Keith Pluymers
Associate Professor
Office
SCH Schroeder Hall 312
Office Hours
Monday and Wednesday, 11-12; 2-3; and by appointment
Office Phone
Email
- About
- Education
- Awards & Honors
- Selected Research
Biography
After completing my BA in History at the University of Delaware, I earned my PhD at the University of Southern California. Prior to joining ISU, I was a postdoctoral instructor at Caltech.
Current Courses
HIS 332.001 Environmental History
HIS 429.001 Environmental History
HIS 200.005 Historical Conversations: Introduction to Historiography
HIS 400.003 Independent Study
HIS 490.003 Readings -- Field Of Study
HIS 101.003 Western Civilization To 1500
HIS 101.004 Western Civilization To 1500
Teaching Interests & Areas
Early Modern Europe, Environmental History, British and Irish History, Atlantic World, Global History
Research Interests & Areas
My first book No Wood, No Kingdom: Political Ecology in the English Atlantic (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2021) examines fears of wood scarcity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the ways in which they shaped English colonial expansion.
My next project examines the history of municipal water supplies, steam power, and climate in the English Atlantic World.
Ph D
University of Southern California
Los Angeles, CA
BA History
University of Delaware
Newark, DE
Environmental Stewardship Award
ISU Office of Sustainability
2022
Kenneth A. and Mary Ann Shaw Teaching Fellowship
ISU College of Arts and Sciences
2022
John Ben Snow Prize for Best Book on British Studies Pre-1800
North American Conference on British Studies
2022
Outstanding University Teaching Award (Teaching Initiative)
Illinois State University
2021
Teaching Initiative Award
College of Arts and Sciences
2020
Research Initiative Award (College of Arts and Sciences nominee)
Illinois State University
2019
Grants and Contracts
Shelby Cullom Davis Center Fellowship
Keith Pluymers.
Princeton University, Department of History, Shelby Cullom Davis Center. September 1 2023 - December 31 2023
William T. Golden Fellow (short-term)
Keith Pluymers.
American Philosophical Society. July 6 2023 - August 6 2023
American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Short-Term Fellowship
Keith Pluymers.
Library Company of Philadelphia. June 2021 - July 2021
New Faculty Initiative Grant
Keith Pluymers.
Illinois State University. July 1 2019 - July 31 2019
International Seminar Series: Local and Global Environments in Conversation
Eric Godoy, Keith Pluymers, Larissa Kennedy.
International Studies Program. - 2019
Performances and Exhibits
Pressing Plants
Keith Pluymers, Joseph Armstrong, Angela Bonnell, Melissa Daliyah Oresky, Jin S Lee.
Milner Library. September 3 2019 - November 10 2019
Keith Pluymers, Joseph Armstrong, Angela Bonnell, Melissa Daliyah Oresky, Jin S Lee.
Milner Library. September 3 2019 - November 10 2019
Book Review
MICHAEL J. JARVIS. Isle of Devils, Isle of Saints: An Atlantic History of Bermuda, 1609-1684. Early America: History, Context, Culture. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022. Pp. 496. $65.00 (cloth).
Keith Pluymers.
(2024), 63, 220-222, https://doi.org/10.1017/jbr.2023.208, Journal of British Studies
Port Cities of the Atlantic World: Sea-Facing Histories of the U.S. South ed. by Jacob Steere-Williams and Blake C. Scott (review)
Keith Pluymers.
(2024), 90, 814-815, https://doi.org/10.1353/soh.2024.a939510, Journal of Southern History
Review: Managing the River Commons: Fishing and New England's Rural Economy
Keith Pluymers.
(2024), 129, 295-296, https://doi.org/10.1093/ahr/rhad556, American Historical Review
Review: England's Islands in a Sea of Troubles by David Cressy
Keith Pluymers.
(2023), 95, 953-954, Journal of Modern History
Review: Fir and Empire: The Transformation of Forests in Early Modern China
Keith Pluymers.
(2023), 11, 11-14, H-Environment Roundtable Reviews
Review: Kate Luce Mulry, An Empire Transformed: Remolding Bodies and Landscapes in the Restoration Atlantic
Keith Pluymers.
(2023), 78, 328-330, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences
“Ecologies of Freedom and the Challenge for Environmental History”
Keith Pluymers.
(2022), Commonplace: The Journal of Early American Life
The Amateur Hour: A History of College Teaching in America by Jonathan Zimmerman
Keith Pluymers.
(2021), 46, 34-35, Teaching History: A Journal of Methods
Ellen Browning Scripps: New Money and American Philanthropy [Book Review]
Keith Pluymers.
(2020), 102, 319-321, https://doi.org/10.1525/scq.2020.102.3.319, Southern California Quarterly
Nature and the Environment in Nineteenth-Century Ireland [Book Review]
Keith Pluymers.
(2020), 25, 802-804, https://doi.org/10.1093/envhis/emaa042, Environmental History
Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore. A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2018. Pp. 328. $34.95 (cloth), $24.95 (paperback and e-book). [Review]
Keith Pluymers.
(2020), 45, 71-73, Teaching History: A Journal of Methods
A Biography of a Map in Motion: Augustine Herrman’s Chesapeake. By Christian J. Koot. (New York: New York University Press, 2018. Pp. xiv, 283. $40, ISBN 978-1-4798-3729-8) [Review]
Keith Pluymers.
(2019), Journal of Southern History
Book, Authored
No Wood, No Kingdom: Political Ecology in the English Atlantic
Keith Pluymers.
