David Pietz is Professor of Modern Chinese History and the UNESCO Chair in Environmental History at the University of Arizona.  His research focuses on environmental history of modern China.  Publications include The Yellow River: The Problem of Water in Modern China (Harvard), Engineering the State: The Huai River and Reconstruction in Nationalist China (Routledge) and State and Economy in Republican China (Harvard Asia Center).  His current project is entitled, “Death and Life on the Yangzi: Extinction, Conservation, and Environmental China in Modern China.”  His research has been supported by the Guggenheim Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Mellon Foundation, the American Philosophical Society, and the Institute for Advanced Studies (Princeton).