Christopher M Parsons Department of History Assistant Professor Northeastern University Telephone: 603-443-0367 360 Huntington Avenue Email: c.parsons@northeastern.edu Boston, MA 02118 ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS Assistant Professor, Department of History, Northeastern University, August 2013 – Present - Affiliated Faculty, Public History Program, 2015 - Present Affiliated Researcher, French Atlantic History Group, McGill University, September 2014 - Present Barra Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania, July 2011 – June 2013 Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Postdoctoral Fellow, McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania, July 2011 – June 2013 Visiting Scholar, Native American Studies Program, Dartmouth College, August 2010 – June 2011 EDUCATION Ph.D., University of Toronto, Department of History, 2011

Dissertation: Plants and Peoples: French and Indigenous Botanical Knowledge in colonial North America, 1600 – 1760

Supervisor: Allan Greer Committee: Kenneth Mills, Heidi Bohaker Readers: Nicholas Dew, Natalie Zemon Davis

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Graduate Certificate, Northeastern University, in progress French as a Second Language (FLE), Université Laval, 2006, 2007. M.A., University of Toronto, Department of History, 2005 B. A. (Honours), University of British Columbia, History, 2004 PUBLICATIONS Books

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Cultivating a New France: Empire and Environment in Colonial North America, forthcoming with the University of Pennsylvania Press (August 2018)

Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters

“Consuming Canada: Capillaire de Canada and Pharmaceutical Networks in the French Atlantic World,” Pharmacy in the Atlantic World (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, forthcoming) “Wildness without Wilderness: The Biogeography of Empire in seventeenth-century French North America,” Environmental History 22, no.4 (2017): 643-67. “Apprendre en apprivoisant: La domestication comme lieu de rencontre dans la France coloniale d’Amérique du Nord,” in Penser l’Amérique: de l’observation à l’inscription, eds. Thomas Wien and Nathalie Vuillemin (Oxford: Oxford University Studies in the Enlightenment, 2017), 143 – 63.

“The Natural History of Colonial Science: Joseph-François Lafitau’s Discovery of Ginseng and its Afterlives,” William & Mary Quarterly 73, no.1 (2016): 37 – 72.

“Of Natives, Newcomers and Nicotiana: Tobacco in the History of the Great Lakes Region,” in French and Indians in the Heart of North America eds. Robert Englebert and Guillaume Teasdale (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2013), 21 – 41. “Ecosystems under Sail: Specimen Transport in the Eighteenth-Century French and British Atlantics,” Early American Studies, vol.10, no. 3 (Fall 2012): 503 – 529; with Kathleen S. Murphy • Winner of John M. Murrin Prize for best essay published in Early American Studies in 2012 “Medical Encounters and Exchanges in Early Canadian Missions,” Scientia Canadensis: Journal of the Canadian Science and Technology Association, vol. 31, no.1 (2008): 49 – 66. • Special issue on “Natural Science in the New World: The Descriptive Enterprise”

Edited Volume

Special issue: Early America and the Environment, Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 13, no. 2 (2015): 279 – 510; co-edited with Cameron Strang.

Other Publications

Review: Radisson, Pierre-Esprit, The Collected Writings. Vol. 2. The Voyages. ed. Germain Warkentin (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press / Toronto: The Champlain Society, 2014), Renaissance and Reformation 38, no. 2 (Spring 2015): 234 – 37. Essay: “Old Roots, New Shoots: Early American Environmental History,” Early American Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 13, no. 2 (2015): 279 – 85; with Cameron Strang.

