James E. Fickle

Professor

Office: 129 Mitchell
Telephone: 901.678.3382
Fax: 901.678.2720
E-mail: jfickle@memphis.edu
Education: Ph.D., History, Louisiana State University, 1970

Fields of Interest

My most recent books include Mississippi Forests and Forestry, published in 2001 by The University Press of Mississippi, which is the first comprehensive study of the forests in a particular state. A companion book Timber: A Photographic History of Mississippi Forestry appeared in November 2004 and includes some two hundred historic photographs and a brief narrative. Many of the photographs are published for the first time or have been misidentified in earlier publications. Also appearing in 2004 was Arthur Temple College of Forestry: The Story of Forestry At SFA, which I co-authored with Archie P. MacDonald. It is a history of the forestry school at Stephen F. Austin State University in Texas.

I am near completion of a history of the forestry profession for the Forest History Society, and I have received a grant from the U.S. Forest Service to write a history of bottomland hardwood research in the South. I have been conducting interviews and visiting archival depositories across the nation in connection with this project. I am also working with the Forest History Society and the U.S. Forest Service on a history of the Forest Inventory and Analysis program of the Forest Service. Additionally, I am writing a history of Alabama forests, and a history of American tennis for the University of Illinois Press “Sports and American Society” series.

I have been appointed as Visiting Professor of Forest and Environmental History at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, where I will research and write a history of the first century of the oldest school of forestry in the United States.

Courses taught

I teach courses in U.S. business and economic history, labor/working class history, and environmental history. My publications and research interests have centered around the forest products industries, with books and articles on labor in that industry, trade associations and organizational structure, and the historical development of the profession of forestry. In the labor area I am particularly interested in biracial unions and organizational efforts. I have a strong interest in conservation, land use, and land and resource management, which combines my recreational interests as a backpacker, camper, climber, and rafter with my academic specialties.

Representative publications

• Timber: A Photographic History of Mississippi Forestry (University Press of Mississippi, 2004)
• Mississippi Forests and Forestry (University Press of Mississippi, 2001)
• The New South and the “New Competition”: Trade Association Development in the Southern Pine Industry (University of Illinois Press, for the Forest History Society, 1980)