Michael J. Lansing was born and raised in the Twin Cities. A historian of the modern United States, his research focuses on the North American West and Midwest. He has received fellowships from the Newberry Library, Science History Institute, and Minnesota Historical Society as well as awards from the Western History Association, the Midwestern History Association, the Montana Historical Society, the Minnesota Historical Society, and the Utah State Historical Society.
He is currently working on two books. A Police State: Politics and Public Safety in Minneapolis, 1945-2020 explores the rise of and resistance to police power in that city. Enriched: Industrial Carbohydrates and the Rise of Nutrition Capitalism is a history of factory-processed grains and the propagation of a political economy that demarcates the way we understand, make, and eat food. Both are under contract with the University of Chicago Press.
His publications include Insurgent Democracy: The Nonpartisan League in North American Politics (University of Chicago Press, 2015), the co-edited Wallace Stegner’s Unsettled Country: Ruin, Realism, and Possibility in the American West (University of Nebraska Press, 2024), and the co-authored The American West: A Concise History (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008). His articles have appeared in the Western Historical Quarterly, Environmental History, the Journal of Historical Geography, the Middle West Review, the Utah Historical Quarterly, Minnesota History, and Ethics, Place, and Environment.
At Augsburg, he teaches introductory courses in U.S. history, as well as classes on the North American West, U.S. environmental history, history of capitalism, and public history. He is also a participating faculty member in the Environmental Studies program. Before arriving at Augsburg in 2005, he taught at Utah State University and the State University of New York at Buffalo and served as visiting assistant editor at the Western Historical Quarterly.
An active public historian, his work includes an oral history project with the Minnesota chapter of the Sierra Club, a congregational history, co-founding the Historyapolis Project, two years on the Legacy Strategic Agenda Collaborative (co-sponsored by the Minnesota Historical Society and the Minnesota Association of Local History Museums), Purple Places: A Digital History Tour of Prince’s Minneapolis, and co-founding Overpoliced and Underprotected in MSP. His reflections on history and current events have appeared in MinnPost, Jacobin, and the Washington Post.
The son of a public school teacher, Michael is committed to improving history pedagogies. He spent two years on the staff of the National History Day in Minnesota program (1999-2001) and served as the academic lead on a Teaching American History grant that served educators in northern Minnesota (2008-2011). He collaborated with K-5 teachers in the Anoka-Hennepin (MN) School District to expand the use of inquiry-based approaches in social studies classrooms (2010-2013). In a similar vein, he participated in the American Historical Association’s Tuning Project—a national effort to identify and frame common goals for post-secondary history education (2012-2014). He currently serves as historical advisor to Project Edge, Broward County (FL) Public Schools and National Council For History Education (2023-) and as Augsburg’s content advisor for secondary social studies education majors (2012-).
Michael is a member of the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, the Western History Association, the American Society for Environmental History, the National Council on Public History, the Coalition for Western Women’s History, the Minnesota Historical Society, and the American Association of University Professors.
Education
- A.B. College of William & Mary
- M.A. Utah State University
- Ph.D. University of Minnesota