No Barriers to Strangers from Afar: Europeans and Gulf Islands

"No Barriers to Strangers from Afar: Europeans and Gulf Islands" explores European interactions with barrier islands of the northern Gulf Coast during the age of contact. Davis will discuss how Europeans ended up on some of the islands intentionally and unintentionally, how they used them to advance conquest, who they met on the islands, what they saw on and in the islands, and what they did not see—what in others Walter Anderson went to the islands to see centuries later.  About Jack E. Davis: Jack E. Davis is a distinguished professor of history and the Rothman Family Chair in the Humanities specializing in environmental history and sustainability studies. He is the author or editor of ten books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea. His latest book, The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America’s Bird, was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice, described as a “rollicking,…