Scott Doebler
Assistant Professor of History
University of Wyoming | History Department
Dr. Scott Doebler is a historian of colonial Latin America, the Maya, and the environment. His current book project examines Indigenous societies and tropical forests of lowland Yucatán and Guatemala and their connections in the Caribbean. Unlike other areas of the Americas, there was no Spanish “colonial” period in the Southern Maya Lands. Rather, this region remained an autonomous Maya space for the entirety of the early modern period. Maya societies and the tropical forests co-constructed communities that offered a range of possibilities for engaging in the early modern world on their own terms, connections that grew more extensive over the centuries. Major funding for his research has come from the SSRC Mellon, Fulbright-Hays, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Huntington Library. His dissertation “Arboreal Apogees: Maya, Spanish, and English Ecologies in Lowland Yucatán and Guatemala, 1517-1717” won the 2023 Rachel Carson Prize from the American Society of Environmental History for the best dissertation in environmental history and was a finalist for the for the 2024 McNeil Center for Early American Studies Dissertation Prize.
Education:
Ph.D. Pennsylvania State University
M.A. Pennsylvania State University
M.Ed. Valparaiso University
B.A. Gustavus Adolphus College
Publications:
“When the Nortes Reign”: Cold Front Winter Storms, Wrecked Conquests, and Weathered Colonialism in the Western Caribbean, 1492-1600. Hispanic American Historical Review. 2026
Living among the Logwood: Maya Forests, Liminal Amphibians, and Quotidian Connectivities in the Laguna de Términos, 1667-1717. Environmental History. 2026.
The Chinese Cotton Contest: The Royal Economic Society of Guatemala, Maya Farmers, and the Struggle Over Enlightenment-Era Agricultural Science, 1796-1798. Colonial Latin American Review. 2021.
(With Matthew Restall) Conquest of Mexico and Peru. Oxford Bibliographies Online. 2020.
Research Interests:
Latin American history; environmental history; Indigenous history; Caribbean history; tropical forests
Courses Taught:
Latin American History, 1500-2000
Global Environmental History
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The University of Wyoming has earned its Research Level 1 (R1) status from the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, placing Wyoming's only four-year university with the top research universities in the United States.