My feature article, “Appalachian Homecoming” in Lilith magazine, has received a 2026 Simon Rockower Award (for Excellence in Writing about Jewish Thought and Life) from the American Jewish Press Association!
And my feature article, “The Largest Gay Denomination in the U.S. is Shrinking. Why?” in Sojourners magazine, has received a 2026 Excellence in Journalism Award (for Excellence in Religion Coverage) from the NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists!
Arranged by subject
Appalachia
“The Long Road to Recovery,” National Parks, Winter 2026 issue.
“Appalachian Homecoming,” Lilith, November 26, 2025.
“I Know, But: ‘Appalachian Spring,’” VAN Magazine, July 31, 2025.
“In Appalachia, Hell Hath No Fury Like a Trans Goth with a Banjo,” Them, October 3, 2024.
“Trans people have a long history in Appalachia—but politicians prefer to ignore it,” The Conversation, December 8, 2021.
Arts & Culture
“Hailed as Visionary, Roanoke Libraries Director Sheila Umberger Retires after 43 Years,” Roanoke Rambler, December 31, 2025.
“A Flourishing Underground Literary Scene,” The Roanoker, September/October 2025 issue.
“I Know, But: ‘Appalachian Spring’: A Politically Muddled Masterpiece for a Country at (Endless) War,’” VAN Magazine, July 31, 2025.
“A Wendy Carlos Playlist: A Composer Who Loves Synths and Shuns Fame,” VAN Magazine, June 19, 2025.
“Bring Out Your Boots, Hats and Fans for a Juneteenth Celebration,” The Roanoker, June 5, 2025.
“Strike a Pose at the House of Expression’s OTA Ball,” The Roanoker, May 15, 2025.
“The Delirious Dance: Keith Jarrett’s ‘The Köln Concert’ at 50,” VAN Magazine, April 17, 2025.
“In Appalachia, Hell Hath No Fury Like a Trans Goth with a Banjo,” Them, October 3, 2024.
Healthcare
“Backlash to transgender health care isn’t new—but faulty science used to justify it has changed over time,” The Advocate, February 4, 2024.
“Transgender Healthcare Has Always Been Feminist,” Lilith, June 20, 2023.
“Gender-affirming care has a long history, though anti-trans laws pretend it’s ‘untested,’” Los Angeles Times, March 28, 2023.
Religion
“The Largest Gay Denomination in the U.S. is Shrinking. Why?” Sojourners, December 2025 issue.
“Appalachian Homecoming: How a new generation of Jews is making home—and making trouble—in the Mountain South,” Lilith, November 26, 2025.
“With tensions over Israel’s war in Gaza, Roanoke’s Jewish community fights its own war of words,” 700/14, November 28, 2025.
Science & Environment
“The Long Road to Recovery: Appalachian communities along the Blue Ridge Parkway are struggling to bounce back,” National Parks, Winter 2026 issue.
“Once Site of Roanoke’s Dump, Washington Park Haunted by Legacy of Environmental Racism,” Roanoke Rambler, March 11, 2025.
“Are trans women ‘biologically male’? The answer is complicated,” The Conversation, December 3, 2024.
“Pseudoscience Has Long Been Used to Oppress Transgender People,” Scientific American, February 12, 2024.
Other Writing
Creative Non-Fiction
“A Queer Place Called Home,” in To Belong Here: A New Generation of Queer, Trans, and Two-Spirit Appalachian Writers, edited by Rae Garringer. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 2025.
“How to Become a Woman,” Southern Cultures 26, no. 3 (2020): 122-137. Co-winner of the 2021 Article Award from the Oral History Association.
Essays
“My Journey to the Future-Past: Confronting History and Anxiety on a Trip to Germany,” Wild Writing, July 1, 2025.
“Living with the Ghosts of Queer Pasts,” Southern Spaces, October 28, 2021.
“How Should We Respond When a Public Historian Engages in, or has Experienced, Sexual Harassment,” History@Work, January 14, 2021.
Tatiana Durant and G. Samantha Rosenthal, “The LGBTQ Movement Has a White Supremacy Problem” WUSSY, July 10, 2020.
“Lasting Legacy: What Stonewall Means in the South,” WUSSY, June 6, 2019.
“Rethinking Capitalism from New York to Hawaiʻi,” UC Press Blog, June 20, 2018.
“Roanoke Made Me Queer Again,” History@Work, May 9, 2018.
“Who Needs Gay Books?” WUSSY, August 2, 2017.
“Reclaiming Queer Historical Space,” History@Work, February 2, 2017.
G. Samantha Rosenthal and Marjeela Basij-Rasikh, “Many Environmentalisms from New York to Kabul, from the Past to the Present,” Solutions 6, no. 3 (July 2015): 70-74.