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Review: Crouch, Christian Ayne, Nobility Lost: French and Canadian Martial Cultures, Indians, and the End of New France (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press), New England Quarterly 88, no. 1 (March 2015): 164 – 66. Review: Radisson, Pierre-Esprit, The Collected Writings. Vol. 1. The Voyages. ed. Germain Warkentin (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen’s University Press / Toronto: The Champlain Society, 2012), Renaissance and Reformation 36, no. 4 (Fall 2013): 185 – 87. Invited Contribution: “Science in New France,” contribution to the Virtual Museum of New France organized by the Museum of Civilization, Gatineau, QC (2012): English: http://www.civilization.ca/virtual-museum-of-new-france/daily-life/science/; French: http://www.civilisations.ca/musee-virtuel-de-la-nouvelle-france/vie-quotidienne/sciences/ Review: Bleichmar, Daniela and Peter Mancall, eds, Collecting Across Cultures: Material Exchanges in the Early Modern Atlantic World (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), British Journal for the History of Science 45, no.1 (March 2012): 128 – 129. Review: Tésio, Stéphanie, Histoire de la pharmacie en France et en Nouvelle-France au 18e siècle (Québec: Presses de l’Université Laval 2009), Scientia Canadensis: Journal of the Canadian Science and Technology Association 35, no.1-2 (2012) 212 – 15. Invited Contribution: Marcelo Aranda, Katherine Arner, Lina del Castillo, Helen Cowie, Matthew Crawford, Joseph Cullon, Marcelo Figueroa, Claire Gherini, Melissa Grafe, Sarah Irving, Ryan Kashanipour, Carla Lois, Adrián López-Denis, Bertie Mandelblatt, Iris Montero Sobrevilla, Kathleen Murphy, Eric Otremba, Christopher Parsons, Heather Peterson, Emily Senior, Teresa Vergara, Kelly Wisecup and Anya Zilberstein, “The history of Atlantic science: Collective reflections from the 2009 Harvard seminar on Atlantic history,” Atlantic Studies: Literary, Cultural and Historical Perspectives, vol. 7, issue 4 (2010): 493 – 509. • Special issue on “Itineraries of Atlantic science - new questions, new approaches, new directions” Invited Contribution: “Involving and acknowledging Indigenous peoples,” Network in Canadian History & Environment (NiCHE), (2010) http://niche-canada.org/node/9129 Invited Contribution: “ ‘I report only what I have learned from my savages’: Naturalists, missionaries and the encounter with the indigenous knowledges of French North America.” Working Papers of the International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, 1500 – 1825, No. 09 – 18 (2009), 1 – 29. Invited Contribution: “Ginseng in Canada?” In I found it at the JCB: Scholars and Sources http://www.brown.edu/Facilities/John_Carter_Brown_Library/I%20found%20it%20JCB/august08.html - published online in August 2008

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Review: Horn, Tammy, Bees in America: How the Honey Bee Shaped a Nation (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2006) Material Culture: The Journal of the American Pioneer Society vol. 40, no. 1 (Spring 2008): 94 – 96.

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT 2016 Digital Humanities Summer Institute, Victoria, Canada 2015 Institute for the Editing of Historical Documents (“Camp Edit”), Association for

Documentary Editing, Lincoln, NE GRANTS, FELLOWSHIPS AND AWARDS Awards and Prizes 2013 John M. Murrin Prize, “Awarded annually for the best essay published in Early American

Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal” 2012 Finlayson Gold Medal, Department of History, University of Toronto, “Awarded to a

graduate student in the doctoral program with the most outstanding thesis in the preceding year.”

Major Fellowships 2011 – 2013 Barra Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, McNeil Center for Early American

Studies, University of Pennsylvania 2011 – 2013 SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellowship, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of

Canada (held concurrently with Barra Postdoctoral Fellowship) 2010 – 2011 Dissertation Completion Award, University of Toronto, 2005 – 2010 University of Toronto Fellowship, University of Toronto

- Standard funding package at the University of Toronto 2007 – 2009 SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of

Canada 2007 – 2010 Hannah Senior General Scholarship, Associated Medical Services (for research in the

history of medicine) – Declined for SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship 2007 – 2008 Ontario Graduate Scholarship, Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and

