_______ THE FUTURES ISSUE
FU
WINTER 2021 - 2022
T
U
R ES W I NT ER ’ 2 1 -’ 2 2 | 1
PAULA BURCH-CELENTANO
LOCATED 30 MINUTES FROM TULANE'S UPTOWN CAMPUS, A STUDIO IN THE WOODS PROVIDES A RESIDENCY FOR ARTISTS AND SCHOLARS TACKLING THE CHALLENGING ISSUES OF OUR TIME WITH POWER, RESOURCEFULNESS, AND IMAGINATION. OUR PROTECTED FOREST ON THE MISSISSIPPI RIVER ENCOURAGES ITS VISITORS TO LISTEN DEEPLY TO THE LAND AND WATER AND USE THE STUDIO TO CREATE WORKS THAT MOVE HUMANITY FORWARD.
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liberal arts TULANE SCHOOL OF
MAGAZINE
WINTER 21-22 | VOL. 3 | NO. 2
FROM THE EDITORS August 2021: the stage is set for the beginning of in-person classes, events, and returning to university life as we know it. A year and a half into a global pandemic, we’ve become more adaptable, we’ve developed new skills, and we have a greater understanding of the interconnectedness of our lives. In August, we were ready to start the fall semester afresh. Then, Hurricane Ida, a Category 4 storm, swept through South Louisiana. Hand in hand with a pandemic, the events of the past year continue to teach us new lessons and push us to think about adjusting to an unchartered, global future that promises to persist in its complexity. We’ve been preparing for the future for a long time in the School of Liberal Arts and are excited to present this issue of our magazine, focused on “Futures” plural. In one sense, this issue supports the traditional understanding of how our faculty and students research the past to move forward. Studying disciplines like history, anthropology, and classics allow us to understand our present moment more deeply and prepare for the days, months, and decades ahead. But we are also grounded in the current moment across the school—our faculty are engaged with both our student body and the New Orleans community in ways that are shaping a more dynamic education, forging new paths to fulfilling careers, and creating a better understanding of the world we live in and the world we will live in. In the School itself, we’re responding to these calls by revitalizing key offerings, such as the Digital Media Practices program and the Strategy, Leadership and Analytics Minor (SLAM), to better equip our students for careers of the future. While the approaches differ, what you’ll find reiterated throughout this issue is that the liberal arts disciplines excel in preparing students for the growth necessary to welcome what lies ahead—in fact, the word “future” has its roots in the Latin futurus and the stem fu-, meaning “to grow, to become.” As you’ll see in these articles, graduating with a degree in the liberal arts means leaving college with remarkable communication, research, and problem solving skills, as well as the capacity to adapt to changing circumstances—key abilities required for a workforce inclusive of careers we can’t yet envision. We hope you enjoy this issue of the Tulane School of Liberal Arts Magazine, and we look forward to traveling onward, into the unknown, together.
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EDITORIAL DIRECTORS BRIAN T. EDWARDS JULIANA ARGENTINO ASSISTANT EDITORIAL DIRECTOR EMILY WILKERSON ART DIRECTOR ARIELLE PENTES CONTRIBUTORS COURTNEY BRYAN EDWARD CRUZ ILANA HORWITZ LILIAN LOMBERA ADAM MCKEOWN CHERYL NARUSE MAURA SULLIVAN JALON YOUNG DESIGNER MELINDA WHATLEY VILES PHOTOGRAPHER PAULA BURCH-CELENTANO SPECIAL THANKS RYAN MCBRIDE JOSEPH MISTROT DIANA SOTO-OLSON ______________ 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 DIRECTOR OF MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS JULIANA ARGENTINO ______________ The Tulane School of Liberal Arts Magazine is published twice a year by the School of Liberal Arts Office of the Dean. 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 Dominique Vining, Director of Development, at dvining@tulane.edu.
4
LIB FO PO AG
by B
THE FUTURES ISSUE
contents 4
8
by Brian T. Edwards
with Adam McKeown and Edward Cruz
LIBERAL ARTS FOR THE POST-PANDEMIC AGE
PATHS TO A REWARDING CAREER
12
TRANSFORMING GRADUATE EDUCATION THROUGH COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
26
THE FUTURE OF HIGHER EDUCATION NEEDS TO EMBRACE RELIGION by Ilana M.Horwitz
by Emily Wilkerson
also in this issue 7 WHY HIRE LIBERAL ARTS GRADUATES?
