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Across the city of New Orleans, residents creatively adapted to a different type of Mardi Gras during the Covid-19 pandemic by decorating their houses. Bryan Batt, a Tulane alumnus and famed actor in both television and film, participated in the Krewe of House Floats by adorning his Uptown home.
SALLY ASHER
liberal arts TULANE SCHOOL OF
MAGAZINE
SPRING 2021 | VOL. 3 | NO. 1
EDITORIAL DIRECTORS BRIAN T. EDWARDS NICOLE WESTERFIELD WRITER, EDITOR EMILY WILKERSON ART DIRECTOR ARIELLE PENTES
FROM THE DEAN Our fifth issue of the School of Liberal Arts Magazine is organized around the concept of commitment. In a sense, the theme builds on that of our previous issue, which explored the notion of responsibility. Yet the words travel along separate vectors and, in turn, evoke different resonances. So, this issue is meant to complement, rather than supplement, the fall number. The pieces you’ll encounter here come from a wide range of places, both in terms of the academic disciplines of our contributors and the forms of commitment they explore. We framed this issue around three areas that reflect some of our own commitments: to anti-racism, to the environment, and to the liberal arts more broadly. We feature senior scholars reflecting on the commitments that have directed their academic careers and some of the newest members of our faculty, as they bring the next generation of ideas, strategies, and passions to their teaching and research. Commitment itself is an evocative word, suggesting both an obligation or pledge and a steadfastness of purpose. Scholars and university teachers are known for both senses of the word, as they dedicate themselves to projects and endeavors over the long term and are driven by a devotion to the values that drew them to their field of inquiry. Knowledge of the distant past or the complex present does not come easily and without toil. And during challenging times—such as those that have marked the past year and more—our commitments have been tested deeply and frequently. But they have also guided us. As I write these words, it is a year since Covid-19 turned our world upside down. By the time this magazine is in your hands or on your screens, we will be marking the second time that many of our cherished traditions have been disrupted. It is therefore timely to take this index of that which fuels the profound energies and talents of the members of our Liberal Arts community in the work they do. For those commitments will surely outlast the crises of the present.
BRIAN EDWARDS Dean & Professor of English School of Liberal Arts
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DESIGNERS CHELSEA CHRISTOPHER MELINDA WHATLEY VILES CONTRIBUTORS ELIZABETH HILL BOONE ANDREA S. BOYLES HONGWEI THORN CHEN AARON COLLIER MEGAN FAUST BEAU D.J. GAITORS R. BLAKESLEE GILPIN MARY GLAVAN AMALIA LEGUIZAMÓN EBONY PERRO TONI WEISS SPECIAL THANKS PAULA BURCH-CELENTANO JOSEPH MISTROT ______________ SCHOOL OF LIBERAL ARTS LEADERSHIP DEAN BRIAN T. EDWARDS CHIEF BUSINESS OFFICER GERMAINE GROSS ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR FACULTY AFFAIRS HOLLY FLORA ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR RESEARCH & GRADUATE PROGRAMS KATHARINE JACK ASSOCIATE DEAN FOR ACADEMIC INITIATIVES & CURRICULUM VICKI MAYER ______________ The Tulane School of Liberal Arts Magazine is published twice a year by the School of Liberal Arts Dean’s Office. Material may only be reprinted with permission. We would love to hear from you! Send letters to the editor at SLAmagfeedback@tulane.edu. To support Tulane’s School of Liberal Arts, contact Christiane Walker, Senior Director of Development, at cwalker11@tulane.edu.
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RAC AND ENG
by An
THE COMMITMENT ISSUE
contents 4
12
18
20
RACE, PLACE, AND COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
AFRO-MEXICANS: ILLUMINATING THE INVISIBLE FROM PAST TO PRESENT
HONORING STUDENTS’ POTENTIAL
LIBERATION AND LIBERAL ARTS: WRITING AS RESISTANCE
by Andrea S. Boyles
by Beau D.J. Gaitors
by Mary Glavan
by Ebony Perro
also in this issue
26 LINE
by Aaron Collier
8 UNDERSTANDING THE IMPACT OF VISUAL CULTURE 16 A COMMITMENT TO LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES 24 THE COMMITTED FILM PROJECTIONIST 28 EMPATHY FOR STUDENTS 30 A COLLECTIVE COMMITMENT AGAINST GMOS 32 PLANTATIONS TO PETROCHEMICALS 34 FAILING BETTER 36 NEW TENURED AND TENURE-TRACK FACULTY
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PHOTO BY GAYATRI MALHOTRA
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Race, Place, & Community Engagement BY ANDREA S. BOYLES, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY AND AFRICANA STUDIES PROGRAM
It has been almost seven years since Michael “Mike” Brown, Jr. was killed, sparking civil unrest in Ferguson, Mo. I remember it like yesterday—
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—the hours, days, weeks, and months of relentless “direct action” occurring across the region, nation, and globe. This widespread amalgamation of activism had been a somewhat unexpected and yet organic and eventual mobilizing of Black citizens in pursuit of social justice. To date, the Ferguson uprising is the longest sustained Black resistance (more than 400 days) since the Montgomery bus boycott (381 days), and I was a participant observer in it. From police protests to town hall meetings, city council meetings, anti-gun violence summits and more, this Black-led effort was all-encompassing, transformative, and committed to protecting and advancing Black lives and the quality thereof. Black citizens locked in and committed themselves to uncovering and tackling perceived injustices and widespread systemic discrimination generally. I understood this almost immediately— within the first few hours of arriving at the outer crime scene (e.g., “Ground Zero”), as members of the Brown family and Black community gathered and grieved, and before the world chimed in. As a Black native St. Louisan, sociologist, and critical criminologist with expertise in social justice and Black citizen-police conflict specifically, I was determined to see the process through; I purposed to be present for the journey. That is, I was fully available and engaged at the behest of “the people” and intimately accounted for the movement and overall Black experience through the heat of it. This first meant committedly staying open and amenable to doing the work of relationship- and community-building, as Black citizens determined it. My insider status as a Black woman St. Louisan—where Ferguson is a suburban municipality—did not automatically grant me the right or suitability for accessing the movement or people. In other words, the idea or assumption that my shared and intersecting social location and lived oppression through Blackness, femaleness, and previous impoverishment alone constituted acceptance wreaks of privilege, an approach often lost on elites and the white racial majority, especially. Respect and trust must be earned, irrespectively, in the Black community. The fact that I also faced similar everyday discrimination did not negate the weight of my then academic and administrative appointments, research and publishing agenda, or improved social mobility.
Reflexivity and selfexamination are important. And in the absence of these behaviors, we see and experience the interactive effects of race and place. 6 | TUL A NE SCHO O L O F LIBER A L A RTS M AG A ZINE
Reflexivity and self-examination are important. And in the absence of these behaviors, we see and experience the interactive effects of race and place. To understand this more deeply, we can trace how Black people have long suffered an auspicious agenda that, in practice, only advanced segregation and containment to protect the interests of privileged populations across locations. While motived by perceived political and economic benefits, these actions normalized race and class threat, detachment, and exploitation for Black and other minoritized populations. Aggressive and excessive policing and criminalizing for profit—as a Department of Justice report outlined in Ferguson—are some of many testaments, all of which subsequently fueled this Black twenty-first century uprising. Dominant and institutional exchanges with minoritized communities continue to shore up age-old systemic plays for power. The business of (de)valuing, possessing, and then governing places has remained true across geographic and intellectual spaces—hence, the reason the presence, voices, or agenda of Black frontline community workers, activists, or citizens generally have been afterthoughts or practically absent comparably.
I account for these exploitive relationships in my recent books, You Can’t Stop the Revolution: Community Disorder and Social Ties in Post-Ferguson America and Race, Place, and Suburban Policing: Too Close for Comfort. Throughout my research, I found many of these oppressive relationships framed as community-centered by the privileged or power majority, but experienced and perceived differently by members of the Black community. For example, while hanging out and talking with folks about various topics following an inner-city ward meeting, I asked activists/organizers “Hakim,” “Kavion,” and “Chon” what they thought about academics. In general, they described us as “analyzing for the sake of over-analyzin’” and therefore, not much help to the community. This is consistent with another community leader who described our work as “analysis paralysis,” and sees researchers as theory- and discussion-driven and incapable or unwilling to translate their knowledge into “hands on,” substantive engagement. Reflexivity and intentional sweat equity, time, and/or money spent at the directing of “the people” advances trust, social justice, and Black lives across all spheres. My work finds those attributes as key in building and sustaining relationships and services across communities. Contrarily, economic ambition and profiteering have proven antithetical to engaging with and advancing the Black community. The persisting construction and relegation of Black people and communities of color widely—poor ones particularly—centered on white racial-spatial politics furthers race and class segregation, social control, and pervasive discrimination wholly; all of which coalesced over time, igniting the Ferguson uprising and the Black Lives Matter movement. Contemporary Black resistance is a continuum and collective effort; it is also evolutionary, transformative, holistic, and constant. These principles give rise and guide my work, theoretically and practically. I stand on the shoulders of many, and thus, embrace my relationship and accounting of “community” as my duty; that is, a humanitarian responsibility. It is with a great, liberating imagination that I hope my research will “pay it forward,” illuminating historical truths and empowerment. Boyles’ recent book You Can’t Stop the Revolution: Community Disorder and Social Ties in Post-Ferguson America (pictured left) was published by University of California Press in 2019. In November 2020, she was appointed as a Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS) delegate to the United Nations’ Economic and Social Council to provide expertise on issues such as reproductive health and violence against women, and in 2021, Boyles joined the faculty of the School of Liberal Arts as associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Africana Studies Program.
It is with a great, liberating imagination that I hope my research will “pay it forward,” illuminating historical truths and empowerment.
COURSE SPOTLIGHT
Building Community Through the Arts Now in its eleventh year, Building Community Through the Arts is co-taught by Barbara Hayley, a professor in and chair of the Department of Theatre and Dance, and Ron Bechet, a professor of art at Xavier University in New Orleans. This course examines theory and practice of communitybased arts, engagement, and social justice. While community partnerships shift annually, in 2021 Tulane and Xavier students worked in teams with the grassroots organization Orleans Legacy Project in collaboration with the Equal Justice Initiative based in Montgomery, Ala., collecting historical research and assisting in creative marketing, fundraising, and programming. In class, students discuss and reflect on readings, guest visits, videos, and case studies via writings, presentations, and story circles, a process created by John O’Neal and Free Southern Theatre, a theatre arm of the '60s civil rights movement.
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Understanding the Impact of Visual Culture AN INTERVIEW WITH
Elizabeth Hill Boone PROFESSOR OF ART HISTORY AND MARTHA AND DONALD ROBERTSON CHAIR IN LATIN AMERICAN ART
Professor Elizabeth Hill Boone has contributed groundbreaking research in the field of art history for more than 40 years. A specialist in Pre-Columbian and early colonial art of Latin America, Boone is a former Director of Pre-Columbian Studies at Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., was the Andrew W. Mellon Professor at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts at the National Gallery of Art, and has been awarded Mexico’s Order of the Aztec Eagle, the College Art Association’s Distinguished Scholar, and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society for Ethnohistory. She is also a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Mexican Academy of History. This spring, Boone will retire after a 26-year tenure in Tulane University’s Newcomb Art Department. EMILY WILKERSON (EW): wanted to study the history of art?
When did you first realize you
ELIZABETH HILL BOONE (EHB):
I was a sophomore in college. Although I started out in marine biology, I was drawn to art. I found ancient Egyptian and Greek art to be especially compelling because these were expressions of peoples somewhat like us, but also culturally different from us.
EW: What drew you to Pre-Columbian art history, in particular? EHB: My sculpture professor Karl Rosenberg at the College of William & Mary taught a course on ancient sculpture in which he devoted three weeks to Pre-Columbian art. I remember when he showed us the monumental sculpture of a monstrous creature— the Coatlicue sculpture, which was said to be the Aztec’s mother goddess. She was figurally horrific, with her head and hands replaced by great serpents and a skirt of intertwined rattlesnakes. I came to wonder how this could be—what kind of mind has such an image at its mother goddess? I spent some of my early career working toward the answer to that question. EW: How does art history inform our understanding of
life today?
EHB: Art history gives us the skills to see, and to evaluate what we are seeing. It trains us to look, notice difference, and judge critically. Additionally, art history tracks major historical and social movements/trends and reveals them through the visual expressions of that time. We see Egypt not through the texts of papyrus scrolls but through the pyramids, sculptures, and tomb paintings; we see the Italian Renaissance not through written documents but through 8 | TUL A NE SCHO O L O F LIBER A L A RTS M AG A ZIN E
the explorations and achievements—scientific as well as cultural and social—of its artists; and we see the Aztecs through their great sculptures and painted books. Art history is the perfect disciplinary major because it draws on the approaches of history, archaeology, linguistics, literary studies, critical theory, and sociology, among others. It is ecumenical in the way it draws on different approaches to understanding visual culture. Moreover—and this is especially important today in our increasingly visual world—art history teaches us how to evaluate the way images shape our thinking and can manipulate us, for good or bad.
EW:
You’ve published five books in the last ten years on writing and pictography in Mexico, in addition to numerous published articles. How does writing fit into art history—a discipline largely understood as image-based?
EHB: Artists use images to think and express themselves, but most others largely think and express themselves through language. Our expression becomes more permanent when we write it down because writing is a medium that allows discourse across location and time. We write for the future and for others not present at the moment of our writing. And, of course, this includes those who write alphabetically to record spoken languages, but also mathematicians and physicists who use algebraic notation, or composers who write musical scores. My own intellectual project has been to understand and explain the system of Mexican pictography, and particularly how the Aztecs used figural images to record their past history, their present world, and its future possibilities. In a research project, as I begin thinking about the corpus of images I am studying, the practice of writing (and all that goes into it, from outlines to drafts) allows me
PROFESSOR ELIZABETH HILL BOONE. PHOTO BY PAULA BURCH-CELENTANO.
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to organize, analyze, and essentially make sense of these ancient human expressions. I write to solve problems, and then to convey this information to others.
EW: What are some of the changes you’ve seen in field over the 40+ years you’ve been an art historian?
EHB:
In the field of art history—and much of academia—the most obvious change has been the gender rebalance. When I went to college, it was rare to have a female professor; almost all our teachers were men, and women were not taken seriously as scholars or professors. The women’s liberation movement of the late 1960s through 1980s changed this, and although women are still largely the caregivers of their children, they are also researchers and professors. Our art history program, for example, has one male professor and eleven females, five of whom are also mothers of young children. In the field of Pre-Columbian Studies, I would say the greatest change has been the critical intervention of art historians, and not just archaeologists, as interpreters of ancient American cultures. And art history as a discipline has also changed in its goals and reach. It has transitioned from its former focus on Western Europe to a new emphasis on non-Western and global perspectives and a concern with images and objects not previously embraced in the concept of fine art. It is an exciting time to be an art historian.
