Traci Brynne Voyles

Bio

Dr. Traci Brynne Voyles is Professor and Department Head of History at North Carolina State University. She is an environmental historian with a focus on United States history from the mid-nineteenth through the twentieth centuries. Voyles earned her Ph.D. from the University of California San Diego and completed a Mellon Environments & Societies postdoctoral fellowship in History at the University of California Davis. She has held faculty appointments at Loyola Marymount University and the University of Oklahoma.

Voyles is the author of The Settler Sea: California’s Salton Sea and the Consequences of Colonialism (Many Wests book series, University of Nebraska Press, 2021), winner of the 2022 Caughey Prize from the Western History Association for most distinguished work on the American West and a 2022 Choice Outstanding Academic Title. She is also the author of Wastelanding: Legacies of Uranium Mining in Navajo Country (University of Minnesota Press, 2015). She is the co-editor, with Mary E. Mendoza, of the collection Not Just Green, Not Just White: Race, Justice, and Environmental History, and has authored many peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and review essays. Voyles’s current book project, Natural Childbirth: An Environmental History, explores the history of natural childbirth in the US, examining ideological and material conditions that shape birth as they have changed over time.

Voyles’ work has been featured in a range of venues, including The Nation, The Atlantic, The American Prospect, Boston Review, ARTnews, KCET | PBS SoCal, and Edge Effects.

Education:
PhD, University of California San Diego, 2010
MA, University of California San Diego, 2005
BA, University of Colorado Boulder, 2003

Publications

BOOKS

THE SETTLER SEA: CALIFORNIA’S SALTON SEA AND THE CONSEQUENCES OF COLONIALISM. MANY WESTS. LINCOLN: UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS, 2021.

• Winner, 2022 Caughey Prize for Most Distinguished Work on the American West, Western History Association
• 2022 Choice Outstanding Academic Title

WASTELANDING: LEGACIES OF URANIUM MINING IN NAVAJO COUNTRY. MINNEAPOLIS: UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS, 2015. 291 PAGES.

• Winner, 2016 Southwest Book Award, Border Regional Libraries Association

NOT JUST GREEN, NOT JUST WHITE: RACE, JUSTICE, AND ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY. CO-EDITED WITH MARY E. MENDOZA. LINCOLN: UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS, 2025. 536 PAGES.

JOURNAL ARTICLES

• “Anatomic Bombs: The Sexual Life of Nuclearism, 1945-1957.” American Quarterly, September 2020.
• “Green Lovin’ Mamas Don’t Vax! The Pseudo-Environmentalism of Anti-Vaccination Discourse.” Studies in the Humanities, Special Issue on Disability Studies and Environmental Humanities, Spring 2020.
• “Environmentalism in the Interstices: California’s Salton Sea and the Borderlands of Nature and Culture.” Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities 3 (2016): 211-241.

ESSAYS, INVITED ESSAYS, AND CHAPTERS IN EDITED COLLECTIONS

• “Man Destroys Nature? Gender, History, and the Feminist Praxis of Situating Sustainabilities.” In Sustainability: Approaches to Environmental Justice and Social Power, edited by Julie Sze, 196–215. New York: New York University Press, 2018. 19 pages.
• “The Invalid Sea: Disability Studies and Environmental Justice History.” In Disability Studies and the Environmental Humanities: Toward an Eco-Crip Theory, edited by Sarah Jaquette Ray and Jay Sibara, 448–73. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2017. 25 pages.
• “Intimate Cartographies: Navajo Ecological Citizenship, Soil Conservation, and Livestock Reduction.” In American Studies, Ecocriticism, and Citizenship: Thinking and Acting in the Local and Global Commons, edited by Joni Adamson and Kimberly N. Ruffin, 50–63. Routledge Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Literature 15. New York: Routledge, 2013. 13 pages.
• “Pushed Into the Margins: Native Women and Environment in Settler California.” In Not Just Green, Not Just White: Race, Justice, and Environmental History. Traci Brynne Voyles and Mary E. Mendoza, Eds. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2025.

PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP

• “How the Salton Sea Came to Be Viewed as a ‘Lost Cause’.” KCET, June 3, 2022.
• “Water.” Interview with Kimberly Marshall. Staying with the Question – OUAH.FM. May 2022.
• “The Settler Sea.” Interview with Stephen Hausman. New Books Network. January 19, 2022.
• “Why Are Anti-Vaxxers Obsessed With the ‘Natural’?” Interview with Emery Jensen. Edge Effects. February 17, 2022.
• “How Do You Solve a Problem like the Salton Sea?” Inhabiting the Anthropocene. February 3, 2021.
• “Finney, ‘Black Faces, White Spaces’ & Zimring, ‘Clean and White,’ Roundtable Review.” H-Environment, Vol. 7, No. 1 2017.