About

Daniel Rinn’s biography:

Raised in the coastal redwoods of Humboldt County, California, I have been captivated by the natural world since childhood. Drawn away from the scenic beauty of home to study history, I completed a B.A. at Oglethorpe University in Atlanta.

Shortly thereafter I attended an M.A. program at the University of Oregon, where I produced a thesis on the intellectual origins of the New Left. Interested in pursuing additional graduate work in American intellectual history, I entered the PhD program at the University of Rochester. While at UR, my academic interests began to more directly incorporate my love of nature.

I am particularly interested in the work of Liberty Hyde Bailey (1858-1954), Aldo Leopold (1887-1948). and Wendell Berry (b. 1934). Figures I term pragmatic naturalists, Bailey, Leopold, and Berry did not subsume humans into the natural world, losing sight of the important role culture plays in the environment.  Nor did they merely cite human well-being as a reason for protecting the non-human world.  They maintained that while culture and nature were inextricably linked, each played a unique role in human experience.

If you would like to know more about my current work, please take a look at my CV here. You can also read my article on Liberty Hyde Bailey, blog entries for the Oregon Digital Newspaper Program and the Journal of the History of Ideas, as well as my essay on redwoods and marijuana for the Washington Post.