THE MUSIC WE KNOW:
16 ALUMNI HIGHLIGHTS 22 NEW DIGITAL MEDIA PRACTICES FACULTY
An Interview with Courtney Bryan
23 SLAM MINOR UPDATE
18
24 GLOBAL ASIA 25 EVST FACULTY SPOTLIGHT 28 SUMMER COURSE/ CREATIVE INDUSTRIES SPOTLIGHT 30 A SHORT STORY: RIFFING
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BY BRIAN T. EDWARDS DEAN AND PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH
4 | TUL A NE SCHOO L O F LIBER A L A RTS M AG A ZIN E
It
Liberal Arts for thePostPandemic Age EVEN BEFORE THE WORLD WENT THROUGH THE DRAMATIC SERIES OF TRANSFORMATIONS PRODUCED BY COVID-19, WE ALREADY KNEW IT WAS CHANGING INCREDIBLY QUICKLY.
may seem odd to speak of discussions from two or three years ago as if they are the distant past, but that’s the thing about change—the future is here before you know it. In 2018, in what now seems a different world, a group called Institute for the Future released a study that generated a lot of controversy. The report claimed that because of the rate of technological change, an overwhelming 85% of the jobs that would exist by 2030 hadn’t yet been invented. The paper was fiercely debated: Forbes called it a myth, yet PBS reported on it as proven fact. For college educators, the question was urgent: what did such a rapidly changing job market mean for our curriculum? Change is happening at a dizzying pace. Environmental crises are now the rule rather than the exception. Here in New Orleans, we know that as well as anywhere. And then, a global pandemic sweeps in to force us to reorganize our entire society. Two years later, fewer people remember the “normal” we are supposed to return to. Some call the changes brought by the recent decades of digital innovation a fourth industrial revolution, recognizing that new technologies have a pattern of producing seismic social and political change. In the face of so much transformation, I propose that a liberal arts education has never been more valuable. And if this seems surprising, then let me double down: I will insist on both senses of the word “value.” First, a well-rounded education forms good citizens and critical media consumers, and enriches our sense of living—this is value in a more abstract sense. Second, I maintain that a liberal arts education has
tangible economic value, in that it prepares students for careers they can’t predict and, indeed, that might not yet exist while they’re in college. A strong liberal arts education emphasizes critical thinking, creative problem solving, the embrace of complexity, and high-level communication skills. If the pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that navigating not only a career, but life itself, requires a whole range of talents, skills, and creativity. AGAINST THE GRAIN To propose liberal arts as the best path to career success seems to go against much of the common wisdom. In the face of the rapid rise in college costs and the ways in which science and technology seem to rule the future, from artificial intelligence and genetic coding to climate change and robotics, many have absorbed the idea that STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) fields are the most reliable ticket to jobs. Politicians from both political parties have publicly knocked liberal arts degrees, calling out English (Sen. Mitt Romney), anthropology (former Florida Gov. Rick Scott), and gender studies (former North Carolina Gov. Patrick McCrory) as poor investments for future job prospects. Even President Barack Obama mocked art history degrees as poor job training. Is a liberal arts education something only for those who don’t need a job? A form of social capital to be gained from elite schools? There have been defenses of a liberal education for centuries. The idea that education in history, literature, the arts, and social and W I NT ER ’ 2 1 -’ 2 2 | 5
A strong liberal arts education emphasizes critical thinking, creative problem solving, the embrace of complexity, and high-level communication skills. —————
