award, which is presented by the Boston Authors Club.

Prior to Eden on the Charles, Rawson had written some small-run publications, including Imprints of the Past: The Brooks Estate in Medford, Massachusetts (1997) for the Medford-Brooks Estate Land Trust, which details the history of the Brooks Estate. Also in 1997, Rawson’s Preservation Resources in Greater Lansing, Michigan was published by the Lansing Historic District Commission.

Following the success of Eden on the Charles, Rawson received support for his research through the Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for the Humanities Fellowship in 2014, the Brooklyn College School of the Humanities and Social Sciences Grant in 2015, and a handful of PSC-CUNY Research Awards between 2012 and 2020. In 2016 Rawson won the Brooklyn College Award for Outstanding Director of Graduate Studies, and in 2019 he received the Book Completion Award from the CUNY Office of Research for his next book project, The Nature of Tomorrow: A History of the Environmental Future, which was published in 2021.

Rawson has also published essays in several scholarly journals and collections. These include the academic journals Environmental History and Historic Madison: A Journal of the Four Lake Region and the essay collections The Encyclopedia of the Great Depression and the New Deal (2001), Remaking Boston: An Environmental History of the City and Its Surroundings (2009), and A Landscape History of New England (2011), among others.

Rawson has delivered numerous presentations at a variety of conferences and seminars, including the Massachusetts Historical Society, the Urban History Association, and the American Society for Environmental History.

Impact

Rawson’s award-winning publications and research have contributed greatly to the emerging field of environmental history, which examines the reciprocal relationship between a society’s culture and the local environment over time. His numerous appointments have helped establish him as a leading scholar on environmental history, particularly as it relates to the urban environment. He serves as a member of the Urban History Association and the American Historical Association.

Bibliography

“Michael J. Rawson." Brooklyn College, 2024, www.brooklyn.edu/faculty-staff/michael-j-rawson/. Accessed 23 Sept. 2024.

“Michael Rawson Shows How Our Dreams of the Future Have Contributed to Our Present Environmental Crisis." CUNY Graduate Center, 10 Feb. 2022, www.gc.cuny.edu/news/michael-rawson-shows-how-our-dreams-future-have-contributed-our-present-environmental-crisis. Accessed 23 Sept. 2024.

Rawson, Michael J. “The Nature of Water: Reform and the Antebellum Crusade for Municipal Water in Boston.” Environmental History 9 (2004): 411–35. Print.