Michael S. Kideckel

Historian and Educator

I researches histories of nature, food, gender, health, and capitalism. I received a PhD in history from Columbia University in 2018. My book project, Fresh from the Factory: Breakfast Cereal, Natural Food, and the Business of Reform, 1890-1920, is currently under contract with Oxford University Press. It uses the breakfast cereal industry’s advocacy of “natural food” to explain the industrial roots of American ideas about nature. The work is based on my dissertation, which received the 2019 Bancroft Dissertation Award. 

In my teaching career, I have run courses on topics including US history, geography, environmental history, and mass media. I also emphasized collective memory, inclusion and exclusion, and the building of historical narratives. 

Write to me here.