During the annual meeting, we come together to learn from each other, but also from the cities in which we meet. In January, New Orleans will be more than a backdrop for our sessions. We encourage attendees to explore the local communities, and we have organized several tours to facilitate a greater understanding of the city and its history. But we also strive to be responsible participants in the civic culture and discourse of the cities in which we meet. Much of this aspect of annual meeting planning happens behind the scenes, through our outstanding Local Arrangements Committee, but the annual meeting also includes a number of sessions by local historians and on local history.

Over the next months on this blog, we will highlight sessions and events focused on New Orleans and the Gulf region. This week, we focus on sessions that approach the city and region through an environmental lens, which also gives us an opportunity to remind readers of the Presidential Session, a Roundtable on Environmental History for the Twenty-First Century.

Alabama’s Third World? Nature, Race, and Identity in the Physiographic Black Belt
Mark D. Hersey, Mississippi State University

Asian Communities and the Origin of Large-Scale Resource Extraction in the Gulf of Mexico
Jeffery K. Johnson, Georgia State University

Part of AHA Session 36: The Nature of Place: Integrating Social and Environmental History in Regional Identity
Thursday, January 3, 3:30 p.m.–5:30 p.m.
New Orleans Marriott, La Galerie 5

AHA Session 114: To Swim in Strange Waters: Memory, Ecology, and Landscape in the United Houma Nation of Southeastern Louisiana
Friday, January 4, 2:30 p.m.–4:30 p.m.
Sheraton New Orleans, Southdown Room

Chair: Robbie Ethridge, University of Mississippi

Papers:

And a Child Opened the Gates of Paradise: Appropriation of Houma History at Fort Adams, Mississippi
J. Daniel d’Oney, Albany College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences
Fishing for Houma Oral Histories: Curriculum, Colonial Frontier Logics, and Place
Nicholas Ng-A-Fook, University of Ottawa
Crude Oil and Harsh Words: A Century of Conflict between the Houma Indians and the Oil Industry
Frédéric Allamel, International School of Indiana

Comment: Michael Dardar, United Houma Nation

Camille Was No Lady But Katrina Was A Bitch: The Hurricane In Popular Memory
Liz Skilton, Tulane University

Part of Poster Session, Part 1
Saturday, January 5, 11:30 a.m.–2:00 p.m.
New Orleans Marriott, La Galerie 3

Shrimp and Petroleum: Work, Environment, and Culture in Louisiana’s Offshore Oil Industry
Richard Tyler Priest, University of Iowa

Oil and Water: American Indian Sovereignty and Environmental Change in Coastal Louisiana
Robert Andrew Gilmer, University of South Carolina

Part of AHA Session 199: Lives, Places, and Stories of Oil in Water
Saturday, January 5, 2:30 p.m.–4:30 p.m.
Sheraton New Orleans, Napoleon Ballroom D3

Hurricanes in New Orleans: Perspectives on Cultural Adaptation, 1722–65
Eleonora Julia Rohland, Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities

Part of AHA Session 205: Climate and the Atlantic World: Hurricanes, El Niño, La Niña, and Drought in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Saturday, January 5, 2:30 p.m.–4:30 p.m.
Roosevelt New Orleans, Conti Room

“Nature’s Bounty”: Competing Visions of Economic Development in the New South
William D. Bryan, Pennsylvania State University

Part of AHA Session 206: Whose Resources? Visions of Economic Development in a Global Perspective
Saturday, January 5, 2013: 2:30 p.m.–4:30 p.m.
Sheraton New Orleans, Southdown Room

This post first appeared on AHA Today.