basic sciences liberates students from their own local beliefs and prejudices—the “liberal” in liberal education refers to freeing, as in liberation—has underlain the argument that well-rounded graduates make good citizens. George Washington believed that the success of American democracy required an educated citizenry and called for a national university—going so far as to leave a bequest for its establishment in his will and specifying that students should study literature, arts, and sciences. Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson agreed enough to found universities themselves. But who can afford to be a good citizen if they can’t find a good job? Here is where a rapidly changing job market matters deeply. Whether or not 85% of the jobs we’ll have in the 2030s will be new, what’s uncontrovertibly true is that all jobs require the ability to be flexible. In a dynamic era, all careers must adjust to the ways in which new technologies, artificial intelligence, climate change, or myriad other factors might affect the work they do. STEM VS LIBERAL ARTS THROW DOWN So what about degrees in STEM versus liberal arts degrees, the classic comparison? Efforts to chart the economic value of those degrees— 6 | TUL A NE SCHOO L O F LIBER A L A RTS M AG A ZIN E
beyond superficial social media listicles—reveal some surprises. A 2019 study published by the New York Times compared the salaries of computer science and engineering graduates who were two to four years out of college (23 to 25 years old) against history and social science majors and found that the former group had a 37% higher salary on average. Just what you’d expect, right? But then the study looked at 40-yearolds with the same majors and found that the history and social science majors’ wages surpassed the computer scientists and engineers. Why? There are a lot of factors at play, but if you’re preparing for a world you can’t predict, narrow training is risky business. (The best computer science departments teach the discipline as a liberal art—a particular mode of algorithmic thinking that’s useful not only to future software engineers—signaling that engineers would do well to take a second major in a liberal arts field.) An education that builds solid fundamentals in how to learn, how to communicate, and how to engage with complexity makes sense for a future that might take any number of tracks. That’s precisely what a well-planned liberal arts education provides. Embracing the very unpredictability of the future is a remarkable way to approach one’s study of the past, whether through history or literature, as well as to engage with the ways social scientists analyze and make sense of the present. Indeed, bringing together these approaches and putting them in dialogue is the surest way to confront the problems of the future—political, environmental, social—which underlies the theme of this issue of the Tulane School of Liberal Arts Magazine. As Tulane historian Andy Horowitz argued in the New York Times in the wake of Hurrican Ida, “structural problems need structural solutions.” Horowitz’s essay reflects the kind of thinking a liberal education champions—understanding the present as a reflection of complex underlying structures—and making connections between past and present, the general and the specific. GARDEN OF FORKING PATHS There’s no single path or major within the liberal arts that yields this kind of complex thinking. My point is that any of the liberal arts disciplines embraced deeply for its own sake may do just that. But students should keep these goals in mind: make sure you learn to write well and communicate orally with acumen, embrace complexity whether in historical situations, advanced grammatical constructions or social science problems, think creatively, and develop research capabilities. And then learn to speak about those talents and skills with future employers and you’re in a great position for a future we simply do not and cannot yet know. In a world that seems to be at the breaking point politically, socially, and in terms of the natural environment, what we need desperately is the next generation of young leaders. We need graduates who have grappled freely with the problems of the present and past, both inside the United States and in communities and contexts far from our own lived experience, and who have thought hard about positive social change. It’s more than the future of our republic at stake. As the fourth industrial revolution continues to change everything, as we struggle to contain global pandemics, and as we adapt to a changing climate, the ways in which we learn to live with the world we have created for ourselves will allow us to harness the very changes—both positive and negative—we have unleashed. It’s those with a rigorous liberal arts education who will be best positioned to lead us into and through that uncertain future.
WHY HIRE
LIBERAL ARTS GRADUATES?