EW:
You’ve received awards such as Mexico’s Order of the Aztec Eagle (1990), the College Art Association’s (CAA) Distinguished Scholar (2019), and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society for Ethnohistory (2019). What do these awards mean for you, your work, and your discipline?
EHB: I am very honored to have been recognized for my work, and I think also for my students’ success, of which I am very proud. It was exciting to be recognized by Mexico in 1990 for promoting Aztec culture in a path-breaking exhibition at the National Gallery of Art and a coordinated symposium on the spectacular finds when the Aztec Great Temple was just beginning to be excavated. More recently, it was especially gratifying to see the CAA recognize a Latin Americanist and Pre-Columbianist as the distinguished scholar, when 40 years prior we Latin Americanists had to fight for CAA recognition and to have even a single session on the topic at the annual meeting. This shows us how far the field has come. I have been very fortunate to have participated in the development of Pre-Columbian and early colonial studies as a field of art historical endeavor. The Ethnohistory award, I think, recognizes the importance of insisting that Mexican pictographic writing should be understood as a discourse system roughly parallel to Western writing so that Pre-Columbian and early colonial history can be told through their painted books.
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BARRO NEGRO (BLACK CLAY) POTTERY MADE BY INDIGENOUS ARTISANS IN THE OAXACA REGION OF MEXICO, ALONGSIDE A FAMILY PHOTOGRAPH, HOLD SPECIAL MEANING IN THE HOME OF ELIZABETH HILL BOONE, A PROFESSOR IN THE NEWCOMB ART DEPARTMENT, AND JOHN VERANO, A PROFESSOR IN THE DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY. PHOTO BY PAULA BURCH-CELENTANO.
EW:
What do you most love about teaching, and what has been one of your favorite moments teaching at Tulane?
EHB:
I love seeing students’ eyes light up when they see and understand something entirely new, when they can read an image for the first time and come to know its cultural message, and when the material I teach challenges their assumptions about the way life is, or was. My classes usually ask students to extend beyond their own cultural perspectives. Probably the most fun is in my seminar on Mexican manuscript painting when the students study the graphic vocabulary and organizational structures of painted histories and then create their own painted histories using the ancient principles.
EW: From your perspective, why are the liberal arts important? EHB: It is important to understand how we came to be who we are
as a culture: how things from the past have shaped who we are, and how social and cultural forces in the present also determine this. For me also, it is crucial that we learn to think critically and understand how discourses of various sorts (speeches, sound bites, writings, tweets, and images) can affect us and others; and we need to be able to judge what this influence is and how we should respond to it. The liberal arts give us these skills. Boone’s newest book, Descendants of Aztec Pictography: The Cultural Encyclopedias of Sixteenth-Century Mexico, was published by University of Texas Press in 2021.
PROGRAM SPOTLIGHTS Tenenbaum Sophomore Tutorials With a focus on interdisciplinary research that responds to the current moment, the Tenenbaum Sophomore Tutorials bring together faculty and students in ideal conditions for intellectual exchange over the course of two consecutive semesters. Each fall semester, 12 students join two professors selected from the School of Liberal Arts research faculty in a team-taught seminar on a special topic highlighting approaches from the humanities and social sciences on issues that resonate in the region. Students participating in the program meet weekly throughout the fall for their seminar and also biweekly in individual sessions with one of the professors for a tutorial-style discussion. This model equips students with an atmosphere for engaged learning and discussion while preparing sophomores for original inquiry and research in the humanities. The spring term builds on the tutorial-style relationship and helps students strengthen written and oral communication skills as they pursue independent research projects. Committed to furthering original research, the program pairs each student with a faculty fellow and provides a monetary stiped. Students’ work with faculty may result in written papers or creative work, which is presented at the close of the academic year in a symposium attended by students, Tenenbaum faculty fellows, and invited guests. The Tenenbaum Sophomore Tutorials began in 2020 with Adrian Anagnost, an art history professor in the Newcomb Art Department, and Marline Otte, a professor in the Department of History, leading the course “Monuments and Public Memory.” From the disciplinary vantage points of history and art history and spanning research across multiple decades, this course considered the role of public art and monuments in modern cities of the West, with a special emphasis on New Orleans. Students from across the university—from the liberal arts and public health to architecture—participated in the program’s inaugural iteration. Find out more information on this new, exciting program at liberalarts.tulane.edu/tenenbaum.
Graduate Student Pedagogy While research is the primary focus during a graduate student’s tenure at Tulane, teaching will most likely be a primary job requirement upon graduation. Additionally, the opportunity to teach or lecture often becomes available while still in school. The Center for Learning and Teaching (CELT) initiated the three-course Graduate Student Pedagogy Program in 2020 to prepare graduate students for the job market and beyond. With the goal of providing a foundation for excellence in teaching, students gain three credit hours through the following courses in the program: In “The Essentials of Learning and Teaching” students explore the science of learning, evaluate different course designs, discuss ways to ensure inclusive and diverse classroom environments, and learn about the pedagogy of service learning. Throughout “Practical Course Design and Teaching Skills,” students focus on the practical applications of course design, classroom management techniques, the appropriate inclusion of technology, and the development of learning-based assessments. Lastly, in their “Teaching Practicum,” graduate students gain hands on experience as faculty of record for a course in their department, as a guest lecturer, or give lectures to peers. All graduate students receive feedback on actual teaching opportunities from peers and mentors.
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Afro-Mexicans:
Illuminating the Invisible from Past to Present BY BEAU D.J. GAITORS PH.D. ’17, HISTORY
Mexico.
Take a moment to think about the movies and images you have viewed that reference groups of people in the history of Mexico. You may recall images of the Aztecs, the Mayans, or Spanish conquistadors. These images present conflicts between a Spanish and an indigenous past: two roots that fused to form a national identity. Yet, in other Latin American countries the images of the nation incorporate a third root: African descendants. African influences are seen and felt in Brazil from Candomblé to Capoeira; in Cuba through Santeria and Salsa; and in Peruvian music and their Pacific coast communities. The African presence extends through Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Venezuela, and throughout Latin America.
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AFRO-MEXICAN CHILDREN IN GUANAJUATO, 1910. ROMUALDO GARCÍA. ABOUT A HUNDRED YEARS AGO ROMUALDO GARCÍA WAS THE PHOTOGRAPHER OF CHOICE IN GUANAJUATO, A WEALTHY MINING TOWN ON THE HIGH CENTRAL PLATEAU OF MEXICO. AS THESE IMAGES SHOW, MANY OF HIS SUBJECTS CLEARLY HAD SOMESAFRICAN PR I NG 2ANCESTRY. 02 1 | 13
Despite the dominant narrative, African descendants also have a history and presence in Mexico. In 2015, the Mexican government conducted an interim census that incorporated African descendants into the categories of race and ethnicity, which had not been done since the 1830s. Citizens had the opportunity to self-identify and almost two million people identified as African descendant. After the results of the 2015 census were released, media outlets immediately questioned where African descendants in the interim census came from, some speculating that they were recent immigrants from West Africa or from the Caribbean. The longer history was little appreciated. In the 1500s and early 1600s, New Spain (colonial Mexico) had one of the highest importation rates of enslaved Africans to the Americas leading to large populations in cities. In their first decade of independence, the Mexican government abolished the slave trade in 1824 and the institution of slavery in 1829. As a result, countless African Americans in the southern U.S. took advantage of this new law and participated in the southern route of the Underground Railroad fleeing to their neighbor, Mexico—quite contrary to the standard narrative of slaves seeking freedom north.
Despite the dominant narrative, African descendants also have a history and presence in Mexico. For example, on July 7, 1839, twenty-seven passengers boarded a merchant ship in New Orleans. They exited the ship in the Mexican port city of Tampico. Among the passengers were seven African Americans whose passport status in Mexico listed them as enslaved. These African Americans had traversed the Gulf, hidden on a merchant ship that took them from enslavement in the U.S. to newfound freedom in Mexico. They practiced their own agency and took advantage of the abolition of slavery in Mexico. Passport records of New Orleans from 1830 to 1840 combined with Mexican importation logs reveal a significant number of enslaved and free African Americans who moved to Mexico. Many of the African Americans remained in the port cities and found employment in the shipping arena and marketplaces, joining the African descendant communities already present in Mexico. African descendants contributed to society in various 14 | TUL A NE SC H O O L O F LIBER A L A RTS M AG A ZI N E
ways, including through their occupations as dock workers, vendors, in the military, and as shop owners, and became integral to every aspect of life in Mexico from their roles as political participants, to religious and artistic capacities. As African descendants received state recognition in the interim census of 2015, and will be included going forward, the census should be used to do more than count their numeric presence. The Mexican census can help politicians, lawmakers, and citizens carefully assess issues affecting African descendants, such as access to resources, education, and other critical aspects of life throughout Mexico, which many communities are fighting for today. Although there seems to be minimal representation of Afro-Mexicans, the art of historical research challenges us to consider the past in connection with currentday circumstances to illuminate the “invisible,” not only to reveal the vibrant history of Afro-Mexicans, but to enhance the quality of life of present-day citizens as a model for social justice work for other forgotten groups and spaces.
THE FLIGHT OF ENSLAVED PEOPLE TO MEXICO RESULTED IN NOTICES LIKE THIS ONE THAT APPEARED IN THE NATIONAL VINDICATOR IN 1843. EAST TEXAS DIGITAL ARCHIVES/ STEPHEN F. AUSTIN STATE UNIVERSITY.
DE MULATO Y MESTIZA, PRODUCE MULATO, ES TORNA ATRÁS. BY JUAN RODRÍGUEZ JUÁREZ, CIRCA 1715. MEXICO WAS A SLAVE TRADING COUNTRY IN THE 16TH CENTURY, HAVING A POPULATION OF AROUND 200,000 PRINCIPALLY WEST AFRICAN SLAVES THAT OUTNUMBERED THE SPANISH COLONIALISTS FOR DECADES AND WAS FOR SOME TIME THE LARGEST IN THE AMERICAS. BLACK SLAVES WERE TYPICALLY USED BY THE SPANISH TO ACT AS FOREMEN, OVERSEEING THE INDIGENOUS POPULATIONS, AND MANY OF THE (MOSTLY MALE) SLAVE POPULATION WENT ON TO MARRY INDIGENOUS WOMEN. THEREFORE, AND DUE TO THE MANY RESULTING MIXED-RACE OFFSPRING, BLACK MEXICANS WERE ALL BUT FORGOTTEN ABOUT FOR CENTURIES, AS THEIR BLOODLINES MIXED WITH OTHER INDIGENOUS COMMUNITIES AND MESTIZO PEOPLES OF MEXICO.
Beau D.J. Gaitors earned his Ph.D. in history from Tulane in 2017. His dissertation focused on traders in Veracruz during the transition to Mexican independence. He is an assistant professor in the Department of History at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, where he teaches Latin American history. S PR I NG 2 02 1 | 15
A COMMITMENT TO
Latin American Studies With a myriad of courses, centers, and programs, Tulane University is committed to cutting-edge research on Latin America. Students can enroll in a variety of courses about Latin America—ranging from geography to communication, art history, political science, and anthropology—and also visit special collections, gain hands on experience, and attend programs and events centered on Latin America through the university’s many resources. On average, more than 700 students enroll in courses with Latin American Studies content across all schools. Here are just a few of Tulane's Latin American centers and programs. Middle American Research Institute (M.A.R.I.) Founded in 1924, the Middle American Research Institute (M.A.R.I.) strives to promote greater understanding of the vibrant and diverse cultures of Middle America. It stewards an extensive collection of textiles, artifacts, and an archive of letters, field notes, maps, and photographs from the scores of field projects it has sponsored and continues to sponsor, and strives to make these accessible to researchers and the general public through a variety of exhibitions, workshops, and symposia.
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Roger Thayer Stone Center for Latin American Studies The Stone Center coordinates the research and teaching activities of more than 120 affiliated faculty, 70 of which are core faculty, in schools and departments across several Tulane campuses. In addition, the center’s students and faculty benefit from a network of contacts with public officials, non-governmental organizations, and academic leaders in Latin America. The Stone Center also has very strong regional expertise in Brazilian Studies and Cuban & Caribbean Studies.
Latin American Studies Program, School of Liberal Arts The Bachelor of Latin American Studies curriculum focuses on achieving an interdisciplinary understanding of the region relative to an increasingly globalizing world. Students also have the opportunity to pursue graduate degrees in this field, for which curriculum in Latin American Studies is dependent upon the student’s particular research interests. While all areas of interdisciplinary research on Latin America are welcome, Tulane has developed significant faculty strengths in Economics, Politics, and Society and Arts, Media, Culture, and Politics.
Latin American Library, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library The Latin American Library (LAL) works to generate scholarly community, building on the historical connections between New Orleans and the Americas. By responsibly collecting, preserving, and providing access to historical and contemporary resources on Latin America, the Caribbean, and diasporic communities, LAL strives to be central to the processes of discovery and dissemination of knowledge at Tulane University.
