Jason Newton | Assistant Professor (Lecturer)
Jason Newton
Assistant Professor (Lecturer)
CTIHB 317
About
Dr. Newton teaches classes in on the history of labor, the environment, and capitalism in the United States. He is the author of Cutover Capitalism: The Industrialization of the Northern Forest which was a finalist for the George Perkins Marsh prize for best book in environmental history presented by the American Society for Environmental History in 2025. This book combines the approaches of environmental and labor historians to investigate the unusual process of industrialization of the forest products industry in the northeastern part of the United States from roughly 1850 to 1950. In other words, Newton studies lumberjacks!
The book argues that, as rural America industrialized, the built environment and bodies of workers became conceived of as part of nature and these natural forces were mobilized to increase the scale and efficiency of production in the forest. The fulcrum of the argument is a 1904 scientific study of loggers’ diet that shows how the invention of the calorie and nutritional sciences allowed the metabolism of industrial workers to be refined and exploited as a natural force to speed up the labor process in the forest.
You can find links to Dr. Newton’s publications, writings, and syllabi here. There is a review a Cutover Capitalism written by economist Zoë Plakias in H-Net and another review by forest historian Steven C. Beda in AHR. You can watch Newton’s discussion on Cutover Capitalism with the Forest History Society here and his contribution to the 2025 Yale Forest Forum here. You can listen to an AI generated “podcast” on Cutover Capitalism here, and a “real” podcast on the book here. He microblogs on history @jason_l_newton on X and @jason-l-newton.bsky.social on Bluesky.
Professor Newton is on the education committee for the American Society for Environmental History. At the University of Utah he serves as the advisor for history majors in the honors college, for the History Student Association, and Phi Alpha Theta.
Education
- Ph.D., Syracuse University
- M.A., Syracuse University
- B.A., Syracuse University
Research Focus
Nineteenth and twentieth century U.S. history; environmental history; history of capitalism; labor history; race and immigration; gender history; digital history; public history.
Key Publications
Cutover Capitalism: The Industrialization of the Northern Forest October, (West Virginia University Press, 2024) finalist for the 2025 George Perkins Marsh prize for best book in environmental history presented by the American Society for Environmental History.
Yale Forest School Alumni Map, 1900-1913
Seeing like a Peon: Warcraft and Perspective in Forest History, part of the series, Playing Inside: Board Games, Video Games, and the and the Indoors series for the Network in Canadian History & Environment.
Commentary: The fear of the ‘other,’ Albany Times Union (New York), April 6, 2025
"Educating the Underworked: Dudley Allen Sargent and the Power of the Rural Working-class Body in the United States, 1875-1919" in Kellie Burns and Helen Proctor eds., Curriculum of The Body and The School as Clinic: Histories of Public Health and Schooling, 1900-2020, (Taylor & Francis, 2023)
"Cutover Capitalism: Connecting Labor and Nature in Forest Extraction," Environmental History, 28, no. 4 (2023): 656-667
"‘These French Canadian of the Woods are Half-Wild Folk’: Wilderness, Whiteness, and Work in North America, 1840–1955." Labour/Le Travail 77, no. 1 (2016): 121-150
Teaching
HIST 1700: American History
HIST 2700: US History to 1877
Awards
2024 2025, Adirondack Experience Research Fellow, Adirondack Experience, Blue Mountain Lake, NY