Connie Y. Chiang

Professor of History and Environmental Studies, on leave for the 2024–2025 academic year

Connie Chiang studies modern United States history, with specialties in environmental history, the history of the American West, social history, and Asian American history. She is particularly interested in how shifting human interactions with and attitudes toward the natural world have transformed American society. She is the author of Shaping the Shoreline: Fisheries and Tourism on the Monterey Coast and has published articles in many journals, including the Journal of American History andEnvironmental History.

Her latest book, Nature Behind Barbed Wire: An Environmental History of the Japanese American Incarceration, explores how the environment shaped the confinement of over 110,000 people of Japanese descent during World War II. 

Connie Chiang Headshot

Education

  • PhD, History, University of Washington, 2002
  • MA, History, University of Washington, 1997
  • BA, History & Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, 1996