Professor Honored For Best Dissertation in Environmental History

Lawrence Culver, assistant professor of history at Utah State University, has won the 2005 Rachel Carson Prize for the best dissertation in environmental history completed between Nov. 1, 2003, and Oct. 31, 2004. Culver’s dissertation is entitled “The Island, the Oasis, and the City: Santa Catalina, Palm Springs, Los Angeles, and Southern California’s Shaping of American Life and Leisure.”

 

Culver wants to publish his writings to bring his research to a broader audience.

 

“Publishing a book is an important part of my progress to tenure at Utah State University,” Culver said.

 

Culver’s discourse examines the changing nature of American leisure and recreation from the 1870s to the late 20th century. He first examined the promotion of southern California as a new sort of West, a frontier of leisure that began in the 1870s.

 

“My dissertation documents how southern California remade American attitudes about leisure, altered the national course of urban growth and architecture, and helped formulate the environmental attitudes of modern American,” said Culver.

 

Culver said he chose this subject for dissertation because he was interested in the history of tourism. In his master’s thesis, Culver examined the transformation of Jackson Hole, Wyo.

 

“Studying Los Angeles and southern California allowed me to explore my research interests in a large urban region,” he said.

 

Culver will accept his award at the American Society for Environmental History’s annual conference in Houston on March 16.