Members of our Dean's Advisory Council share how invaluable liberal arts graduates are to the workplace. “ A liberal arts education provides candidates with a breadth of knowledge in multiple disciplines, which makes them well-versed and enables them to adapt to a variety of career opportunities.” —M ARJORIE JACOBS (NEWCOMB COLLEGE ’81) MEDIATOR / ATTORNEY CHICAGO, ILLINOIS
“ O ur highest performing investment teams are always characterized by the collaborative efforts of individuals that are skilled in research and analysis, creative inquiry, and, most importantly, critical thinking. These attributes enhance our understanding and knowledge of any specialty and are hallmarks of the liberal arts. We have frequently hired liberal arts graduates for our investment and business teams because rigorous analysis and discussion are essential to our success. And, as the evolution in the nature of work accelerates, critical thinking and clear communication are becoming even more valuable.” — WILSON MAGEE (ARTS & SCIENCES ’77) INVESTMENT MANAGER DELRAY BEACH, FLORIDA
“ O ur world has never been more complex, and it has never changed more rapidly. Liberal arts graduates absorb new information quickly, make sense of it, and effectively communicate to different audiences. They are curious and question everything. They are capable storytellers. These are the traits required to be a great lawyer.” — JOHN B. STRASBURGER (ARTS & SCIENCES ’86) ATTORNEY HOUSTON, TEXAS
“ We can count on candidates with liberal arts degrees to produce creative solutions to our organization’s most difficult challenges because they effectively and thoroughly analyze complex issues, information, and data. To top it off, candidates with liberal arts degrees communicate clearly, concisely, and constructively, and are able to do so in a manner that aligns with broad and diverse audiences.” — TRAVIS TORRENCE (TULANE COLLEGE ’02) GLOBAL LITIGATION TEAM LEAD HOUSTON, TEXAS
“ I hire graduates of liberal arts programs because they are curious, interdisciplinary thinkers. They know how to reason, write, and argue. They are lifelong learners who work well with people from different academic disciplines and are able to see patterns in vast amounts of information and draw conclusions that summarize and synthesize complex arguments.” —A RTHUR J. OCHOA (SCHOOL OF LIBERAL ARTS PARENT) CHIEF ADVANCEMENT OFFICER LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA W I NT ER ’ 2 1 -’ 2 2 | 7
Paths to a REWARDING CAREER As the Fall 2021 semester approached, ADAM MCKEOWN, Associate Professor in the Department of English and manager of the School of Liberal Arts Internship Program, and EDWARD (EDDY) CRUZ, Assistant Dean and Executive Director of Newcomb Tulane College Career Services, met over Zoom to talk about their respective roles in helping students prepare for successful careers. McKeown and Cruz discuss what employers are looking for, why liberal arts graduates are excelling in preparing for careers of the future, and how Tulane is taking steps to create a more equitable and inclusive environment so that all students can reach their potential. ADAM MCKEOWN (AM): While I have my responsibilities as a professor, I have also enjoyed a professional life beyond the academy that allows me to stay connected to my passions for government work—I’ve served in the Marine Corps reserve for twenty-nine years. I love helping students with internships and career growth because I know firsthand that all of us have many different passions and talents, and there are many different career paths that will allow us to explore them. Overall, I want to help students succeed in their careers and be happy. To do so, they need to believe in themselves and have the support of the people surrounding them to do their best and explore the countless career options available to them. EDWARD CRUZ (EC): Definitely, Adam. In my role in Newcomb-Tulane College Career Services, I see this coming into play in how our office approaches career education. For
us, this looks like focusing on a nonlinear process. We’re teaching students how they can prepare for many opportunities, not just one career pathway. I think this takes some pressure off students because it helps them focus on exploring their skills and their experiences so they can prepare themselves for chance opportunities. This gives students freedom and empowerment to find what leads them to their passion and happiness. AM: There are many career possibilities out there, and we have to remind students that there are many ways to be a qualified and excellent job candidate. EC: Our office always has in mind some key competencies that are outlined by the National Association of Colleges and Employers. These include career and self-development, communication, critical thinking, equity and inclusion, leadership, professionalism, team-
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work, and technology. The role of our office is to help students identify their actions and their experiences and how they fit into these different competencies so they can verbalize this to employers clearly. AM: This is so important, because what I’ve begun to notice with employers is that unless the skillset they’re looking for is very defined and technical, the hiring process is amazingly personal. Employers will often hire someone they like working with and trust that the candidate will learn specific skills along the way. That’s one of the exciting things about internships to me—many young people are hired to do a particular job, but in the process, they get to know a potential future employer. That relationship is crucial to the job opportunity. I think the workplace right now has become more personal than ever before. EC: This brings me to the question, “What
SENIOR ECONOMICS STUDENT IRA RAHMAN (PICTURED THIRD FROM RIGHT) COMPLETED A 2021 SUMMER INTERNSHIP WITH HANCOCK WHITNEY BANK IN NEW ORLEANS AS A FINANCIAL INTELLIGENCE SUMMER ANALYST. IN THIS ROLE, RAHMAN GAINED REAL WORLD BANKING EXPERIENCE, FROM LEARNING ABOUT HOW BANKS MITIGATE RISK THROUGH FEDERAL POLICIES TO DEVELOPING PRESENTATIONS FOR HR MANAGERS ON DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION IN THE WORKPLACE. A HIGHLIGHT OF HER INTERNSHIP WAS PARTICIPATING IN COMMUNITY VOLUNTEER PROJECTS WITH HER HANCOCK WHITNEY TEAM.
