Daniel Vandersommers

• Ph.D., The Ohio State University, 2014

Dan Vandersommers is an assistant professor of environmental history and a lead editor of the journal Animal History, published with the University of California Press and housed at the University of Dayton College of Arts and Sciences. He is author of the award-winning Entangled Encounters at the National Zoo: Stories from the Animal Archive (University Press of Kansas, 2023). Entangled Encounters was a finalist for both the ASEH George Perkins Marsh Prize and the Susanne M. Glasscock Book Prize, and it won the Ohio Academy of History Book Award.

Dan teaches courses in animal history, climate history, global history, American history and environmental literature. And he is currently writing a new book titled The Zoo, Uncaged: A New History (under contract with Reaktion Books), which explores the 5,000-year history of exoticism that is central to zoological display today. 

Beyond this book, Dan is working on projects concerning the history of pet store supply chains and the creation of "animal capital." In the largest register, Dan's work examines environmental ideas within their cultural frames. He is especially interested in the ecologies where ideologies, materialities and living beings merge.

Before arriving at the University of Dayton, Dan served as an NEH Postdoctoral Fellow at the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine (CHSTM) in Philadelphia (2017-2018), and as an SSHRC-funded Postdoctoral Fellow in Animal History at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario (2016-17). He has previously taught at Wittenberg University, Kenyon College, University of Mississippi, McMaster University, Ball State University and The Indiana Academy for Science, Mathematics and Humanities. 

Dan earned his Ph.D. in Early American History in 2014 from The Ohio State University.

Books

1. Entangled Encounters at the National Zoo: Stories of Science, Culture, and Conservation. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2023.

** Finalist for the Susanne M. Glasscock Book Prize for interdisciplinary humanities

** Finalist for the George Perkins Marsh Prize, the American Society for Environmental History's choice for best book in environmental history

** Winner of the Ohio Academy of History Junior Scholar Book Award

** Semifinalist for The Society of Midland Authors Book of the Year in History

2. Zoo Studies: A New Humanities. Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 2019. (Co-edited with Tracy McDonald.) 

** Winner of the Choice “Outstanding Academic Title” award, December 2020

Other publications

Daniel Vandersommers, "Behavior, Habitat, and the Colonizing Work of Zoology: Displaying Indigenous Americans in the Cincinnati Zoo, 1895-1896," American Indian Quarterly (forthcoming, in production).

Daniel Vandersommers, "Pronghorn Language and Entangled Visions for 'Modern' Animal Histories," Modern American History (April 2025).

Daniel Vandersommers, Thomas Aiello, Susan Nance, "Animal History: A Brief Introduction to Its Past and Future," Animal History (January 2025).

Daniel Vandersommers, "Opening Aquaria," in Heterotopia, Radical Imagination, and Liberated Animals: Manifesting Futures of Shattered Orders, ed. Paula Arcari. (Routledge, December 2024).

Daniel Vandersommers, "The Sectionalism of the National Zoo, 1888-1891: Animals, Language, Politics, and Laughter," in Animal Histories of the Civil War Era, ed. Earl Hess (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2022): 228-239.

Daniel Vandersommers, "Failed Zoo Experiments: Primatology, Aeronautics, and the Animality of 'Modern Science,' 1891-1903," in Zoo Studies: A New Humanities (Montreal: MQUP, 2019): 65-92.

Daniel Vandersommers and Tracy McDonald, "Introduction: Towards a New Humanities," in Zoo Studies: A New Humanities (Montreal: MQUP, 2019): 3-18.

Daniel Vandersommers, "Narrating Animal History from the Crags: A Turn-of-the-Century Tale about Mountain Sheep, Resistance, and a Nation," Journal of American Studies 51, no. 3 (August 2017): 751-777.

Daniel Vandersommers, "What's All Happening at the Zoo?" Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective (January 2017).

Daniel Vandersommers, "Animal Activism and the Zoo-Networked Nation," Humanimalia 6, no. 2 (March 2015): 111-165.

Selected talks and presentations since 2018

April 2025: "How 'Habitat' Naturalizes Its Other: Toward Critical Histories of Environmental Display," Pittsburgh, PA, American Society for Environmental History.

March 2025: "Behavior, Habitat, and Postcolonial Zoology," Environmental History and History of Technology Working Group, Ohio State University, invited lecture.

November 2024: "Colonialism, Ethnological Displays, and the Creation of Zoology," Southern Methodist University, Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts.

October 2024: "Zoos, Science & Technology Studies, and the History of Zoology," Department of Biology Ph.D. program, University of Dayton, invited lecture.

August 2024: "Zoo History and the Environmental Humanities," The Greenhouse Center for Environmental Humanities at University of Stavanger, online book talk.

May 2024: "The Intersections of Animal Studies & the History of Science and Medicine," Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies and Jinan University, online book talk.

March 2024: "Animal History Workshop in China and Germany," Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies," online workshop.

November 2023: "Meet the Editors of Animal History," ASEH Connects Virtual Series.

November 2023: "Zoology after Wounded Knee: Settler Colonialism and the Search for 'Behavior' in Zoos," Portland, OR, History of Science Society.

September 2023: Keynote address: "Scientific Cultures and Cultural Sciences: The Secrets of Zoo History," summer speaker series, Toronto Zoo.

September 2023: "Animal History: A Workshop Toward Layered Living in a Multispecies World," a workshop, Cal Poly University Humboldt.

September 2023: Keynote address: "Following Runaway Animals: Stories from the Zoo for Wilding History," Cal Poly University Humboldt. (Rescheduled from May)

March 2023: "Displaying Cree and Sioux in the Cincinnati Zoo: Indigenous Display, Critical Zoology, and the Violence of 'Behavior,'" Boston, American Society for Environmental History.

November 2022: "Monkeys, Public Health, and Breathing Tuberculosis: A Zoo Story, 1901-1914," Chicago, History of Science Society.

October 2022: "Zoo History: The Hauntings of Zoo Animals," Bowling Green State University, Invited lecture for History graduate seminar.

October 2022: "Bighorns, Bison, and Zoo Animals in the American West," Cal Poly University, Humboldt, Invited talk for Environmental History of the American West undergraduate seminar.

October 2022: "Decolonizing Aquaria: A More-Than-Human History for the Future," Purdue University, Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts.

May 3, 2022: "Excavating Zoo History: Hidden Knowledges in the Zoo," Toronto Zoo, ReNewZoo Student Symposium.

May 1, 2022: "Excavating Zoo History: The Meanings of Animals," Toronto Zoo, ReNewZoo Student Symposium.

March 2022: "Zoo Autopsies, Ecologies, and the Airborne Nature of Tuberculosis," Eugene, OR, American Society for Environmental History.

February 2022: "The Crossroads of Science and Popular Culture," OSU, Talk and discussion for Environmental History and History of Technology graduate seminar.

November 2019: "The Civil War and the Zoo: Animals and Political Laughter," UC Irvine, Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts.

September 2019: Keynote Address: "Toward Ecological Futures: Zoo Conservation and Embracing Narratives of Entanglement," Calgary Zoo, CAZA annual meeting.

April 2019: "The Sectionalism of the National Zoo: Animals, Language, Politics" Columbus, OH, American Society for Environmental History.

October 2018: "Fish and the Problem(s) of Historical Scales," Toronto, ON, Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts.