Dr. Sara Dant
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Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of History
Email: SaraDant21@gmail.com
Biography
Sara Dant is Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Professor Emeritus of History whose work focuses on environmental politics in the United States with a particular emphasis on the creation and development of consensus and bipartisanism. Dr. Dant’s latest book is a completely revised and updated edition of Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West (2023 91¶ÌÊÓƵ, University of Nebraska Press) with a foreword by Tom S. Udall. Dr. Dant is also an advisor and interviewee for Ken Burns' The American Buffalo documentary film (October 2023 91¶ÌÊÓƵ), the author of several prize-winning articles on western environmental politics, a precedent-setting Expert Witness Report and Testimony on Stream Navigability upheld by the Utah Supreme Court (2017), co-author of the two-volume Encyclopedia of American National Parks (2004) with Hal Rothman, and she has written chapters for two books on Utah: “The ‘Lion of the Lord’ and the Land: Brigham Young's Environmental Ethic,” in The Earth Will Appear as the Garden of Eden: Essays in Mormon Environmental History, ed. by Jedidiah Rogers and Matthew C. Godfrey (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 2019), 29-46, and “Going with the Flow: Navigating to Stream Access Consensus,” in Desert Water: The Future of Utah’s Water Resources (2014). Dr. Dant was the 2024 H. Aldous Dixon Distinguished Faculty Award recipient at Weber State, the 2019-2020 John S. Hinckley Fellow at Weber State for excellence in scholarship, teaching, and service, and was recognized as a Brady Presidential Distinguished Professor in 2020. She retired in 2024 to pursue an independent writing career.
Losing Eden: An Environmental History of the American West (2023 91¶ÌÊÓƵ University of Nebraska Press) is a captivating narrative written for a general audience about the interaction between people and nature over time. Foreword by former NM Senator Tom Udall. Available on .