“My career center liberal arts advisor
makes a liberal arts degree special today?” A lot of one’s ability to adapt to a changing environment is having a strong foundation in research, critical thinking, and reasoning. Change is constant, whether it is a global pandemic or our normal day-to-day, and things are always shifting within different industries. A liberal arts background provides students with a notably diverse set of skills. They don’t have just one specific toolbox; instead, they’re able to share all the different skills they garner and all the things that they’re exposed to within an interdisciplinary approach in the classroom—this is something that really sets them apart. AM: I think another important thing to stress for university students is that now is not the time to micromanage oneself—this is the time to shake off prejudices as to what a certain career or academic experience looks like. I think the liberal arts aid our students in doing this because they focus on open-ended intellectual growth. You might be very good at one thing or another, but you might find out you’re actually very good at—or enjoy—a completely different thing entirely, if you have the chance
to see what that workplace or those people are like, as well as what that different path might have to offer. There are so many ways to find a rewarding career right now; you just have to be open, and the liberal arts, I think, prepare you to be open. EC: What you’ve just shared reminds me of the importance of understanding what somebody truly values and how that plays into their career. Before you know it, if you’re on a career path where your passion or values aren’t supported, it can come to an abrupt stop. So this is one thing we are always thinking about—realizing that your career can lead you to interesting places if you honor your values and passions. AM: Definitely! I remember talking with a liberal arts graduate once that was very passionate about the environment and went on to work for a mining company. When I talked to her about it later, she said that she felt she could really make a difference by actually talking to people at the mines and in the communities in order to encourage them to examine their decisions and the
assisted me tremendously with the internship process, both by helping me find local opportunities in New Orleans, and through meetings spent prepping application materials and practicing with mock interviews.” ————— IRA RAHMAN
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environmental effects of mining. You wouldn’t automatically think a mining company would be a place where a person with those values would be satisfied, but you don’t know until you try. EC: My passion and values come down to helping people and I learned that pretty early on coming to university as a first-generation college student. I saw this exemplified in roles of doctors and lawyers, but I found the path of higher education through volunteer opportunities on campus. But as you’ve shared, Adam, depending on where you find yourself and what table you’re sitting at, influence and opportunity can change your course quite a lot. That’s really what keeps me going—I’m excited about the work that I do not only as an individual, but as a team in our office, helping students reach their potential and be happy in the process. AM: As I’m listening to you, I feel like we are both thinking about the internship gap. Essentially, students who take part in internships now are more likely to succeed throughout their careers, but not everyone has the same opportunity to participate in internships. The
reasons for this is that many internships are unpaid or pay minimally, so students who can’t participate in an internship due to lack of money or time might be less likely to succeed. We see this echo through academia as well, in terms of who can afford to spend six to ten years working on their doctorate, unpaid or paid minimally, to become a full-time professor. Personal finances have a major gatekeeping function. EC: Completely. At Tulane, we have a variety of opportunities for students to gain support to allow them to pursue internships that might be unpaid. The Center for Public Service has compiled a list of these funds for students. Each opportunity provides a brief description of eligibility and the amount of funding available. Students can locate this list directly on the CPS website (Tulane Funding and Student Awards, Scholarships and Grants). The university and our alumni, parents, and families strive to bridge the gap each year for our students. AM: I think you’re touching upon the fact that creating opportunities is something that must be addressed beyond a career services
