James E. McWilliams
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James E. McWilliams (born November 28, 1968) is professor of history at Texas State University. He specializes in American history, of the colonial and early national period, and in the environmental history of the United States. He also writes for The Texas Observer and the History News Service, and has published a number of op-eds on food in The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and USA Today. Some of his most popular articles advocate veganism.
Career
He received his B.A. in philosophy from Georgetown University in 1991, his Ed.M. from Harvard University in 1994, his M.A. in American studies from the University of Texas at Austin in 1996, and his Ph.D. in history from Johns Hopkins University in 2001.[1] He won the Walter Muir Whitehill Prize in Early American History awarded by the Colonial Society of Massachusetts for 2000,[2] and won the Hiett Prize in the Humanities from the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture in 2009.[3] He has been a fellow in the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University.[4]
McWilliams married on March 18, 1995.[5] James lived in Austin, Texis with his wife and two children in 2009.[1]
As late as 2013 McWilliams was stated to be an avid runner[6] and a vegan.[7]
Animal rights
In 2015, McWilliams authored The Modern Savage: Our Unthinking Decision to Eat Animals, a book supportive of animal rights and veganism. McWilliams criticizes the locavore movement, such as backyard and nonindustrial farms which preach compassionate care of animals but slaughter them in the end.[8]
Reception
McWilliams' book A Revolution in Eating was positively reviewed by anthropologist Jeffrey Cole as an "engaging, creative, and informative account of food in colonial British America."[9] Historian Etta Madden also positively reviewed the book, commenting that "McWilliams's study of the production and consumption of food contributes to a great understanding of the relationship between food and American identity."[10]
Biologist Marc Bekoff positively reviewed The Modern Savage, as a "very thoughtful work about our meal plans in which he covers the ecological and ethical reasons for not eating nonhuman animals (animals)."[11] Kirkus Reviews commented, "While McWilliams offers convincing arguments for animal rights, they are undermined by the extensive quotes, which become tiresome and offer little useful context."[8] McWilliams' views on agriculture, food production, and animal husbandry have been criticized by other authors in the space, including Joel Salatin.[12] In her review in the Chicago Tribune, journalist Monica Eng questions McWilliams' "contrarian essays" that "play well in the land of page views, [but] don't always fare so well in terms of accuracy."[13]
Publications
Books
- McWilliams, James E.(link)
The Pecan: A History of America's Native Nut.
University Texas Press,
ISBN 978-0-292-74916-0.
Full text(Accessed: 2013-08-26)
- McWilliams, James E.(link)
The Politics of the Pasture.
- McWilliams, James E.(link)
Just Food: Where Locavores Get It Wrong and How We Can Truly Eat Responsibly.
ISBN 978-0316033749.
Full text
- McWilliams, James E.(link)
American Pests: The Losing War on Insects from Colonial Times to DDT.
ISBN 978-0231139427.
Full text
- Review: Wanner, Irene (2008-08-08). ""American Pests": Our wrongheaded approach to insect control". The Seattle Times. http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/books/2008098741_americanpests10.html.
- McWilliams, James E.(link)
Building the Bay Colony: Local Economy and Culture in Early Massachusetts.
ISBN 978-0813926360.
Full text
- McWilliams, James E.(link)
A Revolution In Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America.
ISBN 978-0231129923.
Full text
- McWilliams, James E.(link)
The Modern Savage: Our Unthinking Decision to Eat Animals.
Thomas Dunne Books,
ISBN 978-1-250-03119-8.
Peer-reviewed articles
- “The horizon opened up very greatly.: Leland O. Howard and the Transition to Chemical Insecticides in the United States, 1894–1927” Agricultural History (Fall 2008).
- “Cuisine and National Identity in the Early Republic,” Historically Speaking (May/June 2006), 5–8.
- ”African Americans, Native Americans, and the Origins of American Food,” The Texas Journal of History and Genealogy. Volume 4 (2005), pp. 12–16.
- " 'how unripe we are': An Intellectual Construction of American Food,” Food, Society, and Culture (Fall 2005), pp. 143–160.
- “‘To Forward Well-Flavored Productions’: The Kitchen Garden in Early New England.” The New England Quarterly (March 2004), p. 25-50.
- “Integrating Primary and Secondary Sources,” Teaching History (Spring 2004), pp. 3–14.
- “The Transition from Capitalism and the Consolidation of Authority in the Chesapeake Bay Region, 1607–1760: An Interpretive Model,” Maryland Historical Magazine (Summer 2002), pp. 135–152.
- “New England’s First Depression: An Export-Led Interpretation,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History (Summer 2002), pp. 1–20 .
- “Work, Family, and Economic Improvement in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts Bay,” The New England Quarterly (September 2001), pp. 355–384. (Winner of the 2000 Whitehill Prize in Colonial History for the best essay published that year in colonial history).
- “Brewing Beer in Massachusetts Bay, 1640–1690.” The New England Quarterly (December 1998), pp. 353–384.
Popular articles
- McWilliams, James E. (2014-03-08). "Meat Makes the Planet Thirsty". p. A19. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/08/opinion/meat-makes-the-planet-thirsty.html. "Changing one’s diet to replace 50 percent of animal products with edible plants like legumes, nuts and tubers results in a 30 percent reduction in an individual’s food-related water footprint. Going vegetarian, a better option in many respects, reduces that water footprint by almost 60 percent."