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HONORING STUDENTS’ POTENTIAL
BY MARY GL AVAN, VISITING ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
S
omething magical happens when we give students control over their learning. They ask better questions, make better mistakes, and may even become motivated to work beyond the requirements of an assignment. Yet ceding control to students has sometimes felt counter-intuitive to me, especially when the uncertainties of hybrid learning seem to suggest that students need stronger boundaries and clearer guidelines. Without them, won’t students just do whatever they want? Perhaps the answer is, “yes, they may,” but also, “that’s ok.” As a disability scholar and advocate, I’ve been trained to recognize that our boundaries and
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guidelines can become barriers to student learning when we prescribe how students should work to such a degree that it becomes counterproductive, especially for disabled students. I’ve also learned that higher education creates unnecessary barriers for any student who falls outside the perceived norm, and if we’re committed to inclusive education, we have to be willing to question where these barriers come from—to consider for example, why we enforce classroom policies that ban technology or that limit classroom participation to verbal discussion. Because these barriers are connected to systems of power and privilege, dismantling them is often difficult—a process that takes reflection,
planning, and time. For me, it started with the growing recognition that my teaching in rhetoric and writing didn’t always align with the critical and emancipatory commitments of my research in disability studies. Standard assignments for a first-year writing class, like reading a 15-page academic article and discussing it verbally in class, made little space for students who struggle to process written information or students fluent in languages other than standard English. The 500word written summary of the article I expected students to submit by a specific deadline made little room for students whose bodies challenge normative notions of time and space. In short, I was forced to ask myself: what assumptions am I making about what my students should and shouldn’t be able to do? And what do these assumptions reveal about whom I’m committed to honoring in the classroom? These questions led me to Universal Design for Learning (UDL), an education framework that offers principles for replacing unnecessary obstacles with accessible, flexible, and responsive learning practices. UDL recognizes that the multifold ways of learning, knowing, and being that all students bring to the classroom are not barriers, although they do create diverse student needs. UDL instead locates barriers in the material and social environment, and then asks that we proactively redesign the environment by planning and making space for variation. While this redesign might mean something simple like including image descriptions in lecture slides, it can also mean more complex work, like reimagining classroom activities, assignments, or even learning objectives. In the first-year writing and honors classes I teach at Tulane, we still read articles, discuss them, and write summaries; we also watch videos, design digital maps, and make things out of Mardi Gras beads. We compose not just traditional academic essays, but also redesign these essays into formats that enable students to showcase
There’s no easy or perfect way to dismantle barriers to student learning, but a commitment to honoring all students’ potential is a solid place to start. their strongest “voice:” comic strips, videos, podcasts, song lyrics, and other genres that challenge the boundaries and power dynamics of academic discourse. Whenever possible, students get to decide how they will access information or complete an assignment, and they submit their work when it best fits their schedule. While these reenvisoned practices are well suited to the unique environment of the small, workshop-style classes I teach, UDL principles—accessibility, flexibility, and responsivity—can be applied usefully, albeit differently, to any pedagogical environment that centers the student. There’s no easy or perfect way to dismantle barriers to student learning, but a commitment to honoring all students’ potential is a solid place to start. When we start changing our classroom environments, we risk students doing whatever they want. However, we might find that students want to go far beyond our expectations. We may find that it’s really not magic at all: it’s motivation, curiosity, and growth.
COURSE SPOTLIGHT
Cross-Cultural Analysis Cross-Cultural Analysis examines the formation of relationships and identities in different historical, cultural, and communication contexts as these have been structured by histories and dynamics of power. Faculty in the Department of Communication, including Mohan Ambikaipaker, Laura-Zoë Humphreys, and Liam Olson-Mayes, present a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches designed to investigate communication as a site for the enactment of power, struggle, and the formation of identity and difference.
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LIBERATION AND LIBERAL ARTS:
Writing as
Resistance BY EBONY PERRO, PROFESSOR OF PRACTICE, DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
T
eaching first-year writing and honors colloquium courses, I encounter students who envision education as a pathway for change. Though each semester brings a spectrum of students—from aspiring activists who take my courses to learn how to channel their rage to students who learned that emotions do not belong in the classroom—2020 was different. In 2020, I witnessed the resurgence of mass, publicly visible anger and outrage toward structural violence and encountered students who entered college during what many media outlets call unprecedented times. Because of this, more students sought to discuss their feelings and find ways to engage in resistance work.
EBONY PERRO, PROFESSOR OF PRACTICE IN THE DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH. PHOTO BY PAULA BURCH-CELENTANO.
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LIBERATION AND LIBERAL ARTS:
as g in Writ
Resistance BY EBONY PERRO, PROFESSOR OF PRACTICE, DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH
T
eaching first-year writing and honors colloquium courses, I encounter students who envision education as a pathway for change. Though each semester brings a spectrum of students—from aspiring activists who take my courses to learn how to channel their rage to students who learned that emotions do not belong in the classroom—2020 was different. In 2020, I witnessed the resurgence of mass, publicly visible anger and outrage toward structural violence and encountered students who entered college during what many media outlets call unprecedented times. Because of this, more students sought to discuss their feelings and find ways to engage in resistance work.
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EBONY PERRO WITH A QUOTE THAT GUIDES HER TEACHING BY AUTHOR AND ART HISTORIAN TEJU PICTURE CAPTION COLE. PHOTO BY PAULA BURCH-CELENTANO.
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“I’ve never taught outside of a social movement.” I’ve said this to colleagues, friends, and students on numerous occasions, and this fact informs my research and pedagogy. I study the archive of angry Black girls in Black women’s coming-of-age novels from the “angry decade” (the 1960s) to the “age of rage” (present-day). Through Black girl protagonists, Black women writers present counternarratives of rage that illuminate it as a valid response to injustice. They also demonstrate the ways rage informs resistance and initiates change. As students come of age in what scholars call the “age of rage,” I center pedagogical strategies that interrogate the relationship between the social climate and emotions. I show students how rage against injustice becomes an assertion of humanity, citizenship, and voice. Based on these ideas, we develop writing principles that inform paper topics and citational practices. These ideas also become pillars for teaching students to examine rhetorical situations, think critically about inserting themselves into academic conversations, and discern whose voices to represent in their work. When I proposed the honors course “Rage: Movements, Media, and the Politics of Being Mad,” I didn't expect the myriad events of summer that sent surges of rage through every hemisphere. I didn’t imagine that the largest movement in U.S. history—Black Lives Matter—would extend its reach during a pandemic. Millions of people were quarantined with their rage and desired freedom in so many ways. In Fall 2020, students
INSTEAD OF ATTACHING RAGE TO VIOLENCE, I TEACH STUDENTS TO consider rage as a consciousnessraising emotion.
and faculty came face-to-face and screen-to-screen with their isolation and injustice-fueled anger, grappling with what to do with it in the classroom. As the intersections of pain, protest, and pedagogy sparked nationwide anti-racist initiatives and student demands for institutional changes, I afforded students space to channel their anger and write about issues that altered their learning environment. Every semester, I start my courses with a tweet by author and art historian Teju Cole. Cole’s notion of “Writing as writing. Writing as rioting. Writing as righting. On the best days, all three,” presents its productive possibilities. When I ask students what Cole means, I get responses like “writing allows us to speak up for change, explain our perspective, and heal our communities. It provokes new thought, empathy, and action.” With the collective responses in mind, students think deeply about their writing and research as resistance. I also implore that they envision rage in these ways. Instead of attaching rage to violence, I teach students to consider rage as a consciousness-raising emotion. We link their rage to the “rioting” and “righting” in their work, where they challenge the status quo and present correctives through their arguments. As they bridge the personal and political, they commit to social justice. Students host a range of conversations in their writing from campus issues to climate change. Despite differing frustrations and sources of rage, students use their knowledge of rage and the writing practices extracted from Cole’s tweet to develop arguments that explore the historical, social, political underpinnings of the problems they address in their writing. Since students bring their joy, burdens, and rage into the educational space in (in)visible ways, I center Deborah J. Cohan’s concept of pedagogical rage. Cohan explains that as students see the ways rage catalyzes social and personal change, rage initiates a process of educating for critical consciousness. Cohan demonstrates that teaching about rage and resistance does not equate to centering physical violence—instead, it shows students to harness their rage for transforming their communities. Students come to see rage as more than an emotion; it is an “analytical tool” and stimulus to respond to societal problems. These concepts, coupled with students’ writing, empower them to seek ways to be heard in a world that is often strategically deaf to their voices. Though I didn’t imagine Summer 2020 unleashing so much rage, I do imagine—and teach students to imagine—the liberation that righteous rage can bring. Each day, as the sounds of literal and figurative freedom songs permeate the class, I remind students of the power of their anger, taking up the imperative of teaching writing as non-violent resistance. We write through and to our rage, holding space for it as we work toward healing. As national and global discourses are underscored by rage, educators can consider the utility of anger and the possibilities of liberal arts education for liberation.
