Thomas M. Lekan (NHC Fellow, 2009–10; 2010–11; 2022–23)
Project Title, 2022–23
“Conservation by Slaughter”: Wildlife Utilization and the African Origins of Sustainable Development, 1959–1980
University of South Carolina
Project Title, 2010–11
Green Tourism: Consumption and Conservation in 20th Century Germany
University of South Carolina
Project Title, 2009–10
Green Tourism: Consumption and Conservation in 20th Century Germany
University of South Carolina
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Fellowship Work Summary, 2022–23
Thomas M. Lekan completed two chapters of his book-in-progress, Conservation by Slaughter: Sustaining African Wildlife from Colony to Cold War and made substantial progress on the remaining parts of the manuscript based on new materials he accessed and integrated during the fellowship year. He revised, resubmitted, and published “‘A Delicate Equilibrium of the Most Complex Sort’: Competition and Community in Edward F. Ricketts’s Tidepool Ecologies, 1923–1948” for the Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences and submitted the book chapter “Redwoods of the East: Conservation and the Environmental Movement at Congaree, 1930–1976” for the anthology Wood Basket of the World: Lumbering, Manufacturing, and Conserving South Carolina’s Forests, which will be reviewed at the University of South Carolina Press in 2023. Lekan also worked with Carol Hager of Bryn Mawr to craft a book proposal for a shorter, interim, environmental studies book, Green Germany: The Local Roots of Global Sustainability, which is currently under review at Cambridge University Press.
Fellowship Work Summary, 2010–11
Thomas M. Lekan continued work on Saving the Serengeti: Bernhard Grzimek, Nature Tourism, and the Unintended Consequences of Western Environmentalism, under contract with Oxford University Press, and completed “Serengeti Shall Not Die: Bernhard Grzimek, Wildlife Film, and the Making of a Tourist Landscape in East Africa” for German History (2011).
Fellowship Work Summary, 2009–10
Thomas M. Lekan completed two chapters of his book Saving the Serengeti: The Frankfurt Zoological Society and the Paradox of Western Conservation. He also revised “Serengeti Shall Not Die: Bernhard Grzimek, Wildlife Film, and the Making of a Tourist Landscape in East Africa” for German History (2011), as well as “Region, Scenery, Power: Cultural Landscapes in Environmental History,” to appear in the Oxford Handbook of Environmental History.