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Catherine McNeur

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Catherine McNeur
Catherine McNeur, historian
OccupationHistorian
Academic background
Alma materYale University
New York University
Doctoral advisorJohn Mack Faragher
Academic work
DisciplineEnvironmental history
InstitutionsPortland State University

Catherine McNeur is a professor of history at Portland State University.[1] An environmental historian, she has focused on the nineteenth-century United States, urban public spaces, and the history of science.[2]

Background and education

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McNeur, who grew up in Glen Head, NY and attended North Shore High School, majored in Urban Design and Architecture Studies at New York University with minors in Political Science and Metropolitan Studies, graduating with honors in 2003. She earned her Master of Arts (2006), Master of Philosophy (2008), and Doctor of Philosophy (2012) degrees in history from Yale University studying with John Mack Faragher, Joanne Freeman, and David W. Blight.[3] Her dissertation, "The Swinish Multitude and Fashionable Promenades" won Yale University's John Addison Porter Prize, the Urban History Association's Award for Best Dissertation, and the American Society for Environmental History's Rachel Carson Prize.[4][5][6]

Career and scholarship

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After a Bernard and Irene Schwartz Postdoctoral Fellowship at the New-York Historical Society and the New School, McNeur became an assistant professor at Portland State University in 2013, earning tenure in 2017.[7]

McNeur published her first book, Taming Manhattan: Environmental Battles in the Antebellum City (Harvard University Press, 2014), an environmental history of New York in the early nineteenth century that looked at the ways social unrest and urbanization were entangled in environmental issues from the unequal distribution of parks to pigs running freely on the streets.[8] The book was well received and won book prizes from the American Society for Environmental History, the New York Society Library, the Victorian Society of New York, and the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic.[9][10][11][12][13]

In 2023, McNeur published her second book, Mischievous Creatures: The Forgotten Sisters Who Transformed Early American Science (Basic Books, 2023) having uncovered the lives of the entomologist Margaretta Hare Morris and botanist Elizabeth Carrington Morris while researching a different project.[14] The book is not only a double biography of the sisters and their work, but also a rumination on why authors keep stumbling over hidden figures.[15][16][17][18] McNeur has taught courses at Portland State University on writing biographies of marginalized scientists for Wikipedia, partnering with WikiEDU.[19]

Awards

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Publications

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Books

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References

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  1. ^ "Catherine McNeur | Portland State University". www.pdx.edu. Retrieved 2024-02-05.
  2. ^ "Catherine McNeur". scholar.google.com. Retrieved 2024-02-05.
  3. ^ McNeur, Catherine Clare (2012). The 'Swinish Multitude' and Fashionable Promenades: Battles over Public Space in New York City, 1815–1865 (Thesis). ProQuest 1037839374.[page needed]
  4. ^ "Porter and Field Prize Winner History | Office of the Secretary and Vice President for University Life". secretary.yale.edu. Retrieved 2024-02-05.
  5. ^ "Urban History Association - Past Award Winners". www.urbanhistory.org. Retrieved 2024-02-05.
  6. ^ "American Society for Environmental History - Past Recipients". aseh.org. Retrieved 2024-02-05.
  7. ^ "Catherine McNeur | Portland State University". www.pdx.edu. Retrieved 2024-02-05.
  8. ^ McNeur, Catherine (2014-11-03). Taming Manhattan. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-72509-6.
  9. ^ Nazaryan, Alexander (December 4, 2014). "Streets of Gold? Sure Smelled Like Something Else". New York Times.
  10. ^ a b "The New York City Book Awards 2014 | New York Society Library". www.nysoclib.org. Retrieved 2024-02-05.
  11. ^ a b c "American Society for Environmental History - Past Recipients". aseh.org. Retrieved 2024-02-05.
  12. ^ a b "VSNY Book Award | Awards and Honors | LibraryThing". LibraryThing.com. Retrieved 2024-02-05.
  13. ^ a b "Past Prize Winners – SHEAR". Retrieved 2024-02-05.
  14. ^ McNeur, Catherine (2023-10-31). Mischievous Creatures: The Forgotten Sisters Who Transformed Early American Science. Basic Books. ISBN 978-1-5416-7418-9.
  15. ^ Irmscher, Christoph (November 13, 2023). "'Mischievous Creatures' Review: Sisters in the Field". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved February 4, 2024.
  16. ^ "Naturalists Unknown". The American Scholar. 2023-11-16. Retrieved 2024-02-05.
  17. ^ "Mischievous Creatures: The Forgotten Sisters Who Transformed Early American Science by Catherine McNeur". www.publishersweekly.com. Retrieved 2024-02-05.
  18. ^ MISCHIEVOUS CREATURES | Kirkus Reviews.
  19. ^ "History class tells stories of forgotten women scientists | Portland State University". www.pdx.edu. Retrieved 2024-02-05.
  20. ^ "Porter and Field Prize Winner History | Office of the Secretary and Vice President for University Life". secretary.yale.edu. Retrieved 2024-02-05.
  21. ^ "Urban History Association - Past Award Winners". www.urbanhistory.org. Retrieved 2024-02-05.
  22. ^ "Gita Chaudhuri Prize". Western Association of Women Historians. Retrieved May 20, 2024.
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