Alum Gregory Rosenthal ’15 Wins National Dissertation Prize

Gregory Rosenthal, ’15

Gregory Rosenthal, who earned his PhD in History from Stony Brook University in 2015, has been awarded the Rachel Carson Prize for Best Dissertation from the American Society for Environmental History (ASEH).

As noted by the Rachel Carson Prize committee, Rosenthal’s dissertation, “Hawaiians who Left Hawai’i: Work, Body, and Environment in the Pacific World, 1786-1876,” is a “very compelling narrative, which brings a new insight into the meanings of circulation and the making of economies and environments. It excels across the categories used in our evaluation: writing, research and documentation, analysis, and contribution to the field.”

Rosenthal is an assistant professor of public history at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia. His winning dissertation is a history of Native Hawaiian migrant labor in the 19th-century trans-Pacific economy. He has published in Environmental History, World History Bulletin, Perspectives on History, and Solutions, and is the recipient of awards from the American Council of Learned Societies, the American Historical Association, the Huntington Library, the Bancroft Library, and the Massachusetts Historical Society.

While at Stony Brook, Rosenthal worked under the direction of History Professor Chris Sellers, with other History Professors Jared Farmer and Iona Man-Cheong also serving as advisors. “I’m so proud of this recognition of Gregory’s work,” notes Sellers, “as it really does epitomize the best our field has to offer.”