D
r. Newton joined the UNC Charlotte history department in 2020 as the inaugural post-doctoral fellow in the Capitalism Studies program. He was subsequently hired as an assistant teaching professor. His teaching specialties are capitalism, labor, and environmental history. Click the “Teaching” tab for more information on the classes that Dr. Newton offers.
He is currently writing a book titled “Cutover Capitalism: The Industrialization of the Northern Forest.” This book is a labor history of a forest which combines the approaches of environmental and labor historians and investigates the unusual process of industrialization of the forest products industry in the American Northeast from roughly 1850 to 1950. In other words, he studies lumberjacks!
The book argues that, as rural America industrialized, the built environment and bodies of workers became conceived of as part of nature and these natural forces were mobilized to increase the scale and efficiency of production in the forest. The fulcrum of the argument is a 1904 scientific study of loggers’ diet that shows how the invention of the calorie and nutritional sciences allowed the metabolism of industrial workers to be refined and exploited as a natural force to speed up the labor process in the forest. Click the “Research” tab for more of Dr. Newton’s writing.
You can find links to Dr. Newton’s publications, writings, and syllabi here.
Dr. Newton is also the director of the History Learning Community which is open to all incoming UNC Charlotte Freshmen. Click “History Learning Community” for more information.