When the Center for Bioenvironmental Research went looking for someone to fill its new Aron Fellowship, the call went out to all scholars -- no matter their discipline -- who were doing work related to the Mississippi River and the environment of the Deep South. Despite those broad qualifications, administrators at the center were surprised and excited by Dianne Glave's application.

Glave was working on a book about African Americans and the environment in the rural South. But she was doing it from Los Angeles, from her demanding position on the faculty of Loyola Marymount University. "We were really impressed with her," said Douglas Meffert, deputy director of the Center for Bioenvironmental Research. "There aren't many people looking at African American culture as it relates to the environment, but it fit so well with our mission at the CBR."

He sees Glave as a rising star in a young and growing discipline.

Glave said her scholarly work evolved out of her own life. Her mother grew up on a farm in Jamaica and her father in the city of Kingston, both with an affection and attachment to the island's environment. They emigrated to the United States, and Glave was born and raised in New York City. Her family's experience in some ways mirrors one that was typical of African Americans who moved from a rural Southern, agricultural environment to northern cities.

"Historically, African Americans have had a nuanced relationship with the environment, ranging from a deep knowledge of farming to a fear of the woods where they might have been lynched at the turn of the 20th century," said Glave. She notes that the slave trade targeted West Africa, where people had valuable agricultural skills. In the New World, their experience with the environment was shaped by coercive farm labor, racism, segregation and poverty. Yet the connection to the Southern environment persisted, even when many African Americans moved into northern cities in search of economic opportunity.

Glave's fellowship at Tulane, which is supported by the J. Aron Charitable Foundation, has given her the time and resources to complete her upcoming book, Fields and Gardens: An Environmental History of Rural African Americans in the Progressive Era South. She's also coeditor of African Americans and the Environment, which will be published in the fall. Last fall, Glave taught a course on African Americans and the environment that traced the African American experience from slavery to the environmental justice movement. This semester she's facilitating the Mississippi River Basin Colloquium. She has taken students to a plantation on River Road, where they learned about agricultural techniques and looked for evidence of conservation practices, and to one of the pumping stations that keep New Orleans dry.

Glave isn't the only researcher at the Center for Bioenvironmental Research who is examining the relationship between the environment of southern Louisiana and the people who have built a way of life dependent on it. Desiree Plaisance, a research analyst at the center, also is a doctoral student in historical anthropology at the University of Tennessee. But she's originally from Golden Meadow in Lafourche Parish and her dissertation is on the effect of wetlands loss on Cajuns and other long-established populations in south Louisiana, such as the Houma and Chitimacha Indians. She's focusing on Lafourche and Terrebone Parishes, an area that has not been as studied as Cajun and creole life in southwest Louisiana. Plaisance says there is a real difference.

"It's tied to the environment. Marsh Cajuns are shrimpers and oystermen. They do the blessing of the fleet and all that," said Plaisance. "But around Lafayette, it's freshwater, they've got crawfish and cattle and a bit of a Texas influence."

The Center for Bioenvironmental Research, the Aron Foundation and the Coypu Foundation are supporting her research. The oral histories she records will be maintained in perpetuity by the center's Riversphere project and will be used as a source for publications and exhibits.