Dr. Philip J. Dreyfus
Associate Professor, History Department, San Francisco State University
1600 Holloway Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94132
pdreyfus@sfsu.edu
Interests: Environmental History, American West, California, Labor History.
Ph.D. 1993 Graduate School of the City University of New York
Dissertation: “Timber Workers, Unionism and Syndicalism in the Pacific Northwest, 1900-1917.”
M.Phil. 1988; M.A. 1982, Graduate School of the City University of New York
B.A. 1977, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, History and Political Science, City College of New York
SAN FRANCISCO STATE UNIVERSITY
Associate Professor, History Department, August 2008 to present
Assistant Professor, History Department, August 2002 to August 2008
Lecturer, History Department, January 1984 to August 2002
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, HAYWARD
Lecturer, History Department, March 1994 to December 1998
SAN JOSE STATE UNIVERSITY
Lecturer, History Department and Division of Technology, January 1983 to May 1994
MISSION COLLEGE, Santa Clara, CA
Instructor, History Department, June 1984 to January 1988
NASSAU COMMUNITY COLLEGE, Garden City, NY
Instructor, Sociology Department, January 1982 to August 1982
BRONX COMMUNITY COLLEGE, Bronx, NY 10453
Instructor, History Department, September 1981 to January 1982
QUEENS COLLEGE OF C.U.N.Y., Flushing, NY
Lecturer, History Department, January 1981 to June 1981
Courses taught:
Graduate Seminars-
Proseminars-
Upper Division-
Lower Division-
Natural Matters: An Environmental History of the United States, book manuscript in progress
Our Better Nature: Environment and the Making of San Francisco, University of Oklahoma Press, 2008, released April 2009.
“California Labor,” and “Industrial Unionism,” Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working Class History, edited by Eric Arnesen, Routledge Press, November 2006
“Nature, Militancy and the Western Worker: Socialist Shingles, Syndicalist Spruce,” Labor: Studies in Working Class History in the Americas, 1:3, September 2004
“The I.W.W. and the Limits of Inter-Ethnic Organizing: Reds, Whites and Greeks in Grays Harbor, Washington, 1912,” Labor History, 38:4, Fall 1997
“Skilled Labor and the Rise of the Modern Corporation: The Case of the Electrical Industry,” Labor History, 27:1, Winter 1985-86
BOOK REVIEWS
Mother Jones: Raising Cain and Consciousness by Simon Cordery, Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era, January 2012
Justinian Caire and Santa Cruz Island: The Rise and Fall of a California Dynasty by Frederic Caire Chiles, H-Environment, November 2011
Gold Rush Port: The Maritime Archaeology of San Francisco’s Waterfront by James P. Delgado, Pacific Historical Quarterly, May 2010
Land of Sunshine: An Environmental History of Metropolitan Los Angeles, edited by William Deverell and Greg Hise, H-Environment, December 2005
Creatures of Empire: How Domestic Animals Transformed Early America by Virginia Anderson, H-Environment, May 2005
Greater Portland: Urban Life and Landscape in the Pacific Northwest by Carl Abbott, Western Historical Quarterly, 34:1, Spring 2003
Critical Masses: Opposition to Nuclear Power in California, 1958-1978 by Thomas Wellock, H-California, August 1999
SCHOLARLY PRESENTATIONS & PUBLIC LECTURES
“Water: California’s Most Contested Resource,” US Department of Education Teaching American History Grant, Oakland Unified School District, June 2010.
“Enemy of Choice: the Anti-Chinese Movement in the Nineteenth-Century West,” and “Privileged Longings: the Class Basis of the Early Conservation Movement,” US Department of Education Teaching American History Grant, South Central Board of Cooperative Education Services and Colorado State University, Pueblo, June 2010.
