Ellen Griffith Spears is an associate professor in New College and the Department of American Studies at The University of Alabama. Her interdisciplinary scholarship blends environmental history, critical regional studies, and study of the U.S. South in a global context. Her book, Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution,and Justice in an All-American Town, explores how systemic racial and class inequalities reinforced during the Jim Crow era played out in the social movement for environmental justice in one southern U.S. city. The book has won a number of awards, including the Francis B. Simkins Award from the Southern Historical Association, and the Arthur J. Viseltear Award for Outstanding Contribution to the History of Public Health from the Medical Care Section of the American Public Health Association.