All panels held in the Kyle Morrow Room, 3rd floor of Fondren Library, unless otherwise noted
February 5
12:45—1:00 Opening Remarks from the Conference Conveners
1:00—3:00 Panel 1: Climate and Environment in the Anglo-American Atlantic
Chair: Maria R. Montalvo (Rice University)
Katherine Johnston (Columbia University)
“Warm Climates and Racial Slavery in the Eighteenth-Century Greater Caribbean”
Sean Morey Smith (Rice University)
“Differentiating Hot Climates in the Anglo-American Colonial Experience”
Matthew Mulcahy (Loyola University Maryland)
“‘The Surest and Severest’ of Calamities: Drought in the Plantation Colonies of the British Greater Caribbean”
Chris Willoughby (Tulane University)
“‘His Native, Hot Country’: Racial Science and Environment in Antebellum Southern Medical Thought”
Comment: April Lee Hatfield (Texas A&M University)
3:00—3:15 Break
3:15—4:45 Panel 2: Pushing Beyond the Atlantic: Atlantic World or Global History?
Chair: David Ponton (Rice University)
Christopher M. Church (University of Nevada-Reno)
“Economic Growth and Ecological Risk in Florida and the Wider Caribbean during the 1920s”
Daniel S. Margolies (Virginia Wesleyan College)
“Southern Seabed Resources and the Spatialities of Power on the Atlantic Coast, 1945-1958”
Comment: Kristin Wintersteen (University of Houston)
4:45—5:30 Break
5:30—7:00 Keynote Address (Sewall Hall 309)
Chair: Blake Earle (Rice University)
W. Jeffrey Bolster (University of New Hampshire)
“Atlantic Environments”
7:00—9:00 Dinner and Reception (Rice Art Gallery)
February 6
8:00—9:00 Breakfast (History Department, Third Floor Humanities Building)
9:15—10:45 Panel 3: Expanding the Atlantic
Chair: Cami Beekman (Rice University)
Bradford J. Wood (Eastern Kentucky University)
“Ocean Graveyards and Ulterior Atlantic Worlds: The Experience of Colonial North Carolina”
Frances Kolb (Vanderbilt University)
“Profitable Transgressions: International Borders and British Trade Networks in the Lower Mississippi Valley, 1763-1783”
Andrew Patrick (University of Kentucky)
“Kentucky Hemp in the Atlantic World”
Comment: James Sidbury (Rice University)
10:45—11:00 Break
11:00—12:30 Panel 4: Envisioning Environments
Chair: Christina Regelski (Rice University)
Christopher Blakley (Rutgers University)
“Projecting an Atlantic Mining Empire: Mastering Iron and Slaves in Spotswood’s Virginia, 1710-1732”
Peter C. Messer (Mississippi State University)
“Art, Science and the Transatlantic Natures of William Bartram’s Travels”
Tom Okie (Kennesaw State University)
“The Traveler, the Gardener, and the Bishop: Horticultural Reform in the Nineteenth Century South”
Comment: Mark Goldberg (University of Houston)
12:30—2:15 Lunch
2:15—3:45 Panel 5: Commodity Flows into and out of the American South
Chair: Keith D. McCall (Rice University)
Melissa N. Morris (Columbia University)
“A Leafy Dominion: Local Conditions and Global Demand in the Virginia Tobacco Trade, 1600-1800”
Abby Schreiber (Towson University)
“Roads, Canals, Rails: Environmental Change Resulting from Baltimore’s Flour Trade”
Christopher Morris (University of Texas-Arlington)
“Nitrogen Networks: From Ned Cobb’s Alabama to the Early Twentieth-Century World and Back”
Comment: Andrew C. Baker (Texas A&M University-Commerce)
3:45—4:00 Break
4:00—5:30 Panel 6: Contesting Environments: Native Americans and Europeans in the Colonial Crucible
Chair: Lauren Brand (Rice University)
Hayley Negrin (New York University)
“Possessing the South: Female Indian Slaves, Conquest and the Birth of Plantation Environments”
Georgia Carley (Queen’s University)
“Ponds, Minerals, and Submission: The Intersection of Environmental and Political Knowledge in Eighteenth-Century Colonial Forays into the Cherokee Mountains”
Craig Colten (Louisiana State University)
“Fixing Names on Fluid Surfaces: Rivers and Toponymy in the American South”
Comment: Alan Gallay (Texas Christian University)
5:30—6:00 Break
6:00—7:30 Keynote Address (Sewall Hall 309)
Chair: D. Andrew Johnson (Rice University)
Paul S. Sutter (University of Colorado at Boulder)
“African Malady, American Plague, Southern Scourge: Rethinking Yellow Fever’s Atlantic World History”
7:30—9:00 Dinner and Reception (Rice Art Gallery)