Brian Williams
Assistant Professor, Geography
209 Hilbun Hall
Mississippi State, MS 39762
Dr. Brian Williams is an Assistant Professor of Geography in the Department of Geosciences at Mississippi State University. Dr. Williams affiliates faculty with African American Studies and is a member of the Gulf Scholars Program Faculty at MSU. A human geographer and political ecologist, his research is concerned with the ways that racism and social inequalities shape southern environments, landscapes, and spaces; as well as how individuals and communities make sense of and address socio-environmental injustices. He teaches courses ranging from Political Ecology, Cultural Geography, and Human Geography to Geographies of the United States South and Latin America. His work has been published in a wide range of scholarly journals including Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Dialogues in Human Geography, Southern Cultures, Environmental Humanities, and Nature & Space, and he currently serves as co-editor of the Southeastern Geographer.
Education
- PhD, The University of Georgia, Department of Geography, 2018
- MA, The Ohio State University, Department of Geography, 2013
- BA, University of Southern Mississippi, Department of Anthropology, 2008
Experience
- Postdoctoral Fellow, Dartmouth College, Department of Geography, 2018-2019
Research Interests
- Political ecology, environmental justice, food justice, health geography, science and technology studies, political geography, economic geography, historical geography, cultural geography, qualitative methodologies, agri-food systems, critical race and ethnic studies, Black geographies, environmental history, oral history, the U.S. South, Latin America.
Teaching Areas
- GR 4263/6263: Geographies of the U.S. South
- GR 2013: Human Geography
- GR 4133/6133: Political Ecology
- GR 4213/6213: Geography of Latin America
- GR/AN 8183: Culture, Place, and Space
Recent Publications
- 2023 Williams B. “Monocultural crises and rural geographies”. Dialogues in Human Geography. (invited submission).
- 2023 Mansfield B, Werner M, Berndt C, Shattuck A, Galt R, Williams B, et al. (2023) A new critical social science research agenda on pesticides. Agriculture and Human Values: 1–18.
- 2023 Freshour C. and Williams B. “Toward ‘Total Freedom’: Black Ecologies of Land, Labor, and Livelihoods in the Mississippi Delta”. Annals of the American Association of Geographers 113(7): 1563–1572.
- 2023 Williams B. “Pesticides and Sustainability”. EBSCO Pathways to Research: Sustainability: 1–14.
- 2023 Shelton T. and Williams B. Making the Cotton District (White): Urban Renewal, New Urbanism, and the Construction of a Nostalgic Neo-Plantationist Pastiche. Annals of the American Association of Geographers (published online March 2023): 1–19. View More
- 2022 Williams, B. Cotton, Chemicals, and Agricultural Justice. In Turnipseed, C.S. (Ed.) Field Hollers and Freedom Songs: The Anthology (pp. 130-147).
- 2022 Williams B. and Porter J.M. “Cotton, Whiteness, and Other Poisons”. Environmental Humanities 14(3): 499-521.
- 2022 Brown, F. and Williams, B. “‘Heavy with Plenty’: Writing Abundance in the Plantationocene”. Southern Cultures. 28(4): 56-73.
- 2022 Williams B. and Freshour C. “Carceral geographies of pesticides and poultry”. Food and Foodways. 30(1–2). Routledge: 38–57.
- 2021 Williams, B. “The Fabric of Our Lives”?: Cotton, Pesticides, and Agrarian Racial Regimes in the U.S. South. Annals of the American Association of Geographers.
- 2021 Williams, B., Van Sant, L., Moulton, A. A., & Davis, J. Race, Land, and Freedom. In M. Domosh, M. Heffernan, & C. W. J. Withers (Eds.), The Sage Handbook of Historical Geography (pp. 179–198). SAGE Publications.
- 2020 Wright, W. J., McCreary, T., Williams, B., & Bledsoe, A. (2020). Race, Land, and the Law: Black Farmers and the Limits of a Politics of Recognition. In H. Garth & A. Reese (Eds.), Black Foodways (pp. 228–250).
- 2020 Freshour, C. & Williams, B. Abolition in the Time of Covid-19. 2020. Antipode Online. (April 2020)
- 2020 Williams, B., and M. Riley. 2020. The Challenge of Oral History to Environmental History. Environment and History 26 (2):207–231.