Universities – Declined for SSHRC Doctoral Fellowship

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2006 – 2007 Hannah Junior General Scholarship, Associated Medical Services (for research in the

history of medicine) 2005 – 2006 Ontario Graduate Scholarship, Ontario Ministry of Training, Colleges and

Universities 2004 – 2005 Canada Graduate Scholarship - Master's Scholarship, Social Sciences and

Humanities Research Council of Canada Scholarships, Research Grants & Travel Awards 2016 Digital Humanities Summer Institute Tuition Fellowship, University of Victoria 2015 Collaborative Research Cluster Award for “The Sustainable Humanities,”

College of Social Sciences and Humanities, Northeastern University 2015 Research Development Initiative for “The Jesuit Relations: A Digital Edition,”

College of Social Sciences and Humanities, Northeastern University 2015 Institute for the Editing of Historical Documents Stipend, Association for

Documentary Editing 2009, 2011 Dissertation Completion Grant, University of Toronto, 2009/ 2010 2008, 2010 Conference Travel Grant, University of Toronto, 2008 / 2010 2009 André Michaux Travel and Research Grant, The André Michaux Travel and

Research Grant Foundation (for research in the history of botany)

Jeanne Armour Graduate Scholarship, University of Toronto

John Carter Brown Library Associates Fellowship, The John Carter Brown Library

National Science Foundation Travel Grant, History of Science Society

Newberry Library Short-Term Fellowship for Individual Research, The Newberry Library

Phillips Fund Grant for Native American Research – Library Resident Fellowship, The American Philosophical Society

2006, 2007 Summer Language Bursary (French), Heritage Canada

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2004 Women's Canadian Historical Society of Toronto Graduate Fellowship,

University of Toronto, - Declined TEACHING AND RESEARCH EXPERIENCE 2013 – Present Northeastern University HIST 1201: Early America through Food HIST 1201: American History through Food

HIST 1218: Making the Americas, 1492 - 1804 HIST 2342: Environmental History of North America HONR 3310: The Scientific Revolution through its Experiments Graduate Classes HIST 7228: Atlantic Connections: Objects, Collections, and Legacies HIST 7223: North American Environmental History

2012 - 2013 University of Pennsylvania HIST 203: Early America through Food

HIST 203: Native Americans and the Environment 2009 University of Toronto

HIS496H1-F: The Columbian Exchange: Ecological Adaptation and Invasion in the Early Modern Atlantic World – Instructor

PRESENTATIONS Invited Presentations, Roundtables and Public Lectures 09. 2017 The Americas on Fire: Entangled Histories of Empire and Science in the Early Modern

Atlantic and Beyond, John Carter Brown Library, Providence, RI 06. 2017 “The Jesuit Relations: A Digital Edition,” The Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies Annual

Symposium, Boston College, Boston, MA 03. 2017 Roundtable on Jesuit Studies, Loyola University, Chicago, IL 11. 2016 “Wildness without Wilderness,” Lehigh University, Bethlehem, PA 10. 2016 “Biogeography and Empire,” Northeastern University, Boston, MA

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04. 2016 “Consuming Canada: Capillaire de Canada and Pharmaceutical Networks in the French Atlantic World,” Workshop on the history of pharmacopeias and materia medica in the Atlantic World, Department of Pharmacy, University of Wisconsin-Madison

10. 2015 “The Environmental History of a Blunted Impact,” Columbia Seminar on Early American

History and Culture, Columbia University, New York, New York 10. 2015 “Jesuit Science in early America,” Manresa Program, Fordham University, New York, New

York 03. 2015 “How to know a New World,” Department of History, University of South Florida,

Tampa, Florida 02. 2015 “Biogeography and Empire in French North America,” The Atlantic World Workshop,

New York University, New York, New York 11. 2014 “Discovering New France in colonial North America,” Explorations, Encounters, and the

Circulation of Knowledge, 1600-1830, Session 1: Explorations and Encounters: New Directions. William Andrews Clark Memorial Library, University of California, Los Angeles, California

