Neil M. Maher

TEACHING

Maher has taught more than one dozen distinct courses on the undergraduate and graduate levels that help students explore the environmental and political history of the United States. He has also guided  undergraduate students into master’s programs in history, worked with master’s students to obtain full funding for Ph.D. programs, and helped doctoral students gain tenure-track positions in university history and environmental studies departments.

For such efforts, he was designated a Master Teacher (2019) and received the Robert W. Van Houten Award for Teaching Excellence (2009). These are the two most prestigious teaching awards offered at NJIT.  Maher has also received the Excellence in Adivising Award (2009) given by the NJIT undergraduate Student Senate.

COURSES

HIST 490

Environmental Inequality & Justice in Postwar America

HIST 377

Cities in History

HIST 334

Environmental History of North America

HIST 654

The 1960s Era in American History

HIST 657

Food History and American Culture

HIST 637

Global Environmental History

STUDENTS

FORMER PH.D. STUDENTS

Mars Plater

“Escaping Gotham: Working People and the Struggle Over Urban Nature, 1800-1900” 

Assistant Professor, History, University of Connecticut-Stanford

Sara Grossman

“A Natural History of Data: Measuring American Weather from 1820 to Hurricane Sandy” 

Assistant Professor, Environmental Studies, Bryn Mawr College

Kara Schlichting

“Planning the Waterfront: Environmental Perceptions and Resource Access on the Metropolitan Coast of Long Island”

Assistant Professor, History, CUNY-Queens

Sevin Yildiz

“The Hackensack Meadowlands in the Shadow of Gotham: Scientific City-Building Across the 20th Century” 

Assistant Professor, Urban Planning and Policy, University of Illinois-Chicago

Richard Mizelle

“Backwater Blues: The Mississippi Flood Disaster, Race, and the Remaking of Regional Identity, 1900-1930”  

Associate Professor, History, University of Houston

Robert Lifset

“Storm King Mountain & The Birth of Modern American Environmentalism, 1962-1980”

Associate Professor, History, University of Oklahoma

David Kinkela

“Pesticide Exchange: DDT and the International Context of U.S. Environmentalism, 1943-1992”  

Professor, History, SUNY-Freedonia

FORMER M.A. STUDENTS

Robert Hoberman

“The End of These Woods: The New Jersey Pinelands Jetport and American Environmentalism”

Ph.D. History Program, University of California, Davis

Katherine Keirns

“The Brush is Mightier than the Sword: How Drawing Nature Saved West Point”

Ph.D. History Program, Princeton University

Steve Leone

“Rest in Peace?: How Immigration, Sanitation, and Religion Transformed Death in Mid-Nineteenth Century Manhattan”

Ph.D. History Program, University of Oregon

Raechel Lutz

“Who Cuts Your Grass?: How Ideas About Nature and Labor Have Grown New Jersey’s Lawns”

Ph.D. History Program, Rutgers University-New Brunswick

Brian Tyrrell

“’My Dirty Stream’: Pete Seeger, Folk Music, and the Proletarian Influence on Environmentalism”

Ph.D. History Program, University of California, Santa Barbara

Phillip Brophy

“From Trough to Treasure: Portaging Through History with a Wooden Dugout Canoe”

Social Studies Teacher, Hackensack (NJ) High School

Dennis Quinn

“Landmarks and Status: A Consideration of Space and Citizenship in Two Greenwich Village Preservation Movements”

Social Studies Teacher, Seton Hall Prep, West Orange (NJ)

A History Lesson from the CCC for the Green New Deal

Vanderbilt University

May 3, 2024 (1:15-2:45 pm EST)

Neil M. Maher

Federated Department of History
NJIT—Rutgers University, Newark