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department or office. I think that all of us in higher education need to be aware of the internship gap and how we can work towards equity beyond the university by closing the internship gap. Doing so will help create access to career options, since people are more likely to enter career fields in which they feel comfortable, and where they speak the language, literally or figuratively, of the place where they’ll be working. Internships help create that comfort level. EC: Absolutely. To be 100 percent transparent, I still experience this today coming into spaces I might not be as familiar with or as someone who was a first-generation college student. And as you’ve expressed, we have to address this as an institution. We are talking about welcoming the most diverse class to Tulane, and this includes economic and social diversity. And for those students in particular, if we’re not talking about paid versus unpaid internships ahead of time, sooner or later it’s going to come up as a bigger problem. We need to make sure that we’re thinking about these things and providing opportunities up front before
TIMIA PRATT (PICTURED CENTER), A JUNIOR MAJORING IN POLITICAL SCIENCE AND MINORING IN ECONOMICS, HAD THE OPPORTUNITY TO JOIN J.P. MORGAN’S ADVANCING BLACK PATHWAYS FELLOWSHIP, WHICH HELPS EXPOSE STUDENTS OF COLOR TO CAREERS IN FINANCE. AFTER DESCRIBING HER EXPERIENCE AS EXTREMELY REWARDING, PRATT NOTED, "NOT ONLY DO I HAVE CLARITY ON MY FUTURE PATH, BUT I NOW HAVE A FAMILY OF MENTORS, SPONSORS, MANAGERS, AND FUTURE COWORKERS TO SUPPORT ME.” SHE WILL CONTINUE HER PATH WITH J.P. MORGAN NEXT SUMMER BY PARTICIPATING IN THEIR MIDDLE MARKET BANKING INTERNSHIP IN DALLAS, TX.
students with these diverse backgrounds come here, so we can be supportive. AM: And in addition, we need to be active participants in showing our students what they can do. We need to actively link individuals with opportunities. EC: Even when those opportunities might not work out as well as they thought! This goes back to the importance of the nonlinear approach we began the conversation with—for example, if you don’t get this internship or this job doesn’t mean that you necessarily failed, it just might be that you’re not the right person for it right now. This shift might create a completely new pathway to success and happiness.
“My experiences as a liberal arts major helped me maneuver into a career field in which I had no previous experience. I found that becoming more well-rounded — with talents such as writing, public speaking, and the ability to shift from analytical to creative thinking — made me invaluable in the recruitment process.” ————— TIMIA PRATT
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TRANSFORMING
GRADUATE EDUCATION through
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT BY EMILY WILKERSON
G
raduate school is a deep dive into scholarly work. When we consider a graduate education, we often picture a researcher digging through the archives, working in a lab into the night, or writing for hours upon hours. For the past five years, the School of Liberal Arts has been offering graduate students a signature initiative that both enriches and complicates their graduate experiences, balancing the private aspects of academic work and their public impact. The Tulane Mellon Graduate Program in Community-Engaged Scholarship has supported sixty graduate students from a wide range of disciplines who use the program to connect their graduate studies to community organizations in New Orleans and around the world, challenging the notion of a solo researcher as paramount to academic success. The Mellon Graduate Program draws on the experience of Tulane’s faculty, as well as on the wisdom of community leaders. Each year, a dozen graduate students join a cohort with four faculty members with experience in community engagement and four leaders of cultural and activist organizations. These cohorts meet regularly for two years and work to use their academic research in support of real-world change, from enhancing education and uplifting environmental and housing concerns to bridging access to technology. The work of Mellon fellows exemplifies the essential elements of a graduate education of the future rooted in engagement with one’s surroundings.