10. 2014 “An American Tree in Paris” Arader Galleries, New York, NY 05. 2014 Commentator, Early Modern France and the Americas: Connected Histories, Boston

College, Boston, Massachusetts 05. 2014 “Plants, Peoples and the Discovery of Difference in colonial French North America”

Omohundro Institute for Early American History and Culture colloquium, College of William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia

03. 2014 “Fluid Natures, Métis Knowledge: François-Madeleine Vallé and the Mémoire sur les plantes

qui sont dans la caise B” Global Environmental Histories from Below symposium, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois

02. 2014 “The Nature of Empire in colonial French North America.” Center for Early Modern

History, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota 02. 2014 American Oecologies: A Roundtable Discussion on Environmental History Throughout the

Americas, John Carter Brown Library, Providence, Rhode Island 10. 2013 “An American Tree in Paris: The Hidden History of Robinia pseudoacacia in the first era of

globalization,” Terra Society, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts

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02. 2013 “Knowing Early North American Environments” Comparative Literature Department, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario

02. 2012 “Botany in the Borderlands: The Circulation of Ecological Knowledge in the Pays d’en

Haut.” McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

05. 2011 “The Atlantic History of an American Plant: Ginseng, Jesuits and the Académie Royale des

Sciences.” Jesuit History Workshop, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois 03. 2010 “Learning from Silence: Jesuit and Indigenous Ecological Knowledge in the seventeenth

and eighteenth centuries.” Native American Studies Program, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire

05. 2009 “Jesuit botanical description in seventeenth-century North America.” Jesuit Science and

Spirituality Roundtable, Northwestern University, Chicago, Illinois 04. 2009 “Seeing like a Jesuit.” McNeil Center Brown Bag Series, McNeil Center for Early American

Studies, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 08. 2008 “Plantula Marilandica /Araliastrum Quinquefolii / Gin-seng: The multiple guises of a

colonial plant.” Fellows Luncheon, John Carter Brown Library, Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island

Conference Presentations 11. 2017 “Towards a Hemispheric History of Ginseng,” History of Science Society Annual

Meeting, Toronto, ON 06. 2017 Roundtable: Environmental History in the Atlantic World, World History Association

Annual Meeting, Boston, MA 05. 2017 “Cultivating a New France,” William & Mary Quarterly – Early Modern Studies

Institute, The Huntington Library, Pasadena, CA 03. 2017 Roundtable: Integrating Online Resources for Jesuit Studies, Renaissance Society of

America, Chicago, IL 11. 2015 Comment, American Society for Ethnohistory Annual Meeting, Las Vegas, NV 10. 2015 “The view from the North,” American Studies Association Annual Meeting,

Toronto, ON

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* Organized panel “Troubling Region: The Problem of Region in Teaching ‘the Early Americas”

06. 2015 Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture / Society for

Early Americanists Annual Meeting, Chicago, IL * Organized roundtable “Interdisciplinarity before the disciplines” 11. 2014 “Beyond Erasure: Pehr Kalm and Indigenous Knowledge in Eighteenth-Century North

America,” History of Science Society Annual Meeting, Chicago, Illinois 06. 2014 “Cultivating Authority in Seventeenth-Century New France,” Omohundro Institute of

Early American History and Culture Conference, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia

04. 2014 “Pehr Kalm’s Entangled Ecologies,” Organization of American Historians Annual

Meeting, Atlanta, Georgia 05. 2013 “Knowing through Taming: Domestication as a Site of Encounter in Colonial French North

America,” De l’observation à l’inscription: Les savoirs sur l’Amérique entre 1600 et 1830 dans les textes d’expression française, French Atlantic History Group, Montréal, Québec

06. 2012 “"I report only what I have learned from my sauvages" : Colonial and Indigenous

Knowledges in the French Atlantic,” Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture Conference, Huntington Library, San Marino, California

* organized panel entitled “Atlantic Histories of Indigenous Knowledge” 05. 2011 “Plants and Peoples: Reconceptualizing the history of indigenous knowledge in the French

Atlantic World,” Summer Academy of Atlantic History, National University of Ireland – Galway, Ireland

11. 2010 “Botanical Discovery in a Not-So-New World: French North American folk taxonomies in

the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.” History of Science Society Annual Meeting. Montréal, Québec.

