Shiloh Green Soto

Shiloh Soto is an urban environmental historian interested in housing segregation and natural disaster in the US West. Following stories about the relationship between real estate developers, affluent homeowners, and working-class communities, Dr. Soto is interested in illuminating the ways that environmental segregation concentrates poor communities — and often communities of color — on cheap, flood- and fire-prone land. Her applied work demonstrates how the history of housing segregation shapes contemporary struggles for environmental justice, housing accessibility/affordability, and tenant rights.

Dr. Soto’s scholarship and teaching has been supported by a number of fellowships and awards, including the Luce Foundation, the Mellon-funded Digital Ethnic Studies Consortium, and various humanities research initiatives. She has organized panel sessions and presented papers at wide-ranging conferences, including the American Studies Association, the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment, and the Western History Association, and she has been an invited speaker at Princeton University and at California State University, Northridge’s Whitsett Seminar.

A proud first-generation college student and community college graduate from a working-class family in Southern California, Dr. Soto is committed to mentorship for students from underresourced and/or underrepresented backgrounds.