Associate Professor of History and Environmental Studies
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania (1992)
American Cultural/Environmental; Maritime; Folklife; Upper Midwest/Great Lakes; Historic Preservation; Cultural Resource Management; Public History

Affiliate Faculty Member: American Studies Program; Canadian Studies Program


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Office: 4414 Friedmann Hall
E-mail: michael.chiarappa@wmich.edu
Phone: (269) 387-4598

Teaching and Research

My research and teaching is focused in the areas of American environmental history, the history of America’s built environments and landscapes, American maritime history, and local/regional history. I am also a principal participant in our department’s Public History Program where I teach courses in historic preservation, documentation methods, and cultural resource management. I have conducted numerous field schools focusing on historic preservation, museology, oral history, and local history. In my role as a public historian and historic preservationist, I have worked with the National Park Service, the Smithsonian Institution, the Michigan, Wisconsin, and Maryland Departments of Natural Resources, the Michigan State University Museum and the New Jersey-based Bayshore Discovery Project, as well as a consultant to numerous museums and governmental and non-governmental organizations.

Selected Publications and Public History Projects:

Fish for All: An Oral History of Multiple Claims and Divided Sentiment on Lake Michigan, Co-author Kristin M. Szylvian (East Lansing: Michigan State University Press, 2003).
* 2003 Award of Merit-Historical Society of Michigan

"New York City's Oyster Barges: Architecture's Threshold Role Along the Urban Waterfront," Buildings and Landscapes 14 (2007): 84-108.

“Great Lakes Commercial Fishing Architecture: The Endurance and Transformation of a Region's Landscape/Waterscape.” In Perspectives in Vernacular Architecture X, eds. Kenneth Breisch and Alison Hoagland, 217-232. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2005.

“Overseeing the Family of Whitefishes: The Priorities and Debates of Coregonid Management on America’s Great Lakes, 1870-2000. Environment and History 11(May 2005):163-194.

“Domesticated Waters: Delaware Bay Oystering’s Science and Technology in Ecomuseological Perspective.” In MaritimeTechnologies: Transactions of the International Committee For The Conservation of Industrial Heritage, 117-122. Athens, Greece, 2000.

Selected Public History Projects

Landscape Documentation/Historic Preservation

2006-Built on the Lakeshore: Documenting, Interpreting and Preserving a Great Lakes Maritime Landscape

2005- Buildings, Boats and Work at Piney Neck: The Tradition and Transformation of a Chesapeake Landscape

2003-Michigan’s Fruit Belt: The Architecture and Landscape of an Agricultural Region

2003-Paper Lives, Paper Landscapes: Preservation Planning at Kalamazoo’s Paper Mills

2002-Making Fish in Beautiful Places: The Landscape Architecture of Michigan’s Fish Hatcheries

Museum Exhibition

2005-2006 “World’s Largest: The Benton Harbor Fruit Market and Southwest Michigan’s Fruit Belt”Ft. Miami Heritage Society, St. Joseph, Michigan

2003-2004 “Shared Waters: Natives and French on the Great Lakes,” Ft. Miami Heritage Society, St. Joseph, Michigan *2004 Best Exhibit Award-Center for Great Lakes Culture

2000-2001 "Fish for All: Perspectives on the History of Lake Michigan Fisheries Management and Policy"