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Degrees:
Ph.D., Harvard Univ.
A.M., Harvard Univ.
A.B., Harvard College
Tom Wickman (he/him) is a historian working at the intersection of environmental history, early American studies, Atlantic history, and Native American and Indigenous Studies. He holds an AB in History and Literature, AM in History, and PhD in History of American Civilization (now American Studies), all from Harvard. His first book Snowshoe Country: An Environmental History of Winter in the Early American Northeast was published by Cambridge University Press in 2018 in the series Studies in Environment and History. His articles have appeared in William and Mary Quarterly, Early American Studies, and Atlantic Studies, and essays have been featured in The Palgrave Handbook of Climate History and Rethinking American Disasters.
Presently he is completing a book manuscript, tentatively title River Colony: A New History of Early Connecticut, an environmental and political history of the early colonization of the lower Connecticut River from the 1620s to the 1640s, focusing on Saybrook/Pasbeshauke and Hartford/Suckiaug. The book connects the river's environmental history with larger structures of slavery, colonialism, and militarism in the English and Dutch Atlantic.
With a research focus on the seventeenth century, his courses at Trinity also follow through lines from the 1600s to the present, raise critical questions about ongoing environmental and social crises, and imagine better possible futures.
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Environmental History
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Early America
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Atlantic History
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Native American and Indigenous Studies
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Climate History
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Political Ecology
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Environmental Humanities
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Food History
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AMST-203
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Conflicts and Cultures in American Society
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FYSM-162
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Walking
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HIST-201
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Early America
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HIST-219
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Planet Earth: Past, Present and Future
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HIST-220
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Possible Earths: Histories and Cultures of Environmental Thought
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HIST-300
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History Workshop
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HIST-311
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Sense of Place in the Native Northeast
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Plants in the Environmental Humanities
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Seasonality and Climate
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Connecticut River
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Numeracy in the Early Modern Atlantic World
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Selected Publications:
- Wickman, Thomas. Snowshoe Country: An Environmental and Cultural History of Winter in the Early American Northeast. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.
- Wickman, Thomas. “Spring Floods and Settler Colonial Ambivalence: A Microhistory of Freshets on Wright’s Island in the Mid-Nineteenth Century.” Rethinking American Disasters, eds. Cynthia Kierner, Matthew Mulcahy, and Liz Skilton (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2023), 118-137.
- Wickman, Thomas. “Our Best Places: Gender, Food Sovereignty, and Miantonomi’s Kin on the Connecticut River.” Early American Studies 19:2 (2021): 215-263.
- Wickman, Thomas. “Narrating Indigenous Histories of Climate Change in the Americas and Pacific.” Palgrave Handbook of Climate History, eds. Christian Pfister, Sam White, Franz Mauelshagen (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).
- Wickman, Thomas. “The Great Snow of 1717: Settler Landscapes, Deep Snow Cover, and Winter's Environmental History.” Northeastern Naturalist 24:special issue 7 (2017): H81-H114.
- Wickman, Thomas. “‘Winters Embittered with Hardships’: Severe Cold, Wabanaki Power, and English Adjustments, 1690-1710.” The William & Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser., 72, no. 1 (January 2015): 57-98.
- Wickman, Thomas. “Arithmetic and Afro-Atlantic pastoral protest: The place of (in)numeracy in Gronniosaw and Equiano.” Atlantic Studies 8, no. 2 (June 2011): 189-212; reprinted in Abolitionist Places, eds. Jared Hickman and Martha Schoolman (London: Taylor & Francis, 2013).
Selected Presentations:
- Wickman, Thomas. “The Radical Militarism of the Saybrook Network.” Conference Paper, Northeast Conference for British Studies, Hartford, CT, September 28, 2024.
- Wickman, Thomas. “‘Our Coves’: Tidal Fishing Nets, Conflict in the 1630s, and #LandBack in the Native Northeast.” Conference Paper, American Society for Environmental History, Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, March 23, 2023.
- Wickman, Thomas. “Dawnland Winters: Decolonizing One Season’s History.” Invited Lecture, Museum of the White Mountains, Plymouth, NH, July 7, 2022.
- Wickman, Thomas. “Grounded Histories of Climate in the Native Northeast and Colonial New England.” Invited Lecture in honor of John Quinlan Murphy, Redwood Library, Newport, RI, July 9, 2022.
- Wickman, Thomas. “A Political Ecology of When and Where: Phenology, Fowling, and Trespass in the 1630s.” McNeil Center for Early American Studies (MCEAS), University of Pennsylvania, “The Climate Crisis: Early Americanists Respond,” Philadelphia, PA, June 17, 2022.
- Wickman, Thomas. “Snowshoes, Wabanaki Sovereignty, and ‘New England Winters’ in the Colonial Imagination.” Invited Lecture, Trinity ALL, Hartford, CT, April 14, 2022.
- Wickman, Thomas. “Sequassen and Land Acknowledgments at Suckiaug/Hartford.” Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, April 2, 2022.
- Wickman, Thomas. “Snow Cover and Winter Knowledge in the Little Ice Age.” Invited Lecture, Historic Deerfield lecture series, “The Big Chill: Early History of Climate Change,” via Zoom, March 27, 2022.
