Dr. John Mayer Crum is an environmental historian exploring how settler colonialism, Native resistance, and extractive capitalism transformed the ecologies of the U.S. South. John holds a Ph.D. in American History from Rice University and previously served as the John Boles Editorial fellow at the Journal of Southern History. His dissertation explored how the Cherokee Nation, white settlers, and Federal authorities shaped competing landscapes of state power in the nineteenth-century Tennessee Valley. He is currently developing a book project focused on the environmental vision of the Cherokee state-building project. He is also interested in situating southern Appalachia and the South in the context of hemispheric and global environmental histories, as well as contemporary efforts to contend with the environmental legacies of empire.

At Berea College, he teaches courses on early American history, Latin American history, Native history, and environmental history, with a focus on encouraging students to cultivate habits of attention and reflection through encounters with primary sources.