Biography

Hultgren’s research explores the relationship between environmental politics and the political right. His first book, Border Walls Gone Green (University of Minnesota Press, 2015), explained and critiqued the strange historical intersections between the environmental movement and the immigration restriction movement. His most recent book, The Smoke and the Spoils (MIT Press, 2025), traces the evolution of anti-environmental politics in the United States from the mid-19th century to the present. At Bennington, Hultgren teaches environmental politics and policy, as well as courses related to political theory, social movements, and immigration politics. He received his PhD in Political Science from Colorado State University (2012) and has previously taught at Colorado State and Northern Arizona University. Hultgren joined the Bennington faculty in Fall 2016.

Books

Hultgren, John. 2025. The Smoke and the Spoils: Anti-Environmentalism and Class Struggle in the United States. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Hultgren, John. 2015. Border Walls Gone Green: Nature and Anti-immigrant Politics in America. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Refereed Articles and Chapters

Hultgren, John. 2023. “Anti-Environmentalism and the Natural ‘Wages of Whiteness’.” Environmental Politics 32 (6): 949-968.

Petersen, Brian, and John Hultgren. 2020. “The Case for a 21st Century Wilderness Ethic.” Ethics, Policy, & Environment 23 (2): 222-239.

Hultgren, John. 2020. “Undoing the Oikos, Awakening Resistance? Neoliberalism, Democracy, and the Environment in ‘Trump Country'.” Theory & Event 21 (1): 271-296. 

Hultgren, John and Dimitris Stevis. 2020. “Interrogating Socio-Ecological Coalitions: Environmentalist Engagements with Labor and Immigrants’ Rights in the U.S.” Environmental Politics 29 (3): 457-478.

Hultgren, John. 2018. “Those Who Bring from the Earth: Anti-Environmentalism and the Trope of the White Male Worker.” Ethics, Policy, & Environment 21 (1): 21-25.

Hultgren, John. 2018. “American Environmental Ideologies in the 21st Century: A Re-Evaluation.” Journal of Political Ideologies 23 (1): 54-79.

Hultgren, John. 2018. “Representing Posthumans: Citizenship and the Political Production of Bodies and Technology.” Chapter in Erika Cudworth, Stephen Hobden and Emilian Kavalski (eds.), Posthuman Dialogues in International Relations. Oxford, UK: Routledge.

Hultgren, John. 2017. “Discourse, Nature and Critical Political Economy: American Environmentalists Debate Immigration.” Chapter in Johnna Montgomerie (ed.), Critical Methods in Political and Cultural Economy. Oxford, UK: Routledge.

Hultgren, John. 2016. “Nature, Place, and the Politics of Migration.” Chapter in Harald Bauder and Christian Matheis (eds.), Migration Policy and Practice: Interventions and Solutions. London and NY: Palgrave MacMillan.

Hultgren, John. 2014. “The ‘Nature’ of American Immigration Restrictionism.” New Political Science 36 (1): 52-75.

Hultgren, John. 2012. “Natural Exceptions to Green Sovereignty? American Environmentalism and the ‘Immigration Problem’.” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 37:4, pp. 300-316.

Public Scholarship

“Democracy’s Others: Migrating in a Time of COVID-19” (co-authored with students Soumya Shailendra,  Sitashma Parajuli, and Ioanna Katsara). EuropeNow, Issue 36, October 2020.

“History, Once More, in the Gear of Social Change” (co-authored with David Bond). International Karl Polanyi  Society. June 30, 2020.

“The Nativist Contagion.” Society & Space Magazine. May 25, 2020.

“Polanyi Returns to Bennington.” EuropeNow, Issue 25. March 2019.

“The Environment on Main Street.” McSweeneys Internet Tendency. Sept. 19, 2018.

“Children. Before. Borders.” University of Minnesota Press Blog. July 3, 2018.

“Immigration and the American Political Imagination.” CounterPunch. Oct. 20, 2017.

Interviews and Media

Kaufman, Alexander. 2021. “How Arizona’s Attorney General is Weaponizing Climate Fears to Keep out Immigrants.” HuffPost, May 1 (republished in Mother Jones, May 4).

Gardiner, Beth. 2020. “White Supremacy Goes Green.” NY Times, February 28.

Tan, Tiffany. 2019. “Conference Looks to the Past to Understand the Present.” Bennington Banner, October 23. 

Cagle, Susie. 2019. “Bees not Refugees: The Environmentalist Roots of Anti-Immigrant Bigotry.” The Guardian, August 16 (republished in Mother Jones, August 19).

Beinart, Peter. 2019. “White Nationalists Discover the Environment.” The Atlantic, August 5.

Schaberg, Christopher. 2019. “Loving Wilderness, Loving Borders.” Public Books, May 15.

Del Valle, Gaby. 2018. “When Environmentalism Meets Xenophobia.” The Nation, Dec. 3-10 Issue.

LeBoeuf, Patricia. 2018. “Bennington College to Expand Work on Forced Migration.” Bennington Banner, October 3.

Meyer, Robinson. 2017. “Trump's Solar-Powered Border Wall Is More Than a Troll.” The Atlantic, June 6.

“Environmentalism against Immigrants.” Against the Grain, KPFA/Pacifica Radio.