Keith Pluymers
Assistant Professor
History
Office
Schroeder Hall - SCH 318
Office Hours
Monday and Wednesday, 1-3:30PM and by appointment.
Office Phone
Email
- About
- Education
- Awards & Honors
- Research
Biography
After completing my BA in History at the University of Delaware, I earned my PhD at the University of Southern California. Prior to joining ISU, I was a postdoctoral instructor at Caltech.
Current Courses
490.004Readings -- Field Of Study
478.001Seminar: Topics In Global History
101.004Western Civilization To 1500
101.005Western Civilization To 1500
200.003Doing History: An Introduction
332.001Environmental History
400.003Independent Study
490.003Readings -- Field Of Study
101.003Western Civilization To 1500
101.004Western Civilization To 1500
Teaching Interests & Areas
Early Modern Europe, Environmental History, British and Irish History, Atlantic World, Global History
Research Interests & Areas
My first book No Wood, No Kingdom: Political Ecology in the English Atlantic (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021) examines fears of wood scarcity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the ways in which they shaped English colonial expansion.
My next project examines the history of municipal water supplies, steam power, and climate in the English Atlantic World.
Ph D
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA
BA History
University of Delaware
Newark, DE
Environmental Stewardship Award
ISU Office of Sustainability
2022
Kenneth A. and Mary Ann Shaw Teaching Fellowship
ISU College of Arts and Sciences
2022
John Ben Snow Prize for Best Book on British Studies Pre-1800
North American Conference on British Studies
2022
Outstanding University Teaching Award (Teaching Initiative)
Illinois State University
2021
Teaching Initiative Award
College of Arts and Sciences
2020
Research Initiative Award (College of Arts and Sciences nominee)
Illinois State University
2019
Book Review
Keith Pluymers, "Review: An Empire Transformed: Remolding Bodies and Landscapes in the Restoration Atlantic by Kate Luce Mulry," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences (July 2023), 78 (3), pgs. 328-330.
Keith Pluymers, "Review: England's Islands in a Sea of Troubles by David Cressy," Journal of Modern History (December 2023), 95 (4), pgs. 953 - 954
Keith Pluymers, "Review: Fir and Empire: The Transformation of Forests in Early Modern China by Ian Miller," H-Environment Roundtable Reviews (27 March 2023), 11 (4), pgs. 11-14, https://networks.h-net.org/system/files/contributed-files/env-roundtable-13-4.pdf
“Ecologies of Freedom and the Challenge for Environmental History,” roundtable review of The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow in Commonplace: The Journal of Early American Life (October 2022), http://commonplace.online/article/as-deep-as-it-is-vast/
The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching in America by Jonathan Zimmerman [Book Review] in Teaching History: A Journal of Methods (Spring 2021), 46 (1), pgs. 34-35
Book, Authored
No Wood, No Kingdom: Political Ecology in the English Atlantic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021)
Book, Chapter
Pluymers, K. ‘Pirates’ and the Problems of Plantation in Seventeenth-Century Ireland. Peter Mancall and Carole Shammas (EDs). Governing the Sea in the Early Modern Era: Essays in Honor of Robert C. Ritchie (2015): 79-108.
Journal Article
“Composting in the herbarium” (co-authored with Melissa Oresky), Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture (Autumn 2020) issue 52, pgs. 156-172.
Pluymers, K. Atlantic Iron: Wood Scarcity and the Political Ecology of Early English Expansion. William and Mary Quarterly 73.3 (2016): 389-426.
Pluymers, K. Taming the Wilderness in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Ireland and Virginia. Environmental History 16.4 (2011): 610 - 632.
Presentations
Water, Steam, and Philadelphia’s Eighteenth-Century Anthropocene. Society for the History of the Early American Republic Second Book Workshop. Society for the History of the Early American Republic. (2023)
"A Grand Narrative for the Early Modern World: The Twentieth Anniversary of The Unending Frontier (Roundtable)," American Society for Environmental History, Boston, MA, 24 March 2023
"Climate Anxiety and Climate Ambition in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia," Annenberg Seminar, Department of History, University of Pennsylvania, 2 November 2023
"Imperial Visions and Colonial Omission in John Evelyn’s Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees and the Propagation of Timber in His Majesty’s Dominions (1662)," Usages de l’arbre dans l’Angleterre de la première modernité, Sorbonne, 3 April 2023
"Memories of Early Modern Deforestation and the Making of Modern Irish Environmentalism," Tudor and Stuart Ireland Conference, 19 August 2023.
“Pumps and Protosystems: Water Before the Waterworks in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia," Shelby Cullom Davis Seminar, Princeton University, 6 October 2023
Book Break: Keith Pluymers on No Wood, No Kingdom. Book Breaks. Gilder Lehrman Institute for American History. (2022)
No Wood, No Kingdom. Greenhouse Online Book Talks. The Greenhouse: Center for Environmental Humanities, University of Stavenger. (2022)
"“‘Extreme’ Climates, Disease, and Urban Infrastructure," North American Conference on British Studies, 12 November 2022, Chicago, IL.
“Green Imperialism Revisited,” Environments and Sustainability Symposium, Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, The Ohio State University, 18-19 November 2022
Grants & Contracts
Shelby Cullom Davis Center Fellowship. Princeton University, Department of History, Shelby Cullom Davis Center. Private. (2023)
William T. Golden Fellow (short-term). American Philosophical Society. Private. (2023)
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Short-Term Fellowship. Library Company of Philadelphia. Private. (2021)
New Faculty Initiative Grant. Illinois State University. Illinois State University. (2019)
International Seminar Series: Local and Global Environments in Conversation. International Studies Program. Illinois State University.