Professor and Chair, Women's and Gender Studies
Phone: (405) 325-3481
Email: voyles@ou.edu
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Professor and Chair, Women's and Gender Studies
Phone: (405) 325-3481
Email: voyles@ou.edu
Pronouns: she/her/hers
Dr. Traci Brynne Voyles is Professor and Chair of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Oklahoma (OU), and Affiliate Faculty in the OU Departments of History and Native American Studies. She is a historian of colonialism, race, gender, and environment, with a focus on North America from the nineteenth through the twentieth century. Voyles earned her Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California San Diego and completed a Mellon Environments & Societies postdoctoral fellowship in History at the University of California Davis.
Voyles is the author of The Settler Sea: California's Salton Sea and the Consequences of Colonialism (Many Wests book series, University of Nebraska Press, 2021), winner of the 2022 Caughey Prize from the Western History Association for most distinguished work on the American West and a 2022 Choice Outstanding Academic Title. She is also the author of Wastelanding: Legacies of Uranium Mining in Navajo Country (University of Minnesota Press, 2015) as well as many peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, review essays, and public history projects. Voyles's current book project, Natural Childbirth: An Environmental History, explores the history of natural childbirth in the US, examining ideological and material conditions that shape birth as they have changed over time.
Voyles' work has been featured in a range of venues, including The Nation, The Atlantic, The American Prospect, Boston Review, ARTnews, KCET | PBS SoCal, and Edge Effects.
Education:
PhD, University of California San Diego, 2010
MA, University of California San Diego, 2005
BA, University of Colorado Boulder, 2003
THE SETTLER SEA: CALIFORNIA’S SALTON SEA AND THE CONSEQUENCES OF COLONIALISM. MANY WESTS. LINCOLN: UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS, 2021.
WASTELANDING: LEGACIES OF URANIUM MINING IN NAVAJO COUNTRY. MINNEAPOLIS: UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS, 2015. 291 PAGES.
NOT JUST GREEN, NOT JUST WHITE: RACE, JUSTICE, AND ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY. CO-EDITED WITH MARY E. MENDOZA. LINCOLN: UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS [UNDER CONTRACT].
PUBLIC SCHOLARSHIP