Nicole (Nicky) Rehnberg, MA

Biography

Nicky Rehnberg is an environmental public historian and doctoral candidate at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Between 2019 to 2023, she was an active member of the California State Parks’ program History and Relevancy, in which she researched, wrote, and created programing on California history for the public.

Before pursuing her PhD in history, she taught many literature and writing courses at several colleges and universities in southern California. Since then, she has taught the introduction to Environmental Studies, Gender and the Environment, Great Issues in the History of Public Policy, the introduction to the History of Latin America, Science and the Modern World, California History, and all US History survey courses.

Current Research Project

Her dissertation, “White Roots, Redwoods: Racializing German and US Conservation, 1920-1945” examines how Coast Redwoods and Giant Sequoias were used transnationally as an object of racial science and a tool of white nationalism and white supremacy in the early twentieth century. Conservationists conflated forest and racial management in Germany and the US, and her research shows the connections between conservation and eugenics, through forestry displays in natural history museums and public parks in both countries.

Publications

• “Energy Justice on California’s Central Coast: A Public Syllabus.” https://www.ejcasyllabus.org.
• “The Ethics of Reintroducing Large Carnivores: The Case of the California Grizzly.” Conservation and Society, 19.1 (2021): 80-90. Print.
• “In Search of Lost Things: Proust and the Importance of Material Culture.” American Papers, 33. (2014): 74-77. Print.
• “Oh Captain, Our Captain: Captain America as a Hitler-Punching, Commie-Smashing, American God.” The American Papers, 32. (2013): 85-91. Print.