Aidan Dresang stands out as one of the few undergraduate contributors to become such an active and consistent voice at Not Even Past. Working under the mentorship of Erika Bsumek at The University of Texas at Austin, Dresang’swork explores the relationship between communities, infrastructure, technology, and democracy. His research examines how ordinary people have challenged large institutions and technocratic systems that they believed threatened their values, livelihoods, or environments. From antinuclear activism in North Texas to the experiences of Black Civilian Conservation Corps workers at Palo Duro Canyon, his work highlights how local struggles reveal broader questions about power, citizenship, and public participation.
Dresang recently completed his undergraduate honors thesis, Exposing the Nuclear Dinosaur: How North Texans Protested Nuclear Power and Energized Democracy, which received the Liberal Arts Honors Outstanding Thesis Award in the Humanities category from the UT Austin Liberal Arts Honors Scholarship Committee in Spring 2026. He is currently exploring connections between the twentieth-century antinuclear movement and present-day debates surrounding AI data centers and technological development. Beyond his academic research, he is deeply committed to public history and history education. In fall 2026, he will graduate with a degree in History and Social Studies certification before beginning student teaching at Weiss High School in Pflugerville. He also continues to work with ClioVis, a UT-based educational technology platform focused on interactive timelines and critical thinking in history education, where he develops research timelines, social media content, and educational materials that connect historical inquiry to contemporary public debates.
His first contribution to Not Even Past, published in February 2024, reflected many of the themes that continue to shape Dresang’s work: environmental history, public history, and the relationship between science and historical interpretation. In “The Fellowship of the Tree Rings: A ClioVis Project,” Dresang examined how scholars have used dendrochronology—the study of tree rings—to reconstruct centuries of Caribbean hurricane activity and connect climatic shifts to major historical developments such as the Sugar Revolution and the Golden Age of European Piracy. Drawing inspiration from a RadioLab episode and research by scholars such as Valarie Trouet, Dresang explored how environmental forces shaped human history in ways often overlooked by traditional narratives. The piece also reflected his interest in using digital tools to make complex historical and scientific ideas more accessible to broader audiences. The article highlighted Dresang’s interest in making complex historical and scientific ideas accessible to broader audiences while encouraging readers to reconsider the environment not as historical backdrop, but as an active force in shaping human events
Published in October 2024, “Leaps of Fame: The Rise of Sam Patch and a Changing Industrial Landscape” demonstrated Dresang’s growing interest in the intersection of labor history, environmental history, and public space. The piece examined the life of nineteenth-century daredevil Sam Patch, one of the United States’ earliest “common man” celebrities, whose public jumps became spectacles tied to the social transformations of the Industrial Revolution. Drawing on historian Paul E. Johnson’s work and integrating an interactive ClioVis timeline, Dresang situated Patch’s performances within broader struggles over industrialization, class identity, and access to natural spaces in early America. Rather than presenting Patch simply as an eccentric entertainer, Dresang showed how his performances reflected deeper tensions between working-class communities and elite attempts to privatize and regulate public land during the rise of industrial capitalism.
Published in fall 2025, “Constructing a Canyon: Black CCC Workers and the Making of Palo Duro” marked a significant expansion of Dresang’s scholarship into questions of race, memory, infrastructure, and public landscapes in the American Southwest. Focusing on Black Civilian Conservation Corps workers who helped build Palo Duro Canyon State Park during the 1930s, Dresang examined how New Deal infrastructure projects simultaneously depended on Black labor while erasing Black presence from the historical narratives embedded within the park itself. Drawing on archival sources, including letters written by Black CCC workers protesting segregation and geographic isolation, he argued that the park’s roads, trails, landmarks, and promotional materials constructed a settler-centered vision of Texas history that marginalized both Black and Indigenous peoples. Drawing on ideas such as “place-making” and Erika Bsumek’s idea of “infrastructures of dispossession,” Dresang demonstrated how physical landscapes shape public memory and historical understanding.
Through his work with Not Even Past, Aidan Dresang has consistently combined rigorous historical research with digital humanities and public engagement. Whether writing about climate history, industrialization, labor struggles, or the racial politics of public landscapes, his work encourages readers to think critically about how ordinary people shape—and are shaped by—the environments and institutions around them. Central to this approach has been his work with ClioVis, where he uses interactive timelines and digital tools to help audiences visualize historical connections across space, time, and theme. As both a historian and future educator, Dresang remains committed to making history accessible, relevant, and meaningful beyond the university classroom.
The views and opinions expressed in this article or video are those of the individual author(s) or presenter(s) and do not necessarily reflect the policy or views of the editors at Not Even Past, the UT Department of History, the University of Texas at Austin, or the UT System Board of Regents. Not Even Past is an online public history magazine rather than a peer-reviewed academic journal. While we make efforts to ensure that factual information in articles was obtained from reliable sources, Not Even Past is not responsible for any errors or omissions.
