Professional Summary
Dr. Samm Newton is an Assistant Professor of Blue Humanities jointly appointed in the Department of History and the School of Environment and Sustainability. Newton's research interests include histories of science and the environment; earth and ocean sciences; global environments; oceans; animals / multispecies worlds; science and empire; energy, plastics, extraction; novel technologies and natural resources.
Newton's current book project focuses on the marine geosciences and global ocean governance in the early twentieth century. It is a response to histories that treat oil and gas as commodities circulating in the public sphere, above the waterline, disconnected from the habitats where they are found. Instead, the project emphasizes the influential role of the industry expertise and commercial knowledge-making practices that made hydrocarbons legible below the sea’s surface. Hydrocarbons need an environmental history, and that history is, unequivocally, an ocean history.
They teach courses anchored in historical methods and, more broadly, in the humanities, focused on histories of water, the modern earth and ocean sciences, global environments, and human relationships with the natural world.
Dr. Newton is not currently accepting graduate students.
Education
PhD: University of Wisconsin Madison, 2026 (History of Science, Medicine, and Technology)
MA: Oregon State University Corvallis, 2018 (Environmental Arts and Humanities)
Courses Taught
-HIST-2024 GLOBAL ENVIR HIST
-EVST-2024 GLOBAL ENVIR HIST
Contact Information
Email: samm.newton@uc.edu; Websites: www.sammnewton.com; www.mariposasmarinas.com