Unsettling Sovereignty:
International Law, Nuclear Weapons, & US Extraterritorial Power in Postwar Oceania (University of Chicago Press, 2026).
Available for purchase at the University of Chicago Press: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/U/bo273603741.html
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The 80-Year Nuclear Legacy in the Marshall Islands
Physics Today 79, no. 10 (2026): 30-39.
Learn about the present-day effects of the nuclear legacy in this interview with Benetick Kabua Maddison of the Marshallese Educational Initiative.
Surfacing Law
Environmental History 31 (2026): 400-406.
In a world marked by long-lasting pollutants, legal historical meth-
ods have important lessons to teach about how environmental problems get deep-sixed.
The Nuclear Charter
International Law, Military Technology, & the Making of Strategic Trusteeship, 1942-1947, in Living in a Nuclear World: From Fukushima to Hiroshima (Routledge, 2022), 85-108.
During the 1940s, the United States treated land in Oceania as military technology. The US-designed status of UN "strategic trusteeship" granted US national rights to militarize the Marshall, Caroline, and Northern Mariana Islands under an extraterritorial status of dependency.
This chapter is open access:
https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/oa-edit/10.4324/9781003227472-6/nuclear-charter-international-law-military-technology-making-strategic-trusteeship-1942%E2%80%931947-mitchell?context=ubx&refId=9eaf7413-f578-47e6-b99d-d78bdb040036
The Cosmology of Evidence
Suffering, Science, and Biological Witness After Three Mile Island, Journal of the History of Biology 54 (2021): 7-29.
Following the partial reactor meltdown at Three Mile Island, everyday people teamed up with Japanese activists to begin documenting their experiences and observations. Eventually, they began to fall ill. During decades of litigation over their injuries, they turned to life scientists to use the suffering, living world as evidence of their exposure.
Offshoring American Environmental Law
Land, Culture, and Marshall Islanders' Struggles for Self-Determination During the 1970s, Environmental History 22 (2017): 209-234.
Despite years of detonation and the ongoing harms of radiological contamination, as the 1960s came to a close, Marshall Islanders had still not been able to get a hearing in the US courts. In the early 1970s, the people of Enewetak Atoll turned to the emerging field of US environmental law to explain their peoplehood, assert their self-determination, and demand that military activities stop.
Screening Out Controversy
Human Genetics, Emerging Techniques of Diagnosis, and the Origins of teh Social Issues Committee of the American Society of Human Genetics, 1964-1973, Journal of the History of Biology 50 (2017): 425-456.
During the 1960s and early 1970s, the scientists of the American Society of Human Genetics grappled with what role they should play in addressing the broader social consequences of their research. Seeking to harness interest in and assert professional control over emerging techniques of genetic diagnosis, the committee strove to protect the society's image by relegating ethical and policy questions about their use to the individual consciences of member scientists.
History, Ethics, & The Environmental Archive
Somatosphere (2017): https://somatosphere.com/2017/history-ethics-and-the-environmental-archive.html/.
Whereas most Americans think of their bodies as separate from their environment--if a person's body moves, it is no longer a part of the environment it departed--Marshall Islanders regard their bodies and atoll worlds as intrinsically connected parts of the same whole. These strikingly different understandings of what the environment is have consequences for how historians use archival data about it.
Compensation for Transboundary Claims in Nuclear Accidents
in Nuclear Compensation: Lessons from Fukushima (Northwestern University Libraries, 2021) (with Annelise Riles & Dai Yokomizo).
Who pays when the damage from a nuclear accident crosses international borders? The answer is complicated. This chapter traces the uneven patchwork of treaty regimes, and examines US sailors' litigation over the itinerant, seagoing fallout from Fukushima.
This chapter is open access:
https://nuclear-compensation.northwestern.pub/
Mapping Three Mile Island
Nuclear Liability & Compensation in the United States, in Nuclear Compensation: Lessons from Fukushima (Northwestern University Libraries, 2021).
Examining the worst nuclear power plant accident in US history, this chapter sketches out the limited liability legal regimes governing offsite harm from nuclear power disasters in the United States.
This chapter is open access:
https://nuclear-compensation.northwestern.pub/
Storyscapes and Emplacement, Layer by Layer
Change over Time 3 (2013): 162-173 (with David Barnes).
Using Philadelphia's historic lazaretto as an example, this article explores how the long and varied histories of repurposed buildings can serve as an interpretive resource.
