Southern Louisiana features a dynamic deltaic landscape crafted by the Mississippi River and the various groups of people who have inhabited and modified its banks. This talk, which is presented in collaboration with the exhibition East of the Mississippi: Nineteenth-Century American Landscape Photography, provides an overview of the coupled human and natural history of the Mississippi Delta.

Elizabeth L. Chamberlain is native to southeastern Wisconsin and has been a longtime resident of Louisiana. She holds a PhD in Earth and Environmental Sciences from Tulane University, where she studied under Torbjörn E. Törnqvist. As a doctoral student, Chamberlain traveled extensively, conducting internships at the University of Liverpool, UK, and at the Netherlands Centre for Luminescence Dating. She has also participated in field campaigns in the Ganges-Brahmaputra-Meghan delta of Bangladesh, and has led and contributed to numerous field campaigns in the Mississippi Delta and Lower Mississippi River Valley. Her work focuses on the complex relationships between humans and natural landscapes, with a focus on how people can adapt and persist in places such as the Mississippi Delta.

Friday Nights at NOMA is supported in part by grant funds from the Azby Fund; Ruby K. Worner Charitable Trust; New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival and Foundation; and the Louisiana Division of the Arts, Office of Cultural Development, Department of Culture, Recreation and Tourism, in cooperation with the Louisiana State Arts Council as administered by the Arts Council of New Orleans.