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“I am constantly revisiting my research to make sure it not only benefits my community, but embodies a research ethic.” ————— MAURA SULLIVAN LINGUISTICS DOCTORAL STUDENT
NATIVE ACTIVIST AND SCHOLAR MAURA SULLIVAN IS A LINGUISTICS DOCTORAL STUDENT WORKING WITH THE CHUMASH NATION TO DIAGNOSE THE COMMUNITY’S NATIVE LANGUAGE USE. SHE AND INDIGENOUS ARTIST SOLANGE AGUILAR COLLABORATED TO DEVELOP A COLORING BOOK FOR CHUMASH YOUTH, TO AID IN LANGUAGE REVITALIZATION. W I NT ER ’ 2 1 -’ 2 2 | 13
CULTURAL PRODUCER LILIAN LOMBERA, A MELLON FELLOW COMPLETING HER MASTER’S DEGREE IN LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES, HELPED CREATE AND FACILITATE A CULTURAL EXCHANGE—CALLED GETTING FUNKY IN HAVANA—BETWEEN NEW ORLEANS STUDENTS FROM THE TROMBONE SHORTY FOUNDATION AND CUBAN STUDENTS FROM AMADEO ROLDAN MUSIC CONSERVATORY. PERFORMANCE PHOTOS BY MICHAEL WEINTRAUB.
“It is essential that we are open to the idea that knowledge exchange is reciprocal.” ————— LILIAN LOMBERA LATIN AMERICAN STUDIES MASTERS STUDENT
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social issues. Similar to Sullivan, she is also researching the communities “Together, Mellon fellows develop as a community and interact of which she is a member. Lombera’s work brings together her previous not just as academics or professionals, but as whole people in all of their work and uncovers a dialogue between the Cuban band Cimafunk and the complexity,” said Ryan McBride, Administrative Associate Professor cultural practices of Queen Cherice Harrison-Nelson and the Guardians and Mellon Program Director. “The program strives to interrupt the of the Flame Maroon Society in New Orleans. Working specifically with traditional power dynamics of academia, apply decolonizing methodartists and culture bearers that are honoring maroons—individuals who ologies, and practice the kinds of critical introspection necessary for escaped from slavery and created their own communities—Lombera amethical community-engaged scholarship.” plifies the voices of her community members to reiterate the importance Building an interdisciplinary community with their cohort gives of learning from those in our communities that are often not considered Mellon graduate students experience discussing their research with peoteachers. In her words, she works to “empower communities through deple from outside their disciplines, as well as outside academia. The cohort colonizing experiences,” and while she works with living artists, a large conversations also help graduate students reflect on the research practices part of her work is focused on how we of their home disciplines and on the document culture and how this affects complexities of bridging their academic which voices are represented throughwork with public arts and humanities out history. projects. As Maura Sullivan, a linguisLombera’s Mellon Program tics doctoral student, stresses, this proproject has been bridging the intercess addresses an important question sections of community, language, and facing many academics today: whom cultural production through two iteris my research really serving? Sullivan is ations. In March 2020, she worked in from the Coastal Band of the Chumash collaboration with Horns to Havana, Nation, located in what is recognized the Trombone Shorty Foundation today as southern coastal California. As (TSF), Gia Prima Foundation, and a Native scholar, she is both a member Cuban Educational Travel to create a of a community and a researcher of that cultural exchange between New Orcommunity. “I am constantly revisiting leans students from the TSF and Cumy research to make sure it not only ban students from Amadeo Roldan benefits my community, but embodies music conservatory. For the first time, a research ethic,” explains Sullivan, who musicians Troy Andrews, Soul Rebels has witnessed extractive practices of acBrass Brand, and Tank and the Banademics in Native communities, both gas, and cultural ambassadors Harher own and others. rison-Nelson and Big Chief Monk Putting her research into pracBoudreaux traveled to Cuba to partice, Sullivan has been working with ————— ticipate in a cultural exchange called the Chumash Nation to diagnose the Getting Funky in Havana, during community’s Native language use and DIANA SOTO-OLSON which they created music together develop a coloring book with IndigMELLON GRADUATE PROGRAM MANAGER with Cuban students in an experienenous artist Solange Aguilar for the tial, learning environment. As the Covid-19 pandemic stretched across Chumash youth to aid in language revitalization. With the guidance every region of the world, Lombera shifted her attention to working of Judith Maxwell, professor in the Department of Anthropology, with director Catherine Murphy on Maestras Voluntarias, a film focused Sullivan is working closely with her Native community to bring their on how community education in the early 60s can inform and inspire language back to daily use, which is a vital part of preserving their culindividuals today. ture and history. Her graduate research and Mellon Program work is Mellon Graduate Program