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Susan Schrepfer
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<h2 id="life">Life</h2> <p>Susan Schrepfer was born in <a href="/facts/San_Francisco/cb9l7hbC">San Francisco</a> in 1941, and grew up in <a href="/facts/Gilroy%2c_California/unoMrnLx">Gilroy, California</a>. After graduating from high school in Gilroy, she worked as a farm labourer before studying history at the University of California, Santa Barbara, receiving her AB in 1963. She gained an MA (1965) and a PhD in history at the University of California, Riverside.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:2" href="#fn:2"><sup>2</sup></a> </p><p>As a researcher at the <a href="/facts/Forest_History_Society/Ds0x00Lw">Forest History Society</a>, Schrepfer combined archival research and oral history to reconstruct the differing priorities of environmentalists, scientists and <a href="/facts/History_of_the_lumber_industry_in_the_United_States/7srpvQbz">timber industry</a> executives in nineteenth- and twentieth-century America. In 1974 she joined <a href="/facts/Rutgers_University/dC8074a9">Rutgers University</a> as an assistant professor of history. She revised her PhD dissertation, publishing it as <i>The Fight to Save the Redwoods</i> (1983), winning the Forest History Society's Biennial Book Award. In 1988 she helped found the Rutgers Institute for High School Teachers, a collaboration between the state university's history faculty and <a href="/facts/New_Jersey/pI5k19S7">New Jersey</a>'s school teachers.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:3" href="#fn:3"><sup>3</sup></a> </p><p>In 2005 she published <i>Nature's Altars</i>, praised by one reviewer as "the best monograph in US environmental history yet to appear to use gender as its central category of analysis”.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:4" href="#fn:4"><sup>4</sup></a> Diagnosed with <a href="/facts/Pancreatic_cancer/6h9GIInW">pancreatic cancer</a>, she was given only months to live in 2008.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:5" href="#fn:5"><sup>5</sup></a> She died on March 3, 2014.<a class="footnote-ref" id="fnref:6" href="#fn:6"><sup>6</sup></a> She is survived by her daughter, Amy, and step-daughter, Cecilia. She was predeceased by her partner, Edward Ortiz. </p> <h2 id="works">Works</h2> <ul><li>(with Edwin van Horn Larson and Elwood R. Maunder) <i>A history of the Northeastern Forest Experiment Station, 1923 to 1973</i>. Upper Darby, PA.: Forest Service, 1973.</li> <li><i>The fight to save the redwoods: a history of environmental reform, 1917-1978</i>. Madison, Wis.: University of Wisconsin Press, 1983.</li> <li>(ed, with Philip Scranton) <i>Industrializing organisms: introducing evolutionary history</i>. New York: Routledge, 2003</li> <li><i>Nature's altars: mountains, gender, and American environmentalism</i>. Lawrence, Kan.: University Press of Kansas, 2005</li></ul> <h2 id="external-links">External links</h2> <ul><li>Char Miller, <a href="https://www.kcet.org/redefine/a-woman-of-the-woods-susan-r-schrepfer-1941-2014">A Woman of the Woods: Susan R. Schrepfer, 1941-2014</a>, KCET, April 9, 2014.</li></ul> <h2 id="references">References</h2> <ol> <li id="fn:1"><p>Peter Mickulas, In Memoriam: Susan Rita Schrepfer, 1941-2014, Perspectives on History, December 1, 2014. Accessed September 6, 2020. <a href="https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/december-2014/in-memoriam-susan-rita-schrepfer" target="_blank">https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/december-2014/in-memoriam-susan-rita-schrepfer</a> <a href="#fnref:1" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:2"><p>Peter Mickulas, In Memoriam: Susan Rita Schrepfer, 1941-2014, Perspectives on History, December 1, 2014. Accessed September 6, 2020. <a href="https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/december-2014/in-memoriam-susan-rita-schrepfer" target="_blank">https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/december-2014/in-memoriam-susan-rita-schrepfer</a> <a href="#fnref:2" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:3"><p>Peter Mickulas, In Memoriam: Susan Rita Schrepfer, 1941-2014, Perspectives on History, December 1, 2014. Accessed September 6, 2020. <a href="https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/december-2014/in-memoriam-susan-rita-schrepfer" target="_blank">https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/december-2014/in-memoriam-susan-rita-schrepfer</a> <a href="#fnref:3" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:4"><p>Sackman, Douglas Cazaux, 'Nature’s Altars: Mountains, Gender, and American Environmentalism', Reviews in American History, vol. 34, no. 2 (2006), p.208. <a href="#fnref:4" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:5"><p>Peter Mickulas, In Memoriam: Susan Rita Schrepfer, 1941-2014, Perspectives on History, December 1, 2014. Accessed September 6, 2020. <a href="https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/december-2014/in-memoriam-susan-rita-schrepfer" target="_blank">https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/december-2014/in-memoriam-susan-rita-schrepfer</a> <a href="#fnref:5" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> <li id="fn:6"><p>Department of History: Susan R. Schrepfer, Rutgers University. Accessed September 6, 2020. <a href="https://history.rutgers.edu/faculty-directory/185-schrepfer-susan" target="_blank">https://history.rutgers.edu/faculty-directory/185-schrepfer-susan</a> <a href="#fnref:6" class="footnote-back-ref">↩</a></p></li> </ol>