Dr. Maria E. Montoya

Biography: Maria E. Montoya, Ph.D.

Global Network Associate Professor of History – New York University
Dean of Arts and Sciences – NYU Shanghai

Maria E. Montoya is a Global Network Associate Professor of History at New York University and the Dean of Arts and Sciences at NYU Shanghai. She earned her BA, MA and PhD degrees at Yale University. Her research explores how workers and families in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries have used natural resources to make a living and make their homes in particular places in the American West. She is the author of numerous articles on the History of the American West, Environmental, Labor and Latina/o history, including her most recent piece in the Western Historical Quarterly, “Viewing the American West as A Chicana in China.” She is also the author of the book, Translating Property: The Maxwell Land Grant and the Conflict over Land in the American West, 1840-1900. She is the lead author on the U.S. History textbook, Global Americans: A Social and Global History of the United States. Her new book, A Workplace of Their Own: Progressive Management of Workers and their Families in Colorado’s Coal Fields, is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. It focuses on John D. Rockefeller and Josephine Roche, and their roles in defining the spheres of work and home life during the early 20th century. She is also working on another book project about the scarcity of water in the American Southwest, and the Rio Grande in particular. She is currently the PI for Zaanheh: A Natural History of Shanghai which is an interdisciplinary research team based at NYU Shanghai, and which was inspired by Eric Sanderson’s Mannahatta Project.