Book talks: Our Better Nature: Environment and the Making of San Francisco:
Friends of the Leonard Library Lifetime Members' Luncheon, April 2012
Thoreau Center for Sustainability, San Francisco, April 2010
San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association, February 2010
Contra Costa Jewish Book and Arts Festival, November 2009
San Francisco Department of the Environment, November 2009
KPFA 94.1 FM, "Cover to Cover" with Denny Smithson, June 2009
Mrs. Dalloway's Books, Berkeley, June 2009
Pegasus Books, Berkeley, June 2009
Green Arcade Books, San Francisco, June 2009
San Francisco Public Library, Civic Center, May 2009
San Francisco Rotary Club, May 2009
"Popular Environmental Impulses and the Politics of Well-Being," "Understanding US Political Culture: The US Elections of 2008 and their Historical Context," 2008 Fulbright Commission Summer Institute for German University Teachers, September 2008
“The Big Quake, Clean Water and Dirty Politics,” “1906 and Beyond: Mayor Taylor’s Administration,” San Francisco History Center of the San Francisco Public Library, in association with the California Book Club, November 2007
“The Wilderness and the Garden: Conflicting Views of Nature and the Emergence of Modern American Environmental Values,” “American Values – Contested Values,” 2007 Fulbright American Studies Summer Institute for German University Teachers, September 2007
"Ethnicity & Class Consciousness in America: Immigrant and Native-born Workers, 1880s-1920s,” SFUSD Office of Teaching and Learning, “History of Immigration in the United States,” US Department of Education Teaching American History Grant, July 2007 & March 2008
"Society, Politics, and Economy in Ante-Bellum California,” SFUSD Office of Teaching and Learning, “The Civil War in California,” US Department of Education Teaching American History Grant, February 2007
“Class, Politics, and Unionism: The Worker as Citizen,” Citizenship & Identity in U.S. History Lecture Series, Teaching American History Grant, San Francisco Unified School District, April & August 2006, May 2007
“California’s Role in WWII Japanese-American Internment: Security, Civil Liberties, and Race,” Marin School of Arts & Technology, May 2006
“An Ecological Conquest: Colonial San Francisco and the Demise of the Native Order,” University High School, San Francisco, November 2004
“Natural Limits: Environment and the Birth of San Francisco,” Ziegler Lecture Series, Contra Costa Jewish Community Center, August 2004
“A Peculiar Phobia: California Anti-Asian Sentiment from the Gold Rush to the Second World War,” Ziegler Lecture Series, Contra Costa Jewish Community Center, October 2003
“The Environment: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.” SFSU History Department 4th Annual Student Forum. Moderator, “Culture, Ethnicity and Race” panel, May 2003
“California in the Great Depression,” Ziegler Lecture Series, Contra Costa Jewish Community Center, April 2003
“Nature, Radicalism and the Pacific Northwest,” SFSU History Students’ Association, Faculty Lecture Series, March 2002
“Water Wars! The California Conservation Movement 1900-1920,” Ziegler Lecture Series, Contra Costa Jewish Community Center, October 2000
“Female Reformer: Katherine Philips Edson and the California Progressive Movement, 1900-1930,” Lecture Series, San Francisco Towers, July 2000
“Understanding One Another, an African-American - Jewish Spiritual Dialogue,” Panel Discussion, Congregation Beth El, Berkeley, March 2000
“Reluctant Radicals: American Workers and Socialism in the Early Twentieth Century,” Lecture Series, San Francisco Towers, October 1999
“French Jewry, the Dreyfus Family and the Dreyfus Affair,” Lecture Series, Bnai Brith of Walnut Creek, July 1999
“Nature’s Warriors: John Muir, Theodore Roosevelt and the Battle for Hetch Hetchy,” Lecture Series, San Francisco Towers, June 1999
“Ecology and Colonialism in British North America,” Lecture Series, San Francisco Towers, March 1999