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The Committed Film Projectionist: Technology, Labor, & Nation BY HONGWEI THORN CHEN, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF COMMUNICATION
For
the greater part of the twentieth century in China, film projectionists did not work quietly behind soundproofed projection booths where they attended to the hidden machinery of cinema’s dream factories. Until the proliferation of television during the 1990s, motion pictures reached the countryside thanks to mobile projection teams, which transported film projectors, film prints, sound equipment, and electric generators across the nation’s variegated geography. Film screenings never stood alone, but instead were accompanied by lectures, community activities, news reports, and government propaganda. Newspapers, magazines, and radio programs celebrated the heroism of itinerant projectionists, whose jobs involved long tours away from home, strenuous physical labor, and diplomatically negotiating the rifts between state policy and local society. Although greatly expanded under the Communists in the 1960s, state-sponsored mobile film projection originated in the 1930s when the ruling Nationalist government made use of new portable film technologies to build a nationwide educational projection network. Proponents of educational film saw movies not only as a powerful tool for indoctrination and pedagogy, but also as a medium that could connect diverse communities by supplying them with shared objects and experiences. Chinese reformers in the 1930s saw the country as underdeveloped: its transportation infrastructure was fragmented, and its population did not understand themselves as being part of a unified nation. Film projectionists overcame these obstacles by transporting films via automobiles, boats, animal drawn carriages, and by foot. They lectured alongside their films—sometimes in local dialect—to make them accessible to culturally and linguistically diverse audiences. Who were these itinerant projectionists? Ministry of Educationsponsored training programs envisioned their candidates as committed educators who were physically able and equipped with foundational knowledge in mathematics and the sciences, as well as fluency in English (as most educational films and film equipment used in this period were imported from the U.S.). While we often think of film
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PHOTO OF A CHINESE PROJECTIONIST FROM THE ARCHIVES OF THE UNITED BOARD FOR CHRISTIAN HIGHER EDUCATION IN ASIA, SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, YALE DIVINITY SCHOOL LIBRARY.
projectionists as specialized technical workers, such “projectionist-lecturers” had to be jacks-of-all-trades. Bringing together diverse talents, they also became figureheads of national integration. A print illustration from 1937 (right) exemplifies the complexities, and indeed the contradictions, of the image of the projectionist as a heroic and multitalented individual. Beside a team transporting film equipment on a hand-drawn cart against a background of rolling hills is a poetic inscription written in the cadence of a work song, eulogizing the travails of projection teams: Pull Hard! Push Hard! In the name of the peoples’ intellectual hunger This is our great educational responsibility Not afraid of the wind or the frost, the rain or the snow Not afraid of the grueling hardships Comrades! Forward March! The poem celebrates the heroism of film projectionists by evoking the physical hardship that they endure. The projectionists’ ability to brave the elements is taken as a sign of their commitment to educating the people and
improving society. Yet, in the illustration itself, we see a clear division of labor: the most prominent figure in it is a worker with bared legs straining to pull the cart while the group of the projectionist-lecturers follow in black suits and suitcases. This stark contrast between the “manual” and “mental” labor of film projection belies the poem’s singular “we.” Who exactly is it that bears “our great educational responsibility?” While it is commonplace today to say that media technologies disconnect people from their physical environs while enabling them to form new communities irrespective of geography, the experience of Chinese film projectionists suggests that this is only one side of the story. Mass mediated societies remain bound together physically and geographically by uneven systems of material circulation and human labor, of which the projectionist is one part. In this context, perhaps we can read the projectionist’s “great educational responsibility” neither as a commitment to an abstract idea or cause (the “nation,” in this case) nor as the completion of a narrow professional task, but rather as the process of attending to these systems in their complexity.
“GOING TO THE COUNTRYSIDE SKETCH” SOURCE JIANGSU ZHENJIANG PROVINCIAL MASS EDUCATION CENTER SUMMARY ON ELECTRIFIED EDUCATION (ZHENJIANG: JIANGSU SHENGLI MINZHONG JIAOYU GUAN, 1937).
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LINE BY AARON COLLIER, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, NEWCOMB DEPARTMENT OF ART
BASIC
formal elements such as line and shape are often valued in visual art as preliminary or preparatory agents, mere steppingstones toward the finished work. In my paintings, I aim to picture that which is in the process of becoming, arriving, or departing. In doing so, the formal elements of line and shape frequently constitute the end rather than the means. Line is itself a commitment: a declared edge or positive form puncturing negative space. Roman author and philosopher Pliny the Elder fancifully traces the origin of painting to a single line. In his book Natural History, Pliny the Elder offers the legend of a young woman in Corinth outlining the undulating edge of her lover’s cast shadow onto the wall with a scrap of charcoal before he sets sail on a perilous journey, presumably never to return. For the young woman, this spare contour served as an insistence, a pledge to hold. The commitment of the line (as is true in all commitment) inhabits the space of presence and absence, an embodied declaration against the void.
AARON COLLIER, A TRACE OF WHAT IS LEFT, 2020, FLASHE ON CANVAS, 32 X 30 INCHES. (LEFT) AARON COLLIER, ATTENDANTS TO THE ASCENT, 2018, FLASHE ON CANVAS, 36 X 32 INCHES.
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Empathy for Students
BY TONI WEISS, LAWRENCE M.V.D. SCHLOSS SENIOR PROFESSOR OF PRACTICE, DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS, AND EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF CLASSROOM ENGAGEMENT, CENTER FOR ENGAGED LEARNING AND TEACHING
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A
high-quality liberal arts education encourages all of us to be life-long learners and gives us the analytical skills necessary to be critical thinkers. But as the content experts in the classroom, professors often forget what it feels like to be a student. Covid-19 has been, and continues to be, a black cloud taking so very much from us; however, this pandemic has also given educators an amazing opportunity to be actual students again. For two weeks in March 2020, the Center for Engaged Learning and Teaching (CELT) and the Innovative Learning Center (ILC), two faculty development centers at Tulane, taught hundreds of faculty members how to use Zoom. As the Executive Director of Classroom Engagement at CELT, I, and my colleagues, focused specifically on the step-by-step process of scheduling meetings, recording sessions, and sharing screens. Today, those tasks likely seem intuitive, but they certainly didn’t then. Considering the number of people who emailed us with questions, participated in workshops, and came to office hours for individual help, it is clear that most people required multiple interactions with the new information before feeling confident using Zoom. Few of us can truly learn a new idea, concept, or skill the first time we see it, something we, as content experts, tend to forget. This struggle with Zoom was a good reminder that students need to see something multiple times before they can start to internalize the information. The CELT team made the conscious decision to not layer the conversation about Zooming with too much learning theory or best pedagogical practices—that could wait until everyone was more familiar with the technology. Only once someone felt comfortable unmuting the microphone, for example, could we begin to infuse the conversation with questions such as “Why are you structuring this assignment like this?” or “Tell me more about what you are trying to assess.” Students need content and skills scaffolded so they can be introduced to something new when they are ready to learn it. CELT and the ILC have been teaching faculty how to use Canvas, Tulane’s chosen digital Learning
Students need content and skills scaffolded so they can be introduced to something new when they are ready to learn it. Management System, for over five years. We have encouraged everyone to use its multitude of features, but often to no avail; many still just saw it as a place to dump course documents. The pandemic completely changed this dynamic. Suddenly, faculty were wanting to know how to set up Canvas quizzes, put students into working groups, create assignments, and embed videos into pages. It was only until this information was relevant that people began to ask the questions. Students learn best when they see the value in exerting the necessary efforts. In our commitment to give our students the very best education possible despite extremely challenging circumstances, educators and administrators were forced to become students again ourselves. Beyond the new technology we learned and the new pedagogy we embraced, perhaps the most important thing teachers will carry forward will be an increased empathy for our students. Now that we remember the fear, the insecurities, the need for some handholding, and the desire to do well, faculty are in a better position to provide our students with the encouragement and guidance they need to become the very best life-long learners.