* organized panel entitled “Discourse and Discovery: Colonial Encounters and Ideologies of Modern Science” with Matthew Crawford, Kent State

10. 2010 “Science from Silence: From Indigenous Knowledge to Jesuit Science in French missions in

the Pays d’en Haut.” American Society for Ethnohistory Annual Meeting, Ottawa, Ontario

* organized panel entitled “Native-Newcomer Networks in the Pays d’en Haut” with Robert Morrissey, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

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10. 2010 “Sailors, Specimens, and Science: Maritime Networks and the Global Expansion of Enlightenment Science in Eighteenth-Century England and France.” The Age of Sail, 1450 – 1850 (sponsored by the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture) University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia

11. 2009 “The Natural History of Secrets: The French Encounter with the Indigenous Knowledge

Systems of French North America.” History of Science Society Annual Meeting, Phoenix, Arizona

08. 2009 “‘I report only what I have learned from my savages’: Naturalists, missionaries and the

encounter with the indigenous knowledges of French North America.” Harvard International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts

05. 2009 “Jesuit Networks and French Knowledge of the Environment.” Canadian Historical

Association Annual Meeting, Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario 05. 2008 “Of Natives, Newcomers and Nicotiana: The History of Tobacco in the Great Lakes.”

French Colonial Historical Society Annual Meeting, Université Laval, Sainte-Foy, Québec

09. 2006 “Medical Encounters and Exchanges in Early Canadian Missions.” The Society for the

History of Natural History International Meeting, McGill University, Montréal, Québec

08. 2005 “Native Remedies and Early Canadians: The Transmission and Non-Transmission of

Medical Knowledge from Native to Newcomer in early New France.” The History and Philosophy of Science and Technology Graduate Student Conference, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario

SERVICE TO THE PROFESSION 2015 – Correspondent, The New Sommervogel Project, Institute for Advanced Jesuit Studies, Present Boston College 2012 - Conference Organizing Committee, McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University 2013 of Pennsylvania Reader for Agricultural History, British Journal of the History of Science, Canadian Bulletin of Medical History, The

Canadian Historical Review, The Journal of Jesuit Studies, Revue d’histoire l’Amérique française, The William & Mary Quarterly

SERVICE TO THE UNIVERSITY

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2016 Faculty Advisor, Undergraduate Research Journal, College of Social Sciences and

Humanities, Northeastern University 2016 Organizer, Undergraduate Research Forum, College of Social Sciences and Humanities,

Northeastern University 2015 Research Cluster Organizer, Northeastern University: Sustainable Humanities 2015 Undergraduate Research Committee, College of Social Sciences and Humanities,

Northeastern University 2014 Undergraduate Committee (2014 – 15), Merit Committee (2014), Department of - Present History, Northeastern University 2011 – 13 Mentor, Undergraduate Research Workshop (2013), Postdoctoral Fellowship Committee (2011 – 12), McNeil Center for Early American Studies, University of Pennsylvania 2007 - 09 Supporting Aboriginal Graduate Enhancement (S.A.G.E), University of Toronto 2004 – 09 Orientation organization (2005 and 2006), graduate funding committee (2005 – 06),

graduate representative to three departmental search committees (2006, 2007 and 2009), graduate representative on departmental programme committee (2004 – 06), graduate representative on departmental review (2008), vice president of Graduate Historical Society (2006 – 07), Department of History, University of Toronto

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS American Historical Association American Society for Ethnohistory Canadian Historical Association Forum on European Expansion and Global Interaction French Colonial Historical Society History of Science Society Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture