Dr. Mark Barrow

FACULTY AFFILIATE   |   Global Change Center

History

ResearchGate  •  Dept Page

540-231-4099 •  barrow@vt.edu

Mark Barrow’s research and teaching lies at the intersection of the history of natural history and wildlife conservation, animal history, environmental history, and American cultural history. A professor in the Department of History since 2010 and a member of the Virginia Tech faculty since 1992, Barrow served as chair of the department from 2010 to 2019.

He is the author of three  books: A Passion for Birds: American Ornithology after Audubon (Princeton University Press, 1998), Nature's Ghosts: Confronting Extinction from the Age of Jefferson to the Age of Ecology (University of Chicago Press, 2009), and Gator!: The Making of America's Iconic Reptile, from First Encounters to Florida Man (University of Chicago Press, 2026).  He is also the author of a Substack: “Wild History: Stories of People and Wildlife in American Culture.” His current research projects explore the rise, fall, and resurgence of fur fashion in American and the history of encounters with the elusive ivory-billed woodpecker. 

Barrow has received numerous awards for teaching excellence at Virginia Tech, including, most recently, the William E. Wine Award, the Diggs Teaching Scholars Award, and the Teaching and Scholar Award for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. He received his doctorate in the history of science from Harvard University and his bachelor’s in history from the University of Florida.

A copy of his CV is available here.