Biography
Trained as a historian, Dylan's research focuses on war and the environment, specifically the American environmental experience during the Pacific War. This research has manifested itself in an upcoming monograph on the U.S. 1st Marine Division in the South Pacific, an article for Water History entitled: Campaigning in a Wet Land: Water, Militarized Landscapes, and the Battle of Guadalcanal, and a forthcoming primary source reader on veteran recollections of growing up in the Great Depression and how that related to surviving Pacific campaigning. A second article on insects and emotions during campaigning is also nearing completion. Dylan regularly lectures at several institutions in Southern Ontario, in History and American Studies, typically instructing undergrads on the two world wars, the civil rights movement, the North American physical environmental, and various versions of the US survey.
Education
- B.A. University of Waterloo, 2002
- M.A. University of Waterloo, 2003
- PhD University of Western Ontario, 2009
Research and teaching interests
- Pacific War
- Oral history
- Veterans
- War and Environment
- Environmental History of water, insects and animals
- War and medicine
- US history
- War in totality
- Modern American politics
- Conservatism
- Libertarianism
- Youth cultures
Courses taught
- HIST 258 United States since 1877
- HIST 291 From the Ground Up: Environmental History of Modern North America
- HIST 314 The Freedom Struggle: The American Civil Rights Movement
At other institutions
- US History to the Civil War, Department of History, McMaster University
- Understanding The Tea Party Movement and Advanced American Studies, the Centre for American Studies, UWO
- The Emergence of Modern America: From the Gilded Age to the Jazz Age, 1877-2929, Department of Historical Studies, UTM
- The Two World Wars, the US Survey, and Youth Cultures of the 20th Century, Department of History, Huron University College, UWO
Recent publications
- "Campaigning in a wet land: Water, militarized landscapes, and the Battle of Guadalcanal" for Water History-Official Journal of the International Water History Association, April 2013, Volume 5, Issue 1, pp 27-42.
- 7500 words for The United States at War, V. 11: Middle East Wars, Military History Series, ABC-Clio (Santa Barbara, CA: 2010).
Awards and achievements
- Travel Grant, HUC Research Committee, 2012 and 2011
- Research Grant, US Marine Corps Heritage Foundation (Quantico, VA), 2007
- Beeler-Raider Fellowship, US Marine Corps Heritage Foundation, 2006
- Graduate Student Teaching Award, from the Society of Graduate Students, the Graduate Teaching Assistants Union, and the Faculty of Graduate Studies, the University of Western Ontario, 2005
Conference presentations
- Animals and arthropods in HBO's The Pacific for the Association of American Geographers (AAG), annual meeting, Seattle, WA, April 2011.
- This wet piece of green hell: Environmental adversity on New Britain for seventy years on New Perspectives on the Second World War, University of Calgary, September 2009.
- Veteran recollections as impetus for eco-military history for Military and Oral History Conference: Between Memory and History, University of Victoria, February 2008.
Professional affiliations
- War and Environment via American Society for Environmental Historians