Willa Hammitt Brown
Willa Hammitt Brown is a historian, speaker, and writer based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She holds PhD in American history from the University of Virginia and has taught history and analytical writing at the University of Virginia, onboard Semester at Sea, and at Harvard University where her teaching won multiple awards. Her writing has appeared on NPR, the CBC, Off Assignment, and TheAtlantic.com. Her first book, Gentlemen of the Woods: Manhood Myth and the American Lumberjack, is forthcoming from University of Minnesota Press in Fall, 2024.
Sample writing
“Problems of Place: Contingent Geographies” - Environmental History Now
"Lumbersexuality and Its Discontents" - Atlantic Online
"Dishonor Code: Rape, Reputation and Repercussion at UVA" - QuiteIrregular
"My Candidate, My Self: On Bernie Bros, Hilary, and the Violence of Politics."
Radio Appearances
"Dishonor Code" - HearSay from the Headlines, WHRV, November 25, 2014.
"Why Lumbersexuals are Coming Out of the Woodwork," Q, CBC, December 12, 2014
CV
EDUCATION______________________________________________________________________________________________________
PhD, History University of Virginia, 2017 Charlottesville, VA
Dissertation: "Gentlemen of the Woods: Manhood, Myth and the American Lumberjack: 1860-1920"
(Director: Elizabeth Varon)
Examination Fields: Nineteenth Century American Cultural History (Special Field), US History 1865- Present, US History 1500-1865, International Comparative Gender History (Minor Field).
Master of Arts, History University of Virginia, 2011 Charlottesville, VA
Thesis: "Settlers, Subjects and Citizens: meanings of Citizenship in the Northwest Territory"
(Director: Peter S. Onuf)
Bachelor of Arts, History Oxford University, 2008 Oxford, UK
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS______________________________________________________________________________________________
Gentlemen of the Woods: Manhood, Myth, and the American Lumberjack, University of Minnesota Press, 2024.
“Half Man, Half Wildcat: Itinerancy and Frontier Manhood, “ Environmental History, October 2023.
Review of Fictions of Western Domesticity by Amanda J. Zink, Western Historical Quarterly, June 2019.
“Contingent Geographies,” Environmental History Now, 4 February, 2019 <envhistnow.com>
''Lumbersexuality and its Discontents” The Atlantic, 10 December 2014, <theatlantic.com>
''Dishonor Code: Rape, Reputation and Repercussion at the University of Virginia," Quite Irregular, 23 November 2014, <quiteirregular.wordpress.com>
PUBLIC PRESENTATIONS AND INVITED TALKS_____________________________________________________________________________
Historical advisor to The Harvest, Skidmore College, October 2019
“Poverty, Pizza, and Palaces: Case Studies in Southern Italian Public History,” Boston By Foot, September 2019.
“The Lumbersexual,” Beards in History Lecture Series, Virginia Tech, November 2015.
“Rebels, Remingtons and Vishnu Tattoos: Race, History and the Middle Class Search for Authenticity,” Summer Tits Arts Workshop, Woodstock, VT, August 2015.
“From Him Unto Whom Much Has Been Given: a brief history of the use (and misuse) of privilege,” Semester at Sea Explorer’s Seminar, March 2015.
“Why 'Lumbersexuals' are coming out of the woodwork,"' Q, CBC Radio, 12 December 2014.
“Behind the Headlines,” Interview with HearSay, WHRV radio, 26 November 2014.
'''If the great battle is to be fought in the Valley of the Mississippi: Lyman Beecher, Theodore Weld, and the Fate of the West, 1830-1834." Early American Seminar, University of Virginia, 21 February 2012.
''The Cult of True Womanhood in the West, 1790-1850," University of Virginia, Fall 2011.
CONFERENCE ACTIVITY _______________________________________________________________________________________________
“’The Passing of the Pines’ and the last good jacks: nature and manhood in Midwestern memory,” paper accepted to Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, May 2020.
“Problems of Place: A Conversation of Representation, Engagement, and Community,” paper accepted to the American Society of Environmental Historians, March 2020.
“The True and Genuine Story of Paul Bunyan: Commercializing the Lumberjack Image, 1900-1920,” American Historical Association conference, January 2020.
“The Seasonal Round: the Anishinaabe and Itinerant Labor in the Northwoods,” Western History Association, Las Vegas, NV, October 2019.
“’Half man, half wildcat’: Itinerancy and the myth of frontier manhood,” American Society for Environmental History Conference, Riverside, CA, March 2018.
SERVICE TO THE PROFESSION & COMMUNITY _________________________________________________________________________
Off the Ladder Seminar for Contingent Faculty, Harvard University, Co-Founder
Northeast Regional Youth Service Center, Massachusetts Department of Corrections, Tutor
Boston by Foot, Docent
willa.hammitt.brown@gmail.com