“Marx in the Mountains: Poverty and Environment in and outside of the Classroom,” Perspectives on History 53, no. 2 (February 2015): 36-37.
“It’s Been Two Years Since Sandy: The Lesson We Missed,” History News Network, October 19, 2014.
Reviews
Review of Alvina Chamberland, Love the World or Get Killed Trying. In Full Stop, October 11, 2024.
Review of Stacy Jane Grover, Tar Hollow Trans: Essays. In Appalachian Journal: A Regional Studies Review, 50, nos. 3-4 (2023): 293-295.
Review of La Shonda Mims, Drastic Dykes and Accidental Activists: Queer Women in the Urban South. In Journal of History 58, no. 1 (2023): 112-113.
Review of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture. In The Public Historian 45, no. 1 (2023): 127-130.
“The Best Genre-Bending Books on Queer Pasts and Futures,” Shepherd, September 5, 2022.
Review of Amanda Regan and Eric Gonzaba, Mapping the Gay Guides: Visualizing Queer Space and American Life. In Scholarly Editing 39 (2022).
Review of Hugh Ryan, When Brooklyn Was Queer. In New York History 102, no. 1 (2021): 221-223.
Review of Katherine Crawford-Lackey and Megan E. Springate, eds., Communities and Place: A Thematic Approach to the Histories of LGBTQ Communities in the United States. In The Public Historian 43, no. 2 (2021): 177-179.
Review of Katherine Crawford-Lackey and Megan E. Springate, eds., Preservation and Place: Historic Preservation by and of LGBTQ Communities in the United States. In History News 74, no. 4 (2019): 39.
Review of Raj Patel and Jason W. Moore, A History of the World in Seven Cheap Things: A Guide to Capitalism, Nature, and the Future of the Planet and Timothy J. LeCain, The Matter of History: How Things Create the Past. In Journal of World History 30, no. 3 (September 2019): 459-464.
Review of Kealani Cook, Return to Kahiki: Native Hawaiians in Oceania. In World History Connected 16, no. 1 (February 2019).
Review of Frederic Caire Chiles, California’s Channel Islands: A History. In Environmental History 21, no. 1 (January 2016).
Review of Noelani Goodyear-Kaʻōpua, Ikaika Hussey, and Erin Kahunawaikaʻala Wright, eds., A Nation Rising: Hawaiian Movements for Life, Land, and Sovereignty. In Native American and Indigenous Studies 2, no. 2 (2015): 178-180.
Review of JoAnna Poblete, Islanders in the Empire: Filipino and Puerto Rican Laborers in Hawaiʻi. In Essays in History 57 (2015).
Review of films As Goes Janesville by Brad Lichstenstein and Brothers on the Line by Sasha Reuther. In The Middle Ground Journal: World History and Global Studies, no. 7 (Fall 2013).
Scholarly Articles
“The Past and Present of LGBTQ+ Healthcare in Germany and the United States,” in Heated Relations: The Past, Present, and Future of the LGBTQ+ Community in Germany and the United States. Washington, DC: American-German Institute, 2026.
“Exit 5, Museum of Trans: Sex Work and the Making of Roanoke, Virginia,” in Queer Virginia: New Stories in the Old Dominion, eds. Charles H. Ford and Jeffrey L. Littlejohn. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2025.
“Many Diasporas: People, Nature, and Movement in Pacific History,” in Migrant Ecologies: Environmental Histories of the Pacific World, eds. James Beattie, Ryan Tucker Jones, and Edward Dallam Melillo, 30-46. Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2023.
“Make Roanoke Queer Again: Community History and Urban Change in a Southern City,” The Public Historian 39, no. 1 (2017): 35-60. Honorable Mention for the 2018 G. Wesley Johnson Award (for the most outstanding article in The Public Historian), National Council on Public History. Included in The Public Historian, 40th Anniversary digital collection (2018), representing “the most significant, enduring, and widely read essays… published since 1978.”
“A Storm in Sāmoa: An Environmental Microhistory,” Rethinking History: The Journal of Theory and Practice 21, no. 1 (2017): 2-27.
“Workers of the World’s Oceans: A Bottom-Up Environmental History of the Pacific,” Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities 3, no. 1/2/3 (2016): 290-310.
“Life and Labor in a Seabird Colony: Hawaiian Guano Workers, 1857-1870,” Environmental History 17, no. 4 (2012): 744-782. Reprinted in Environmental History, 40th Anniversary Virtual Edition (2017), representing “path-breaking scholarship that has shaped our field.”
“Boki’s Predicament: The Material Culture and Environmental History of Hawaiian Sandalwood, 1811-1830,” World History Bulletin 27, no. 1 (2011): 46-62.
G. Samantha Rosenthal, Ph.D. 