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A Collective Commitment Against GMOS BY AMALIA LEGUIZAMÓN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY
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Americans
are increasingly wary of genetically modified foods. We see it in the growing number of food labels saying, “Non-GMO,” meaning the product does not contain genetically modified organisms or materials. And while we fear their potential health risks, many of us cannot distinguish one GMO crop from another. Are strawberries genetically modified? Are peaches or tomatoes? The answers are no, no, and no. Only four products account for 99% of all GMO crops planted worldwide: soybeans, corn, cotton, and canola. Soybeans alone make up 50% of that number. Transgenic soybeans have been genetically modified to tolerate glyphosate-based herbicides—a technological development branded by Monsanto as “Roundup Ready.” While almost 100% of soybeans planted in the U.S. are genetically modified, barely 15% are used in producing foods for human consumption. The primary market for soybeans is animal feed. Without a label, consumers concerned about the potential risks of eating GMO products may not distinguish when, and if, there are any GMO traces in the products they purchase and eat. In the U.S., no law mandates labeling for GMOs, and the brands that willingly provide this information are often prohibitively expensive. We can continue to address our concerns individually by purchasing products that promise to make us safe, or we could follow the lead of the rest of the world and address the problem collectively. In France, Germany, the U.K., and India, among many other places, students, farmers, scientists, and consumers have organized in collective action against GMOs. Argentina, where my research is focused, is the third-largest global grower of GMO crops. Over the past 25 years, glyphosate use has risen sharply in the country with GMO soy expansion, heightening ecological and health risks. Physicians report increased rates of miscarriages, congenital birth defects, leukemia, and other cancers among people who have a history of direct exposure to pesticides. The Mothers of Ituzaingó Anexo, organized into a movement in 2002 compelled by the grief of losing their children, are the central figures of the anti-GMO movement in Argentina. Together, they are demanding fumigations are banned within town limits to protect everyone’s health. Theirs is a collective commitment to protect children, communities, and the environment; a commitment shared by environmental justice movements worldwide. Leguizamón’s book, Seeds of Power: Environmental Injustice and Genetically Modified Soybeans in Argentina, was published in 2020 by Duke University Press.
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Plantations to Petrochemicals: St. Charles’ Geographies of Exploitation BY MEGAN FAUST, PH.D. CANDIDATE, CITY, CULTURE, AND COMMUNITY As the Mississippi River moves through Baton Rouge and snakes toward New Orleans, it passes a strip of land unlike any it encountered previously. This 85-mile stretch along the river is colloquially known as “Cancer Alley” or the “Petrochemical Corridor,” and encompasses about 135 petrochemical plants and many more industrial facilities. These plants dominate the landscape, eating up acres of land, pulling in hundreds of gallons of water from the Mississippi, and discharging industrial waste back into the river and atmosphere. From the expansiveness of these sites, it appears as though they have always stood guard over the river waters. Yet the history of these spaces, often submerged in oil and smog, reveals that this industrial landscape once held quite a different—though no less pernicious—character. Beneath the facilities lies a long history of colonization, expropriation, and slavery. Where plant operators, managers, and technicians now work, enslaved Africans once toiled, forced to work the land and cultivate its crops. 32 | TUL A NE SC H O O L O F LIBER A L A RTS M AG A ZI N E
St. Charles Parish hosts one such site. Several of the plantations that once dominated its social and economic spheres became the infamous Shell Norco Manufacturing Complex, one of the largest petrochemical facilities in the country. Yet before industry dominated St. Charles’ landscape, Indigenous populations lived and worked on the land, as local historian Henry Yoes describes in Louisiana’s German Coast. The Native American peoples the Taensas inhabited present-day St. Charles Parish, but the arrival of 17th century French colonists set upon developing an agricultural empire forced the relocation and decimation of Native peoples in the area. In Indigenous peoples’ stead, French colonists erected plantations to raise sugarcane, indigo, and rice, forcing enslaved Africans to perform dangerous and grueling labor. Under the brutal regime of southern slaveholding, African and Africandescended peoples worked the parish soils, raising fortunes for planter elites. This agricultural focus began to change when, in 1914, the New
chronic illnesses, dirty tap water, and toxin-laden soils with little to no restitution. The titanic piping and exhaling stacks that preside over St. Charles and the river parishes of the Petrochemical Corridor are therein the latest transformation of a space long characterized by exploitation. The geography of industry overlays that of colonization and slavery, but it does not erase the latter’s lasting impacts. It only lengthens the story. Scholars of these spaces must remain dedicated to both telling this story in its entirety while aiding ongoing efforts to construct a new one within it, one based in the reparation and liberation long owed to these communities.
COURSE SPOTLIGHT
Environmental Archeology
THE SHELL NORCO MANUFACTURING COMPLEX, LOCATED IN LOUISIANA'S ST. CHARLES PARISH ALONG THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER, IS ONE OF THE LARGEST PETROCHEMICAL FACILITIES IN THE COUNTRY. PHOTO BY PAULA BURCH-CELENTANO.
Orleans Item reported that Mexican Petroleum had purchased land on the Destrehan plantation to build a large oil refinery. A short two years later, the newspaper proclaimed that the New Orleans Refining Company bought 366 acres of sugarcane fields from the neighboring Good Hope plantation. With the introduction of the first major petroleum industries into the parish, the character of the landscape began to shift irrevocably. While this transition dramatically altered the landscape’s use and aesthetic, the exploitation of its land and peoples remained consistent. Extracting from the environment, whether in the form of soil nutrients or acreage, defined the planters’ and corporations’ approach to the land. This lens of exploitation similarly carried over to their treatment of the local population, especially Africandescended peoples. St. Charles’ Black population suffered the degradations of slavery and coerced labor while agriculture dominated. To this day, their local descendants still bear the brunt of the petrochemical industry’s polluting effects of cancer and
Environmental Archaeology examines the relationship between human behavior and environmental change throughout history. This course looks at the ways in which humans have responded to their environmental circumstances and the ways in which human activities have influenced environmental conditions. Through a combination of lectures, in-class discussion, and self-led research papers, students learn how archaeologists employ methods and theories from a variety of disciplines to explore topics concerning past human/environment interactions. These themes include causes of global climate change, the origins of agriculture and animal domestication, food taboos and colonialism, societal collapse and resilience during environmental change, and Holocene changes in human health, including the origins of modern disease epidemics.
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PHOTO OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS BY AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHER GEORGE K. WARREN, CIRCA 1879.
