Annie Gilbert Coleman

Professor Coleman earned her BA in History from Williams College and her MA and PhD in History of the American West at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Her research focuses on the cultural and environmental history of outdoor sports and recreation, and she teaches courses on Wilderness, Sports, and national parks as well as 20th c history.  Early publications include “The Unbearable Whiteness of Skiing” (Pacific Historical Review, 1994) and the book Ski Style: Sport and Culture in the Rockies (Kansas, 2004).  More recent articles include “River Rats in the Archive: Nature, Texts, and a Moving History of the Colorado” (in Rendering Nature, 2015) and “Shredding Mountain Lines: GoPro, Mobility, and the Spatial Politics of Outdoor Sports” (in The American Environment Revisited, 2018).  Her second book, which is a history of professional outdoor guides and their labor, examines how professional guides have created American wilderness as a site of scenic adventure and sport and will be published by Oxford University Press.  Coleman directs the Minor in Sport, Media, and Culture (SMAC).  She is a Faculty Affiliate with the Initiative on Race and Resilience, the Environmental Humanities Initiative, and the Environmental Change Initiative on campus, and serves on the Faculty Advisory Board for the Notre Dame Institute for Advanced Study.