- Wickman, Thomas. “Winter’s History and Winter’s Future.” Invited Lecture, Mather Homestead, Darien, CT, January 26, 2022.
- Wickman, Thomas. “Wintering Well in Native New England: Histories and Futures,” Indigenous History Conference, “Here it Began: 2020 Hindsight or Foresight,” organized by Linda Coombs and Joyce Rain Anderson, Wampanoag Advisory Committee, Plymouth 400, Bridgewater State University, October 4, 2020.
- Wickman, Thomas. “Winter’s History and Winter’s Future.” University at Albany, State University of New York, Invited Lecture, Albany, NY, December 5, 2019.
- Wickman, Thomas. “‘[O]ur plaines,’ our ‘grass,’ ‘our Coves,’ ‘our Clambanks,’: Deep Time, Sustenant Landscapes, and Gendered Sovereignty in Miantonomi’s Speech.” North American Conferences on British Studies, Vancouver, BC, Canada, November 15, 2019.
- Wickman, Thomas. “Snow and Subsistence.” Concordia University, Invited Lecture, Montreal, QC, Canada, July 17, 2019.
- Wickman, Thomas. “Black Fertile Earth: Governing Land and River at Suckiaug/Hartford, 1633-1650.” CUNY Early American Republic Seminar, New York, NY, May 17, 2019.
- Wickman, Thomas. “Black Fertile Earth: A Political Ecology of Suckiaug/Hartford.” MIT Seminar on Environmental and Agricultural History, Cambridge, MA, February 22, 2019.
- Wickman, Thomas. “Snowshoe Country: An Environmental and Cultural History of Winter in the Early American Northeast” (book lecture). Amherst College, Amherst, MA, February 21, 2019.
- Wickman, Thomas, with Lisa Brooks, Strother Roberts, Ashley Smith, and Cedric Woods. “Native American Environmental History.” Boston Seminar on Environmental History, Massachusetts Historical Society, Boston, MA, October 9, 2018.
- Wickman, Thomas. “Spring Floods and the Shape of Change on the Lower Connecticut.” Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture Annual Meeting, Williamsburg, VA, June 15, 2018.
- Wickman, Thomas. “Snowshoes and Sense of Place in the Anglo-Wabanaki Wars, 1675-1725.” Invited Lecture, Old Berwick Historical Society, “Forgotten Frontier: Untold Stories of the Piscataqua,” South Berwick, ME, November 16, 2017.
- Wickman, Thomas. “Urban-Colonial Climate Histories.” Radcliffe Institute Seminar, “Climate and Colonization: The Case of North America,” Cambridge, MA, October 20, 2017.
- Wickman, Thomas. “What We Talk About When We Talk About Winter.” Radcliffe Institute Seminar, “Climate and Colonization: The Case of North America,” Cambridge, MA, October 20, 2017.
- Wickman, Thomas. “Hoofed Animals in the Snow: Ungulate Geographies and Indigenous Knowledge in the Little Ice Age.” American Society for Environmental History Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL, March 31, 2017.
- Wickman, Thomas. “Yoked for Winter: Oxen, the Anglo-Wabanaki Wars, and the Little Ice Age.” Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture Annual Meeting, Worcester, MA, June 25, 2016.
- Wickman, Thomas. “Cold Bodies and Continuance in the Native Northeast: Indigenous Women's Access to Mudflats in the Little Ice Age.” Native American and Indigenous Studies Association Annual Meeting, Honolulu, HI, May 21, 2016.
- Wickman, Thomas. “Icy Prospects, Hard Falls, and Boreal Analogies in Colonial New England.” Ice Cubed: An Inquiry into the Aesthetics, History, and Science of Ice, Heyrman Center for the Humanities, Columbia University, New York City, NY, April 21, 2016.
- Wickman, Thomas. “Snowshoes and Counter-Atlantic Spaces.” New York University Atlantic History Workshop, New York City, NY, December 8, 2015.
- Wickman, Thomas. “From the First Snow: Indigenous and Colonial Knowledge of Snowfall and Snow Cover in the Northeast.” University of Minnesota Early Modern Atlantic Workshop, Minneapolis, MN, November 13, 2015.
- Wickman, Thomas. “The Political Ecology of Frostfish in Dawnland during the Little Ice Age.” International Conference of Historical Geographers, London, UK, July 9, 2015.
- Wickman, Thomas. “The Great Snow of 1717: English and Algonkian Interpretations.” Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Boston, MA, April 16, 2015.
- Wickman, Thomas. “Dead Sheep and ‘Wild’ Winter Vistas: The Crisis of Pastoral Landscapes in the Era of Anglo-Wabanaki Wars, 1675-1
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- Strengthening Sustainability in Trinity's Curriculum Grant, Mellon Foundation, Trinity College, 2014.
- Graduate Society Dissertation Completion Fellowship, Harvard University, 2011.
- Derek Bok Center Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, Harvard University, 2010.
- Thomas Temple Hoopes Prize, Harvard College, 2007.
- Dorothy Hicks Lee Prize, Harvard College, 2007.
- Perry Miller Prize, Harvard College, 2007.
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