Dana Bogart-Cress, received her Bachelor’s degree in history here at Bowling Green State University back in 2012. She just recently finished her Master’s degree in History at Miami University after finishing a thesis titled My Great Terror: North West Ohio’s Environmental Borderland.

She returned to BGSU to give a lecture on the environmental history of the Black Swamp in Dr. Amilcar Challu’s Environmental History class on February 16.  Students were interested to learn about a topic so close to home. Her lecture introduced students to primary sources that she used in her thesis and talked about the draining and deforestation of the swamp to make it  prime agricultural land. These events were contentious and involved a clash of different and incompatible land uses and cultural values between natives and Euro-American settlers. Dana Bogart-Cress is currently working with AmeriCorps – Ohio History Service Corps in projects related to historic preservation. She can be followed on Twitter at @danambogart

Contributor: Nicole Farley, History Major, class of ‘17