Rate My Professor Benjamin Johnson

Benjamin H. Johnson is Professor in the Department of History and the School of Environmental Sustainability at Loyola University Chicago, where he serves as Graduate Programs Director. He received his Ph.D. and M.A. from Yale University in 2000 and 1996, respectively, and his B.A. summa cum laude from Carleton College in 1994. His academic career includes positions at Loyola University Chicago since 2014, progressing from Assistant Professor to full Professor; Associate Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (2011-2014) and Southern Methodist University (2007-2011); Assistant Professor at Southern Methodist University (2002-2007) and the University of Texas at San Antonio (2001-2002); and Instructor in History at the California Institute of Technology (2000-2001).

Dr. Johnson's research specializations encompass environmental history, North American borderlands, Latino history, and the history of the U.S. West, with particular emphasis on Texas history and Progressive-era conservation. His major publications include Revolution in Texas: How a Forgotten Rebellion and Its Bloody Suppression Turned Mexicans into Americans (Yale University Press, 2003); Bordertown: The Odyssey of an American Place, with photographs by Jeffrey Gusky (Yale University Press, 2008); Escaping the Dark, Gray City: Fear and Hope in Progressive-Era Conservation (Yale University Press, 2017); and Texas: An American History (Yale University Press, 2025). He has co-edited Bridging National Borders in North America: Transnational and Comparative Histories with Andrew Graybill (Duke University Press, 2010); Major Problems in the History of North American Borderlands with Pekka Hämäläinen (Cengage Learning, 2011); and other volumes such as Making of the American West: People and Perspectives (ABC-CLIO, 2007) and Steal this University: The Labor Movement and the Corporatization of Higher Education (Routledge, 2003). Notable articles appear in the Journal of American History, Environmental History, and Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. Johnson has earned prestigious awards, including the Organization of American Historians Friend of History Award (2021, shared with Refusing to Forget collaborators), American Historical Association Herbert Feis Award for public history (2020), Society for the History of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era Roger D. Bridge Distinguished Service Award (2019), and Western History Association Autry Public History Award (2017). He co-founded Refusing to Forget, advancing public history on 1910s racial violence through markers and exhibits; formerly edited The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era; and co-edits the Journal of Texas History and the David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History at University of North Carolina Press. His courses cover U.S. environmental history, climate and history, borderlands, and transnational history.