- McWilliams, James E.
Loving Animals to Death. The American Scholar,
Full text(Accessed: 17 March 2014)
- McWilliams, James E.
Radical Activism and the Future of Animal Rights. Pacific Standard,
Full text(Accessed: 2013-07-10)
- McWilliams, James E.
Vegan Feud: Animal rights activists would accomplish a lot more if they stopped attacking the Humane Society. Slate,
Full text(Accessed: 2013-07-09)
- McWilliams, James E. (2012-04-13). "The Myth of Sustainable Meat". p. A31. https://www.nytimes.com/2012/04/13/opinion/the-myth-of-sustainable-meat.html. "Although these smaller systems appear to be environmentally sustainable, considerable evidence suggests otherwise."
- McWilliams, James E.
The Evidence for a Vegan Diet. The Atlantic,
Full text(Accessed: 2013-07-05)
- McWilliams, James E.
Hunting for Euphemisms: How We Trick Ourselves to Excuse Killing. The Atlantic,
Full text(Accessed: 2013-07-09)
- McWilliams, James E. (2009-11-16). "Bellying up to environmentalism". https://articles.washingtonpost.com/2009-11-16/opinions/36905850_1_grass-fed-beef-meat-production-ground-beef. "Until we make that leap, until we create a culinary culture in which the meat-eaters must do the apologizing, the current proposals will be nothing more than gestures that turn the fork into an empty symbol rather than a real tool for environmental change."
- McWilliams, James E. (2009-04-10). "Free-Range Trichinosis". p. A23. https://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/opinion/10mcwilliams.html. "[S]cientists have found that free-range pork can be more likely than caged pork to carry dangerous bacteria and parasites."
- McWilliams, James E. (2008-11-17). "Our Home-Grown Melamine Problem". p. A27. https://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/17/opinion/17mcwilliams.html. "Last year, for instance, the F.D.A. reported that millions of Americans had eaten chicken fattened on feed with melamine-tainted gluten imported from China."
- McWilliams, James E. (2007-08-06). "Food That Travels Well". https://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/06/opinion/06mcwilliams.html. "[L]amb raised on New Zealand's clover-choked pastures and shipped 11,000 miles by boat to Britain produced 1,520 pounds of carbon dioxide emissions per ton while British lamb produced 6,280 pounds of carbon dioxide per ton"
- List of McWilliams' articles in The Atlantic
- List of McWilliams' articles in The New York Times
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 Blaschke, Jayme (2009-03-17). "James McWilliams awarded Hiett Prize in the Humanities". http://www.txstate.edu/news/news_releases/news_archive/2009/03/HeittPrize031709.html.
- ↑ "Whitehill Prize Past Winners". 2012. http://www.northeastern.edu/neq/whitehill/winners.html.
- ↑ Mosley, Joe, ed. (2011-04-19). "'Contrarian agrarian' challenges assumptions about eating sustainably". University of Oregon. http://around.uoregon.edu/story/james-mcwilliams/%E2%80%9Ccontrarian-agrarian%E2%80%9D-challenges-assumptions-about-eating-sustainably.
- ↑ "American Pests (book review)". New York City. http://cup.columbia.edu/book/978-0-231-13942-7/. "a recent fellow in the Agrarian Studies Program at Yale University."
- ↑ "James E McWilliams married Leila C Kempner on March 18, 1995 in Texas". http://marriagesintexas.com/1995/024334.html.
- ↑ King, David. "Rising Star James McWilliams". http://www.txstate.edu/rising-stars/james_mcwilliams.html. "He is an avid runner"
- ↑ McWilliams, James E. (2013-06-23). "The Importance of Being Unsure". http://james-mcwilliams.com/?p=4100. "But, since becoming a vegan, I can sometimes see why the stereotype persists."
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 "The Modern Savage: Our Unthinking Decision to Eat Animals". Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved October 6, 2020.
- ↑ A Review of "A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America". Food and Foodways, Vol. 17(No. 2) , pp. 133–135 (2009). doi:10.1080/07409710902925904 Full text
- ↑ Reviewed Work: A Revolution in Eating: How the Quest for Food Shaped America by James E. McWilliams. The New England Quarterly, Vol. 81(No. 4) , pp. 733–735 (2008). doi:10.1162/tneq.2008.81.4.733
- ↑ Bekoff, Marc. (2015). "The Modern Savage: A New Book Questions Why We Eat Animals". Psychology Today. Retrieved October 6, 2020.
- ↑ "Joel Salatin responds to New York Times' 'Myth of Sustainable Meat'" (in en-us). 2012-04-17. https://grist.org/sustainable-farming/farmer-responds-to-the-new-york-times-re-sustainable-meat/.
- ↑ Eng, Monica (8 January 2015). "Review: 'The Modern Savage' by James McWilliams". https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/books/ct-prj-modern-savage-james-mcwilliams-20150108-story.html.
External links
- McWilliams' official faculty page at Texas State Template:Webarchive
- McWilliams' Curriculum Vitae Template:Webarchive
- McWilliams' blog Template:Webarchive
- Walter Muir Whitehill Prize in Early American History Template:Webarchive
Template:People in veganism and vegetarianism Template:Portalbar