I am a first-year PhD student studying southern environmental history at Mississippi State University. While completing my bachelor’s degree at the University of Georgia in 2012, I became interested in the interaction between culture and environmental landscapes across the South. In 2015, I graduated with a master’s degree from Mississippi State University with an emphasis in our program’s ARE (Agricultural, Rural, and Environmental history) courses. Currently, I have two primary research interests. The first examines forced labor in the New South through the convict lease system in turpentine and coal camps. This project seeks to delineate the connections between labor, race, and the environment in the Jim Crow South. My second interest deals with the turpentine industry after World War II and interrogates the industry’s rapid declined in a Sunbelt milieu that occurred as this same region and industry benefitted from federal subsidies.