Adam David Sundberg, PhD

Department

History

Position

Associate Professor

Books

• Natural Disaster at the Closing of the Dutch Golden Age: Floods, Worms, and Cattle Plague
  Adam Sundberg, By the early eighteenth century, the economic primacy, cultural efflorescence, and geopolitical power of the Dutch Republic appeared to be waning. The end of this Golden Age was also an era of natural disasters. Between the late seventeenth and the mid-eighteenth century, Dutch communities weathered numerous calamities, including river and coastal floods, cattle plagues, and an outbreak of strange mollusks that threatened the literal foundations of the Republic. Adam Sundberg demonstrates that these disasters emerged out of longstanding changes in environment and society. They were also fundamental to the Dutch experience and understanding of eighteenth-century decline. Disasters provoked widespread suffering, but they also opened opportunities to retool management strategies, expand the scale of response, and to reconsider the ultimate meaning of catastrophe. This book reveals a dynamic and often resilient picture of a society coping with calamity at odds with historical assessments of eighteenth-century stagnation. 2022

Articles

• Journal of Experiential Education
  Adam Sundberg, Echo Koehler Background: Faculty in nursing and history at Creighton University directed two service-learning courses on the history and public health implications of lead (Pb) exposure in Omaha, NE. As part of their service requirements, students conducted or observed blood lead screenings in area schools and reflected on these shared experiences in discipline-specific coursework. Strong student response encouraged the faculty to enrich transdisciplinary teaching and learning between these two courses. Although studies supply numerous best practices to develop collaborative experiences and service-oriented pedagogies, little work focuses on enriching collaborations between preexisting courses. Purpose: This study examines the outcomes of a partnership between nursing and history and presents a practical model that instructors can use to foster and deepen transdisciplinary service-learning. Methodology: Employing a hybrid grounded theory/topic modeling analysis of student reflection papers, we identify course outcomes of closest convergence. Findings/Conclusions: We argue that instructors can deepen transdisciplinary partnerships between service-learning courses by focusing on a common exemplar, encouraging collaborative experiences in the classroom and at service sites, and employing civic health as a shared concept in curricula. Implications: Beyond nursing and history, our model may be employed by faculty in preexisting service-learning courses to bring their courses into transdisciplinary convergence. 2022
• Water History
  Seohyun Park, , Scot McFarlane, Adam Sundberg, Tino Mager, Henk van Schaik, Arie Den Boer, Priyanka Sheth & Aashini Sheth  Water history in the time of COVID-19: cancelled conversations
  12, p. 229-249 2021
• Exhibition
  Adam Sundberg, Exhibiting Climate Change Without Saying ‘Climate Change’: Objects-as-Evidence & the Challenge of Engagement
  39, p. 58-69 2020
• Historisch Jaarboek Groningen
  Gemeenschappelijke verantwoordelijkheid en weerstand: De Kerstvloed van 1717 in Groningen [Communal Responsibility & Resistance: The Christmas Flood of 1717 in Groningen], p. 32-49 2018
• The Low Countries Journal of Social and Economic History/Tijdschrift voor Sociale en Economische Geschiedenis
  Culling the Herds?: Regional divergences in Rinderpest mortality in Flanders and South Holland, 1769-1785
  14.3, p. 31-55 2018
• Agricultural History
  “Happy Land: Women Landowners in early West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, 1813-1845.”
  90.4, p. 484-510 2016
• Dutch Crossing: Journal of Low Countries Studies
  “An Uncommon Threat: Shipworms as a Novel Disaster.”
  40.2, p. 122-138 2016
• Environmental History
  “Claiming the Past: History, Memory, and Innovation following the Christmas Flood of 1717.”
  20/2, p. 238-261 2015

Publications

• Arcadia
  “Molluscan Explosion: The Dutch Shipworm Epidemic of the 1730s.” Environment & Society Portal. Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society. http://www.environmentandsociety.org/node/7307.
  14 2015
• “Floods, Worms, and Cattle Plague: Nature-induced Disaster at the Closing of the Dutch Golden Age, 1672-1760.” 2015

Presentations

• "Dijken, Cultuur, en Wormen: Milleugeschiedenis van de Paalworm-epidemie, 1730-33," [Dikes, Culture, and Worms: Environmental History of the Shipworm Epidemic, 1730-33] Conference of the Stichting voor de Middeleeuwse Archeologie, Hoorn, The Netherlands. 2016
• "Teaching Global Environmental History," Annual Conference of the American Society for Environmental History. Seattle, USA 2016
• "A Decade of Disaster: Cattle Plague during the 1740s in the Netherlands," 8th European Society for Environmental History Biennial Conference, Versailles, France 2015
• "The Importance of the "New": Novelty as a Condition of Disaster Response in Early Modern Times," Workshop: Resilience in disastrous times: the processing of historical catastrophes in the Low Countries (ca. 1600-1850), Rijksuniversiteit Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands. 2015
• "An Unknown Threat: Shipworms as a Novel Disaster," N.W. Posthumus Institute Annual Conference, Brussels, Belgium. 2015