Matthew McKenzie

Professor

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US Merchant Marine 100-ton Inland Waters Master
US Merchant Marine 100-ton Near Coastal Waters Mate
Ph.D., New Hampshire

American Studies Program Coordinator
CT Obligatory Delegate, New England Fisheries Management Council

Areas of Specialty

Marine environmental history, eighteenth and nineteenth century American social and labor history; maritime history; history of tourism and working waterfronts.

Current Research Interests

“Scraping Bottom: Assessing the Social and Ecological Impacts of the North Atlantic Expansion of Beam- and Otter-Trawling in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries.” Interdisciplinary history and marine science investigation of long-term effect of bottom trawling on North Atlantic fisheries. Ruth Thurstan, University of Exeter, College of Life and Environmental Sciences; Emily Klein, Farallon Institute; and Brian Payne, Bridgewater State University, co-investigators (September, 2016 to present).

Selected Publications

Forthcoming Work

McKenzie, Matthew G., “Reassembling the Greater Gulf: Northwest Atlantic Environmental History and the Gulf of St. Lawrence System.” In Ed Macdonald, Claire Campbell, and Brian Payne (eds.), The Greater Gulf: An Environmental History of the Gulf of St. Lawrence (McGill-Queens University Press) (book chapter, accepted, forthcoming).

Books

McKenzie, Matthew G., Breaking the Banks: Representation and Realities in the New England Fisheries, 1866-1966 (Environmental History of the Northeast Series, University of Massachusetts Press, 2018).

McKenzie, Matthew G., Clearing the Coastline: The Nineteenth Century Ecological and Cultural Transformation of Cape Cod (Hanover, New Hampshire: University Press of New England, 2011).

Articles and Book Chapters

Loren McClenachan, Andrew B. Cooper, Marah Hardt, Matthew McKenzie, and Joshua A. Drew, “Conservation Implications of Omitting Historical Data Sources: Response to Baisre,” Conservation Biology (November, 2015).

Loren McClenachan, Joshua Drew, Andrew Cooper, and Matthew McKenzie, “The Importance of Surprising Results and Best Practices in Historical Ecology,” BioScience 65 (9) (September, 2015), pp. 932-939.

Matthew McKenzie, “Modernity and Marine Environmental History: Cultural Influences on the Mechanization of Georges Bank Fisheries, 1905-1932.” In Franziska Torma and John Gillis (eds.), Fluid Frontiers (Whitehorse Press, 2014), pp. 105-116.

McKenzie, Matthew G., “History’s Slippery Slope into Nostalgia [comment block].” In John N. Kittinger, Loren McClenachan, Keryn B. Gedan, Louise K. Blight (eds.), and Daniel Pauly (Foreword), Marine Historical Ecology in Conservation (University of California Press, 2014), p. 261.

McKenzie, Matthew G., “The Gardner Bill,” Island Journal (June, 2013).

Chiarappa, Michael, and Matthew G. McKenzie, “New Directions in Marine Environmental History: Introduction to the Environmental History Forum” (January, 2013).

Matthew McKenzie, “The Widening Gyre: Rethinking the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Collapse, 1850-2000.” In Heidbrink and Starkey (eds.), A History of the North Atlantic Fisheries, Volume II: The Modern Period (Bremerhaven, Germany: Deutsche Shiffartsmuseum, 2012).

Matthew McKenzie, “Iconic Fishermen and the Fates of New England Fisheries Regulations, 1883-1912.”  Environmental History 17 (January 2012), pp. 3–28.

Matthew McKenzie, “Baiting Our Memories: The Impact of Offshore Technology Change on the Species Around Cape Cod, 1860-1895.” In David Starkey, Poul Holm, and Michaela Barnard (eds.), OceansPast: Management Insights from the History of Marine Animal Populations (2007), pp. 77-89.

Matthew McKenzie, “Navigating Federalism: Federalists, the Boston Marine Society, and the Establishment of Federal Authority in Boston, 1789-1792.” Northern Mariner/Le Marin du Nord vol. XVI, no. 3 (July, 2006), pp. 1-14.

Randall R. Reeves, Matthew G. McKenzie, and Tim D. Smith, “History of Bermuda shore whaling, mainly for humpback whales,” Journal of Cetacean Research and Management, vol. 8, no 1. (2006), pp. 33-43.

Claesson, Stefan C., and Matthew McKenzie, for Andy Rosenberg (PI), “Stellwagen Bank Marine Historical Ecology, Phase I: Historical Sources Survey Report.” Prepared for the Stellwagen Bank National Marine Sanctuary, NOAA Contract/Grant No. NA04NO54290190 (2005).

Rosenberg, Bolster, Alexander, Leavenworth, Cooper, and McKenzie, “The History of Ocean Resources: Modeling Cod Biomass Using Historical Records,” Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, vol. 3, no. 2 (2005), pp. 78-84.