(2021), University of Pennsylvania Press
Book, Chapter
‘Pirates’ and the Problems of Plantation in Seventeenth-Century Ireland
Keith Pluymers.
(2015), 79-108, Governing the Sea in the Early Modern Era: Essays in Honor of Robert C. Ritchie
Journal Article
Regulating the City: Streetscaping, Sewers, and the Project of Universal Drainage in Philadelphia
Keith Pluymers.
Journal for the History of Knowledge, 6, 143-162, (2025), 10.55283/jhk.19110
Composting in the herbarium
Keith Pluymers, Melissa Daliyah Oresky.
Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture, (52), 156-172, (2020)
Atlantic Iron: Wood Scarcity and the Political Ecology of Early English Expansion
Keith Pluymers.
William and Mary Quarterly, 73 (3), 389-426, (2016)
Taming the Wilderness in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century Ireland and Virginia
Keith Pluymers.
Environmental History, 16 (4), 610 - 632, (2011)
Presentations
“Cleansing the Streets: Water and Waste in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia"
Keith Pluymers.
History of Science Society Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA, November 14, 2025
Memory, Chronology, and Causation in the Deforestation of Ireland
Keith Pluymers.
Convergences and divergences in the relationship between industries and forestry in Europe: conservation, management, uses and environmental impact (14th-19th centuries), Aranjuez, Spain, October 22, 2025
Dragons and Mud: Steam Engines and London’s Eighteenth-Century Water Supply
Keith Pluymers.
Western Conference on British Studies Annual Meeting, St. Louis, MO, October 10, 2025
From the Forest Laws to the Beginnings of Forestry Science in the English Atlantic, 1511–1691
Keith Pluymers.
Yale Forest Forum, Online, September 4, 2025
Current Trends in Environmental History
Keith Pluymers.
Omohundro Institute Annual Conference, Charleston, SC, June 14, 2025
Sewers, Streets, and Gutters as Climate Infrastructure in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia
Keith Pluymers.
American Society for Environmental History Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh, PA, April 10, 2025
Bridging the Divide: Environmental History, Environmental Education, and the Social Studies Classroom
Richard L Hughes, Keith Pluymers, Grace Bartlett, Emma Malone.
Spring Symposium on Teaching History and the Social Sciences, Normal, IL, February 21, 2025
Climate Anxiety, Climate Ambition, and the Creation of Philadelphia’s Waterworks
Keith Pluymers.
CLIMATE AND CRISIS, 1660-1820, Urbana-Champaign, IL, April 19, 2024
Climate Anxiety and Climate Ambition in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia
Keith Pluymers.
Annenberg Seminar, Philadelphia, PA, November 2, 2023
Pumps and Protosystems: Water Before the Waterworks in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia
Keith Pluymers.
Shelby Cullom Davis Seminar, Princeton, NJ, October 6, 2023
Memories of Early Modern Deforestation and the Making of Modern Irish Environmentalism
Keith Pluymers.
Tudor and Stuart Ireland Conference, Maynooth University, Maynooth, Ireland, August 19, 2023
Water, Steam, and Philadelphia’s Eighteenth-Century Anthropocene
Keith Pluymers.
Society for the History of the Early American Republic Second Book Workshop, Philadelphia, PA, July 13, 2023
Imperial Visions and Colonial Omission in John Evelyn’s Sylva, or A Discourse of Forest-Trees and the Propagation of Timber in His Majesty’s Dominions (1662)
Keith Pluymers.
Usages de l’arbre dans l’Angleterre de la première modernité (Usage of the Tree in the Early Modern Period), Online (Paris, France), April 3, 2023
A Grand Narrative for the Early Modern World: The Twentieth Anniversary of The Unending Frontier (Roundtable)
Keith Pluymers.
American Society for Environmental History Annual Conference, Boston, MA, March 24, 2023
Green Imperialism Revisited
Keith Pluymers.
Medieval and Renaissance Environments and Sustainability, Columbus, OH, November 18, 2022
‘Extreme’ Climates, Disease, and Urban Infrastructure
Keith Pluymers.
North American Conference on British Studies, Chicago, IL, November 12, 2022
Book Break: Keith Pluymers on No Wood, No Kingdom
Keith Pluymers.
Book Breaks, Online, September 4, 2022
No Wood, No Kingdom
Keith Pluymers.
Greenhouse Online Book Talks, Online, May 23, 2022
Indicted Weirs and the Competing Political Ecologies of Plantation Ireland
Keith Pluymers.
Early Modern Ireland and the Wider World, San Marino, CA, April 8, 2022
Teaching the Climate Crisis
Keith Pluymers.
American Society for Environmental History, Eugene, OR, March 24, 2022
Scarcity and Early Modern English Expansion
Keith Pluymers.
Early Modern Europe Seminar, Princeton, NJ, October 13, 2021
No Wood, No Kingdom Book Talk
Keith Pluymers.
Early American Seminar Series, San Marino, CA, September 11, 2021
Mud, Steam, and London’s Eighteenth-Century Water Companies
Keith Pluymers.
British History Seminar, Online, July 19, 2021
Water and Power in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia
Keith Pluymers.
History Department Brown Bag Series, Chicago, IL, February 24, 2021
Wood Conservation, Atlantic Trade, and the Landscapes of Early English Barbados
Keith Pluymers.
North American Conference on British Studies, Vancouver, BC, November 15, 2019