Joseph Whitson

Joseph Whitson received his PhD in American Studies from the University of Minnesota. He works at the intersection of environmental humanities, Indigenous studies, and new media, interrogating the role of settler-colonialism in the natural world. His current project, Marketing the Wilderness: The Digital Battle over Public Land in the United States, is a digitally integrated book manuscript that unpacks the colonial foundations of the outdoor industry and the ways in which Indigenous activists are using social media to challenge them. As a public historian, Joe runs Indigenous Geotags, a social media-based organization that tells the Indigenous history of American national parks and public lands. He has previously worked on publicly engaged projects with organizations like the Humanities Action Lab, the National Park Service, and the Minnesota Historical Society. He previously held a Postdoctoral Fellowship in Digital Humanities at Northwestern University.