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Failing Better BY R. BLAKESLEE GILPIN, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF HISTORY
The tail end of Black history month in 2021 saw what,
at first blush, seems a most curious and unwelcome announcement. The same techniques being used for deep fake technology (the processing power of digital software and machine learning) have just been used to animate, among other historic figures, Frederick Douglass. It is perhaps a fitting tribute to the most photographed man of the nineteenth century, who believed that photos transmitted “the essential humanity” of their subjects, that we should be able to see Douglass come to life. The truth is that from the moment Douglass rose in the audience of the Nantucket Atheneum in 1841, Americans were struck by how he animated abstract debate; he was the living personification of the pursuit of the nation’s freedoms. Living proof of his republic’s hypocrisies, Douglass was also as compelling and inviting in every dimension as slavery was designed to be impenetrable. When Douglass published his first autobiography in 1845, the book became such a massive bestseller that its author was forced to go to Britain to avoid being reclaimed by his former master. Douglass’ supporters soon purchased his freedom for $711.66, and Douglass spent his life as a singular stylist of prose and tireless campaigner on behalf of his enslaved brethren. Douglass was, above all, a passionate and skeptical patriot. To be sure, unbridled anger pulses through his 1852 speech “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?” and bottomless tragedy punctuates his 1845 Narrative, particularly the staggering metaphor of his enslaved younger self watching ships freely plying the Chesapeake Bay. But when he published an expanded and revised autobiography (the second of three!) My Bondage and My Freedom in 1855, Douglass offered his life as evidence for his country’s foundational contradictions, a story of an enslaved boy gaining the most sacred tool of democracy: words. Across thousands of speeches and newspaper editorials, a lifetime spent with word and deed, Douglass personifies Samuel Beckett’s sublime adage: “Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.” Failing better was Douglass’ message and his living example. Revising himself and his republic was the only way to reach toward the nation’s higher ideals. As America’s history of racism and white supremacy saturates our current moment, my and my colleague Nick Bromell’s new edition of Douglass’ My Bondage, My Freedom highlights the author’s earnest desire for us to be better citizens. Reading it implores Americans to listen, to learn and unlearn, and to fail better.
Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. -Samuel Beckett
The newest edition of Douglass’ My Bondage, My Freedom, edited by Gilpin and Nick Bromell, was released in 2020 by W. W. Norton & Company.
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Welcome NEW TENURED AND TENURE-TRACK FACULTY
Emily Cook
Assistant Professor, Department of Economics Emily Cook studies higher education in the U.S. using methods from labor economics and industrial organization. Her research focuses on how federal and state higher-education policies affect market outcomes, including applications, admissions, tuition, and financial aid. Cook earned her Ph.D. in economics from the University of Virginia and her B.A. in economics from the University of Maryland– College Park. She also holds a B.M. in violin performance from the University of Maryland.
Jerome Dent
Assistant Professor, Department of Communication, Africana Studies Program Jerome P. Dent Jr.’s work centers on visual and cultural studies. Dent was born in Los Angeles, received a B.A. in comparative literature and African American studies from the University of California–Irvine, and a M.A. in humanities from Mount St. Mary’s University. In 2020, Dent received his Ph.D. from the University of Rochester, where he was awarded the Provost Fellowship and Slattery Fellowship in 2014, and the Celeste Hughes Bishop Award in 2016. He was also awarded a Flaherty Fellowship in 2016 and a Black Film Center/Archive Research Fellowship in 2018.
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e Gary Hoover
Professor, Department of Economics and Executive Director, Murphy Institute Gary Hoover’s research focuses on the intersection of economics, race, and public policy. Since 2012, Hoover has been co-chair of the American Economic Association Committee on the Status of Minority Groups in the Economics Profession. He is also the current and founding editor of the Journal of Economics, Race and Policy, past vice president of the Southern Economic Association, and a fellow of CESifo Group Munich. Hoover received his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from Washington University in St. Louis and has previously held faculty and leadership positions at the University of Oklahoma and the University of Alabama.
Mélanie Lamotte
Assistant Professor, Department of French & Italian, Africana Studies Program
Mélanie Lamotte is a historian of race, ethnicity, and colonialism in the early modern period. Her work covers the French colonial world with a focus on Louisiana, Guadeloupe (in the Caribbean), Senegal, Isle Bourbon (in the Southwest Indian Ocean), and French India. Lamotte received a Ph.D. in history from the University of Cambridge in 2016, where she was a junior research fellow. Her research projects have been supported by the Mellon Foundation, the Arts and Humanities Research Council of the United Kingdom, and the Library of Congress, among others.
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NEW TENURED AND TENURE-TRACK FACULTY
Golan Moskowitz
Assistant Professor, Department of Jewish Studies Golan Moskowitz is a literary scholar, cultural historian, and visual artist with a Ph.D. in Near Eastern and Judaic Studies from Brandeis University. Moskowitz has worked as a research consultant and editor for the Anti-Defamation League and as assistant to the executive director of the Tauber Institute for the Study of European Jewry. He has published writing on gendered and queer approaches to the study of post-Holocaust family and memory. Moskowitz has taught courses at Smith College, Tufts University, and the University of Toronto.
Lisa Wade
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, and the Newcomb Institute
Lisa Wade’s research explores how gendered ideas about the body inform sexual attitudes and behaviors and sexuality-related discourse and policy. She is the author of American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus and a forthcoming introductory text titled Terrible Magnificent Sociology. She is also the co-author of Gender: Ideas, Interactions, Institutions and co-editor of Assigned: Life with Gender. Wade received a M.A. in Human Sexuality, Marriage, and Family Life Education from New York University and her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Wisconsin.
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Letters to the
Editor The New Orleans Issue
What a lovely gem of a magazine you have created—there is something for everyone! I had several favorite articles in the New Orleans issue, which mirrored the multifaceted city of New Orleans. However, it was Emily Clark’s piece on Noel Carrière that spoke to me. The story of free people of color (gens de couleur libres) resounds through my own studies, which have centered around the False River region and the Louisiana Creole French family LeDoux. I eagerly await Clark’s book! Rev. LaVerne ‘Pike’ Thomas III (A&S ’64) Shreveport, Louisiana I haven’t had much good to say about Tulane since Newcomb College was abolished, but I found the New Orleans issue of the liberal arts magazine genius. From the dean’s poetic message to the fascinating content and focus on community service, I was impressed with the entire magazine. Well done. Jennifer Brush (NC '78) ASB President '77-'78
The Responsibility Issue Pardon my sports metaphor, but with each issue, you hit a home run! Each issue forces me out of my comfort zone. It is wonderful mental rigor. It makes me uncomfortable at moments. It enlightens me at moments. I do not always agree with everything said, but I am always enlightened by seeing a different viewpoint. Thank you for giving my life mental stimulation. Jack Waldbewohner (A&S ’72) Pacifica, California
We would love to hear from you! Send letters to the editor at SLAmagfeedback@tulane.edu.
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40 | TUL A NE SC H O O L O F LIBER A L A RTS M AG A Z I N E
PAULA BURCH-CELENTANO
The Tulane University Marching Band participated in “Mardi Gras for All Y’all,” a three-day virtual Mardi Gras celebration in February 2021, for a local news outlet.
TULANE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LIBERAL ARTS 102 NEWCOMB HALL NEW ORLEANS, LA 70118
CHERYL GERBER
About the Cover: The Tulane motto “Non sibi, sed suis” which translates to “Not for oneself, but for one's own,” serves as a reminder of the university’s commitment to fostering an inclusive community. The motto adorns the Benenson Plaza in front of Newcomb Hall, the home of the School of Liberal Arts, and a plaque on the exterior of the Howard-Tilton Memorial Library.
