This conference will explore the ways in which the myriad flows of peoples, commodities, and ideas interacted with the environments of the greater Atlantic basin as a result of the increasingly close relationship between the Americas, Africa, and Europe. Instead of letting this Atlantic-wide optic obscure close readings of on-the-ground realities, the American South, broadly defined, will serve as both an intellectual and material crossroads. This conference will analyze the environmental implications of these currents both into and out of this region and how such flows were made possible by larger, Atlantic-wide networks. By looking at how cotton, sugar, tobacco, rice and a host of other commodities moved between the southern United States and the larger Atlantic world this conference will be primarily concerned with how people altered, interacted with, and thought about the environments of the South and the Atlantic. This conference will place the South in the context of the Atlantic world and provide a better understanding of how a particular region’s environment related to distant places and markets through the flow of materials and ideas. We hope to attract proposals of projects that look from the South outward, and from the broader Atlantic to the South. Atlantic Environments and the American South will take place in Houston, Texas, on the campus of Rice University on February 5th and 6th, 2016 and is possible thanks to the generosity of the Rice University Humanities Research Center, School of Humanities, and Department of History.