Matthew McKenzie, “Salem as Athenaeum: Academic Learning and Vocational Knowledge in the Early Republic,” in Morrison, Dane Anthony, and Nancy Lusignan Schultz, eds., Salem: Place, Myth and Memory (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004), pp. 91-105.

Review Essays And Encyclopedia Entries

McKenzie, Matthew G., “Naming Colonization,” Massachusetts Historical Review, vol. 19 (2017), pp. 153-157.

McKenzie, Matthew G., “Fisheries and Fishing.” Hugh Slotten (ed.), The Oxford Encyclopedia of the History of American Science, Medicine, and Technology (Oxford University Press, 2014).

Matthew McKenzie, “Clearing the Coastline: The Nineteenth Century Ecological and Cultural Transformation of Cape Cod: A Roundtable Response,” International Journal of Maritime History, vol. XXIII, no. 2 (December, 2011), pp. 359-363.

Matthew McKenzie, “Roundtable: Reviews of George A. Rose, Cod: The Ecological History of the North Atlantic Fisheries, with a Response by George A. Rose.” International Journal of Maritime History, vol. XX, no. 1 (June 2008), pp. 320-326.

Book Reviews

Richard Judd, Second Nature: An Environmental History of New England (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2014), Maine History 51 (2017), pp. 131-133.

Stephen Long, Thirty-Eight: The Hurricane that Transformed New England (2016), Connecticut History Review, vol. 56 (Spring 2017), pp. 117-118.

Robb Robinson, Martin Wilcox, and Matthew McCarthy (eds.), “Human and Environmental Interactions in the Development of the North Atlantic Fisheries,” Studia Atlantica 9 (2015). International Journal of Maritime History, vol. 28 (November 2016), pp. 817-819.

John T. Cumbler, Cape Cod: An Environmental History of a Fragile Ecosystem (2014). Environmental History, vol. 21 (April 2016), pp. 405–407.

Chris Pastore, Between Land and Sea: The Atlantic Coast and the Transformation of New England (2014). Journal of American History, vol. 102, no. 2 (September 2015), pp. 527-528.

Julie Urquhart, Tim G. Acott, David Symes, and Minghua Zhao (eds.), Social Issues in Sustainable Fisheries Management (Dordrecht: Springer, 2014). International Journal of Maritime History, vol. 27 (August 2015), pp. 621-623.

John R. Gillis, The Human Shore: Seacoasts in History (2012). Environmental History, vol. 18 (October, 2013), pp. 813-814.

Connie Chiang, Shaping the Shoreline: Fisheries and Tourism on the Monterey Coast (2008). International Journal of Maritime History, vol. XXI, no. 1 (June 2009), pp. 398-400.

Eric Jay Dolin, Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America (2007). International Journal of Maritime History, vol. XIX, no. 2 (2007), p. 478.

Sarah Tjossem, The Road to PICES: Scientific Cooperation in the North Pacific (2005). Isis, vol. 97, no. 4 (2006), pp. 802-803.

Virginia M. Walsh, Global Institutions and Social Knowledge: Generating Research at the Scripps Institution and the Inter-American Tropical Tuna Commission, 1900s-1990s (2004). Environmental History, vol. 11, no. 1 (2006), pp. 160-162.

William B. Gould IV, Diary of a Contraband: The Civil War Passage of a Black Sailor (2002). Journal of Southern History, vol. 70 (2004), pp. 446-447.

Paul Gilje, Liberty on the Waterfront: American Maritime Culture in the Age of Revolution (2004). The Northern Mariner/Le Marin du Nord, Nord, vol. 14, no. 2 (2004), pp.307-308.

Biography

McKenzie took his PhD in Maritime History from the University of New Hampshire in 2003. As a PhD candidate, he worked with UNH’s Gulf of Maine Cod Project, an interdisciplinary team of historians and fisheries scientists exploring ecological change in the 19th century Scotian Shelf cod-fishery. In 2003, McKenzie began teaching Maritime Studies at the Sea Education Association in Woods Hole, Mass., during which time he sailed offshore in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans in US and Canadian waters. At sea, he continued his courses while also filling in as Assistant Engineer, deckhand, and science deck lackey. He came to UConn’s Avery Point campus in August, 2006, where his position as American Studies Program Coordinator has pulled his interests closer inshore.

McKenzie’s book, Clearing the Coastline: The Nineteenth Century Ecological and Cultural Transformation of Cape Cod (University Press of New England, 2011) explores perceived changes in nineteenth century southern New England’s inshore marine ecology; fishermen’s and scientists’ responses to those changes; and how these economic and ecological transformations helped create the modern tourist communities of the early twentieth century.