Scholars have increasingly recognized the need to better understand human-environment relationships across disciplines. New fields like environmental humanities and critical avian studies highlight this knowledge gap, especially regarding birds—creatures central to human history yet often overlooked in cultural discourse.

My book, Pest Control: Birds, Black Folk, and the History of Environmental Consciousness in the United States South, examines how enslaved people served as ecological stewards in South Carolina's Lowcountry, particularly in managing Bobolinks that threatened rice harvests. This research reveals not only their agricultural expertise but their complex relationship with the land before and after emancipation. By analyzing practices from sharecropping to deforestation, I illuminate how Black ecological consciousness developed amid agricultural exploitation, creating environmental legacies that persist today.