Fraser Livingston is a PhD candidate from Bainbridge, Georgia. He studies the environmental history of the American South, with an emphasis on the loss of the longleaf pine from the southern coastal plain during the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. His dissertation examines the interactions between American forestry, Jim Crow, and the state as New South timber exploitation consumed vast tracts of the longleaf pine that had once fostered some of the most biodiverse forests in the temperate world.

Mississippi State University, Starkville, Mississippi
Doctor of Philosophy in History (In Progress)

Mississippi State University, Starkville, Mississippi
Master of Arts (2015)
Major:  History

University of Georgia, Athens, Georgia
Bachelor of Arts (2012)
Major:  History
Minor:  Classics
HOPE Scholarship Recipient, Dean’s List, Cum Laude

Graduate Teaching Assistant:  Early U.S. History (2013-2014)

Graduate Teaching Assistant:  Modern U.S. History (Fall 2014)

Graduate Teaching Assistant:  Modern Western World (Spring 2015)

Conference Presentations

Western Social Science Association Annual Conference, Denver, Colorado April 2-5, 2013.  “Ostracized, Subsidized, and Fetishized:  Convict Labor in the South’s Turpentine Camps and the Consumption of an Ecosystem”

Agricultural History Society, Provo, Utah June 19-22, 2014. Leased to the Highest Bidder:  Rural Convict Labor in the Naval Stores Industry  

Agricultural History Society, Lexington, Kentucky June 3-6, 2015. More than an Imagined Fear?  Dogs in Rural Convict Camps

Business History Conference, Miami, Florida June 24-27, 2015. Northern Capital in Florida’s Convict Lease System

Southern Capitalisms Graduate Student Conference, Baltimore, Maryland March 4-5, 2016.  A Disputed Landscape: The Convict Lease System in the New South’s Naval Stores Industries

Midwest Labor and Working-Class History Colloquium, Memphis, Tennessee June 2, 2017. Forced Labor in Longleaf Woodlands: The Convict Lease System and the Southern Naval Stores Industry

European Society for Environmental History, Zagreb, Croatia, June 28-July 2, 2017. “You have a butchery”: The Influence of European Forestry on the American South’s Turpentine Industry

Southern Forum on Agricultural, Rural, and Environmental History, Knoxville, Tennessee, April 27-28, 2018. “Naval Stores Dreams, Longleaf Nightmares: The USDA’s First Generation of Forestry Research in the Southern Coastal Plain

Southern Labor Studies Association Biennial Meeting, Athens, Georgia, May 17-19, 2018. “‘All Dirtied Up with the Rosin’ Coerced Labor in the South’s Piney Woods”

Agricultural History Society, St. Petersburg, Florida, May 24-26, 2018. “Charles Herty and Florida’s Convict Lease system: Prisoners, Pines, and the making of Modern Forestry in the Rural South”

• James W. Garner Scholarship, Mississippi State University, 2013-2014
• Agricultural History Society Graduate Student Travel Grant, 2014
• Alf Andrew Heggoy Award, University of Georgia, 2013
• Western Social Science Association Travel Grant