Dr. John Reiger Biography

John F. Reiger received a B.A. in sociology from Duke in 1965, an M.A. in history from the University of Florida in 1966, and a Ph.D. in history from Northwestern in 1970. At Northwestern, he was George M. Fredrickson's first doctoral student and a teaching assistant to Robert H. Wiebe.

His research interests are American and European environmental history, and the material culture of the pre-Columbian Southeast and Caribbean regions. He taught at the University of Miami (Florida) from 1970 to 1982, where he offered one of the first courses in environmental history to be taught in the United States.

In 1983 he gave up his professorship at Miami for a five-year term as Executive Director of the Connecticut Audubon Society, in order to do full-time environmental education and advocacy work. Among the many achievements of CAS in that period were leadership roles in stopping massive lead deposition in the Housatonic River and the creation of the first national wildlife refuge to be established in the Northeast in over a decade.

In 1988 he returned to the academic world when he joined the history faculty of Ohio University. He has published a number of book chapters and articles in history and anthropology journals, as well as three books. One of these, American Sportsmen and the Origins of Conservation (2001), is in its third, expanded edition, and has been in print almost continuously since its first publication in 1975.