Faculty Profiles

Joshua Howe is Associate Professor of History and Environmental Studies. He teaches courses in U.S. and world environmental history, the U.S. West, and the history of U.S. foreign policy, as well as in the interdisciplinary Environmental Studies junior seminar. Much of his early research revolved around the science and politics of climate change, and in 2014 he published Behind the Curve: Science and the Politics of Global Warming: Science and the Politics of Global Warming(University of Washington Press), followed by an edited collection called Making Climate Change History: Documents from Global Warming’s Past (University of Washington Press, 2017). Since 2016 he has also been engaged in a long-term research project investigating relationships among nature and natural resources, toxicity, and American foreign policy, with a primary focus on the environmental legacies of Cold War foreign policy on bodies and landscapes throughout the Cold War world. His forthcoming co-authored book with Marine Corps Veteran and Reed MALS graduate Alexander Lemons, Warbody: A Marine Sniper and the Hidden Violence of Modern Warfare (W.W. Norton, 2025), explores the myriad toxic exposures among American military personnel during the global war on terror in a far-reaching reconceptualization of the violence of warfare. Josh holds a B.A. in history and creative writing from Middlebury College and a Ph.D. in history from Stanford University. From 2010-2012, he served as a postdoctoral fellow with the National Science Foundation’s John Tyndall Correspondence Project at Montana State University in Bozeman, Montana. He has been at Reed since 2012. Josh currently serves as chair of the Environmental Studies Program, and served as the chair of the History Department from 2020-2022. When he is not in the classroom or the archives, you might see him skiing, surfing, riding bikes, or otherwise playing outside somewhere in the mountains of the greater northwestern U.S.