“From Servitude to Slavery: The Invention of Race in Colonial America,” Lecture Series, San Francisco Towers, July 1998
“Exploding the Myths of the Wild West: History V. Hollywood,” Tuesday Lecture Series, Contra Costa Jewish Community Center, October 1996
“The I.W.W. and the Limits of Inter-Ethnic Organizing,” American Historical Association, San Francisco, CA, August 1996
“The Great General Electric Strike of 1916,” Berkshire Historical Society, Pittsfield, MA, June 1984
“American Communists and the Nazi-Soviet Pact: Effects on the Labor Movement,” Five Points Society for American Studies, New York, NY, June 1982
Advisory Board Member, H-California, 2012 to present
Board Member, Fund for Labor Culture and History, 2011 to present
Journal referee, Pacific Historical Review, 2010 to present
Journal referee, Western Historical Quarterly, 2004 to present
Historical consultant, documentary film: City of White Gold: San Francisco in the Gilded Age, 2011
Historical consultant and commentator, PBS documentary television series: Saving the Bay: The Story of San Francisco Bay, 2009
Historical consultant and planning group member, interactive website: California Labor History Map, California State Library, 2002-03
Reviewer of on-line course materials, Xanedu.com, 2000-02
Editorial advisor, A Turbulent Voyage: Readings in African American Studies, Collegiate Press,1998-99
Historical consultant, documentary film: Song of the Sea, Just So Productions, 1997-98
Researcher, American Social History Project, Who Built America? by Bruce Levine et al, (Random House, NY, 1990), 1981-83
Faculty Advisor, Phi Alpha Theta, History Honors Society, 2011 to present
Advisor, California Studies Minor, 2011 to present
College of Arts and Humanities Sabbatical Leave-with-Pay Committee, 2011-12
Chair, History Department Hiring Committee in US Colonial/Atlantic World; Chair, History Department Long-Term Planning Committee; RTP Committee,
Graduate Assistant Coordinator, 2011-12
Chair, History Department Long-Term Planning Committee; Hiring Committee, RTP Committee, Graduate Assistant Coordinator, 2009-11
Board member, Friends of the Leonard Library, 2009-12
Fulbright Campus Evaluation Committee, 2009
Interim Chair, BSS Hiring Committee for Director of Labor Studies, 2007-08
Chair, History Department Hiring Committee in US Intellectual History & US Political History, Graduate Assistant Coordinator, 2007-08
University Graduation Requirements Task Force, BSS College Representative, 2006-08
SFSU Office of International Programs, Study Abroad Interview Committee, 2007
SFSU Labor Archives Student Essay Contest, Judge, 2006-07
Phi Beta Kappa Members-in-Course Committee, 2003 to present
History Department Hiring Committee in US Foreign Relations, Curriculum Committee, Graduate Assistant Coordinator, 2006-07
Chair, History Department Curriculum Committee; Graduate Assistant Coordinator, 2005-06
Chair, History Department Curriculum Committee; Social Committee, Graduate Assistant Coordinator, 2004-05
Chair, History Department Curriculum Committee; Graduate Assistant Coordinator, 2003-04
Chair, History Department Curriculum Committee; Social Committee, Hiring Committee in US Ethnic and Race Relations, 2002-03
Website development of “Resources for Students of California/Western US/Environmental History,” 2001-02
SFSU Faculty Merit Increase Appeals Panel, 2000-01
CFA Lecturer Representative, History Department, SFSU, 2000-02
JUDGE, California Faculty Association/SFSU Labor Archives Student Essay Contest, 1996-99
Sabbatical Leave with pay, Spring 2009
Excellent General Education Teacher, SFSU Advising Center, 1997, 1999, 2003, 2004
SFSU Faculty Merit Award 2000-2001
SFSU Faculty Merit Award 1999-2000
SFSU Faculty Performance Award 1997-98
Nominee – Phi Beta Kappa Northern California Association Excellence in Teaching Award 1996
University Fellow, CUNY 1980-81
University Fellow, CUNY 1979-80
Helbein Scholar, New York University, 1978-79 (declined)
Phi Beta Kappa, 1977