Shepard Krech III
Professor:
Anthropology and Environmental Studies
Phone: 863-7056
Phone 2: 863-3251
Shepard_Krech_III@Brown.EDU
I conduct research on the intersections of (1) anthropology and history, and (2) humans and the natural world; on material culture and the development of museums; currently, on time in indigenous cultures, as well as the relationships between birds and native people – all informed by ethnography in and a general geographical focus on native North America.
Interests
Born in New York City, educated at Yale (B.A.), Oxford (B.Litt.) and Harvard (Ph.D.), Shepard Krech III is professor of anthropology and environmental studies, and director of the Haffenreffer Museum of Anthropology, at Brown University. He has received major fellowships and grants from the National Humanities Center (twice), Woodrow Wilson International Center, NEH, Canadian Embassy, and Wenner-Gren Foundation. He has written more than 140 essays and reviews, has lectured widely, and is the author or editor of 10 books and monographs, including Praise the Bridge That Carries You Over; Indians, Animals and the Fur Trade; A Victorian Earl in the Arctic;The Subarctic Fur Trade; Collecting Native America, 1870-1960; The Ecological Indian; and Encyclopedia of World Environmental History (ed. with J. R. McNeill and C. Merchant).
The Ecological Indian: Myth and History (W. W. Norton, 1999) has been discussed on radio coast-to-coast and reviewed or featured in 10 languages in more than 100 publications, including The New Yorker, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, The New Republic, New York Review of Books, Times Literary Supplement [TLS], Chronicle of Higher Education, Times Higher Education Supplement, Der Spiegel, NRC Handelsblad, and others. Reviewers remark that the book "teaches us everything we have wanted to know about American Indians and the environment" (New York Times), is "ground-breaking and myth-busting" (Wisconsin Public Radio), and "is what good science should be" (Detroit News). The book is most recently (2006) the subject of a session at the annual meeting of the Modern Language Association and of the forthcoming Perspectives on the Ecological Indian (eds. M. Harkin and D. R. Lewis [U. Nebraska Press]) from a 2002 conference on The Ecological Indian in Laramie, Wyoming.
Critics refer to the three-volume Encyclopedia of World Environmental History (Routledge, 2004) as edited with "great insight and skill" (James G. Speth) and "the most ambitious effort yet to offer a comprehensive overview of the long-term history of human interactions with the natural world on a truly planetary scale" (William Cronon).
Shepard Krech III is a trustee of the National Humanities Center and past-president (2004-05) of the American Society for Ethnohistory. He is finishing Southern Indians and Birds (University of Georgia Press), a book on indigenous people and birds in the American South, and is at work on Native American conceptions of time and other topics. A lifelong birder and environmentalist, he lives in Providence, Rhode Island, Washington, D.C., and Sedgwick, Maine.
Degrees
Ph.D. Harvard U 1974
Awards
Major fellowships and academic service:
1981-82
National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship
1992-93
Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Fellowship
1993-94
National Humanities Center Fellowship
2000-01
John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellow in the Ecological Humanities, National Humanities Center
2001-07
Trustee, National Humanities Center
2003-04
President, American Society for Ethnohistory
2004
Pembroke Center Faculty Research Fellowship, Brown University
Affiliations
American Anthropological Association
Anthropology and the Environment Section [AAA]
Royal Anthropological Institute
American Society for Ethnohistory
American Society for Envionmental History
Council on Museum Anthropology
Funded Research
1971-72 Wenner-Gren Foundation
1971-72 National Institute for Mental Health
1971-72 Canadian Research Centre for Anthropology
1975,78,81 American Philosophical Society, Phillips Fund
1976-87 George Mason University: Fdn (1976), Res Grant Prog (1979, 80), Ctr Adv Stud (1980, 81, 82), Interntl Progs (1983, 84, 85, 86), Summer Stip (1984, 87), Sem Study Lv (1986)
1978, 81 Wye Institute, Inc.
1981-82 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship
1984-85 Canadian Embassy: Faculty Enrichment Grant (1984), Faculty/Inst Res Grant Prog (1985)
1986 Grotto Foundation
1986 National Endowment for the Humanities, Travel to Collections
1989- For Haffenreffer Museum (selected): Canadian Embassy (1989), RI Committee on the Humanities (1989, 1991), RI State Council on the Arts (1989); Institute of Museum [and Library] Services-GOS (1991, 1995-97, 1997-99); National Park Service (1995, 1997); NEH--Preservation and Access [$700,000] (1998; returned 2000)
1992- Brown University: Wriston Grant (1992), Solomon Grant (1999), Curr. Dev. (2001)
1992-93 Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Fellowship
1993-94 National Humanities Center Fellowship
2000-01 John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellow in the Ecological Humanities, National Humanities Center
2004 Pembroke Center Faculty Research Fellowship, Brown University