Manager Diana Soto-Olson explains, rooted in reciprocal exchange, and in order to support this exchange, “The Mellon Program’s community of scholars and cultural leaders is a she places a primary emphasis on community and collaboration. home for many and the exciting work they do together makes our graduate These principals also echo throughout the research and work of program in public humanities unlike any other.” Both Lombera and SulliLilian Lombera, a Mellon fellow completing her master’s degree in van are not just documenting the work of often-overlooked culture bearers; Latin American studies. “It is essential that we are open to the idea they are collaborating with them and developing their scholarly approaches that knowledge exchange is reciprocal. Working with communities in a in tandem, expanding the role academics and universities play in responsinonhierarchical approach is a great way to learn and practice this, and bly recording history through community engagement. From California to I believe arts are a door to become aware of a community,” explains Cuba, Sullivan and Lombera’s work with their communities enriches their Lombera. Lombera’s research—which is based on her work as a culhome disciplines, produces scholarship for academics and the larger world, tural producer for many years in Cuba before coming to Tulane—exand transforms their graduate education experience at Tulane University. plores how cultural exchanges between regions can bring awareness to
“The Mellon Program’s community of scholars and cultural leaders is a home for many and the exciting work they do together makes our graduate program in public humanities unlike any other.”
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ALUMNI HIGHLIGHTS A degree from the School of Liberal Arts offers our graduates an almost limitless variety of possible professional paths. We spoke to four alumni whose liberal arts backgrounds have brought about exciting and surprising career directions.
KYLA DENWOOD
School of Liberal Arts, 2021 World Expo Dubai rely on my liberal arts education every day “I while abroad,” explains Kyla Denwood. In May 2021, after graduating from Tulane with degrees in economics and international relations, Denwood moved to Dubai to serve as a Youth Ambassador with the U.S. Pavilion at the 2020 World Expo, which was postponed one year due to the Covid-19 pandemic. “The conversations and opportunities for self-reflection I had in my classes really prepared me for the globally minded discussions that I’m part of at Expo,” Denwood adds. In her role as a cultural ambassador of the United States, Denwood engages with thousands of guests daily as she guides tours of the pavilion and speaks with government officials, business representatives, and performing artists from around the world. Within just the first few months of her role at the World Expo, Denwood has discovered multiple new international career paths she plans to explore and also played a key role in bringing the Tulane University Marching Band—which she led as drum major during her tenure as an undergraduate—into consideration for a performance on U.S. National Day.
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COLONEL KIMBERLY JOHNSON School of Liberal Arts, 1997 U.S. Marines
C olonel Kimberly Johnson’s decisions to take
risks and non-traditional jobs after graduating from Tulane with a degree in sociology led her to one of the highest officer ranks in the U.S. Marine Corps. As a first-year student at Tulane, Johnson chose to pursue a degree in sociology because she knew she would enjoy the coursework in addition to her participation in the university’s Naval ROTC Program. Looking back, she realizes her choice was exactly what she needed to become a leader. While each day differs, Johnson regularly advises all personnel in administration and coordinates correspondence, staffing, and reserve affairs. As she explains, the military is like its own world, but it is made up of every piece of society and every background is represented. “Each day, I apply the theories I learned as an undergraduate without opening a textbook,” says Johnson. “The sociological concepts I learned at Tulane laid the foundation for me to recognize ways to effectively communicate with my teammates, which allows me to be a better leader.”
MATTHEW WU
JP STILES
School of Liberal Arts and School of Science & Engineering, 2014 Cue the Bird
F ive days after graduating from Tulane with a
double major in digital media and psychology, JP Stiles packed up and drove to Hollywood to work with Tulane alumnus, screenwriter, and director Doug Ellin (A&S ’90) on the set of the movie Entourage. Three years later, Stiles and his friend and fellow director Harrison Macks founded Cue the Bird, a production company based in Los Angeles. In the company’s short history, they have produced music videos and branded content for cultural icons and major global companies, and earlier this year partnered with LeBron James’ production company to create a docuseries for NBCUniversal’s streaming service, Peacock, about the athletes competing to make the U.S. Women’s Olympic Gymnastics Team for the Tokyo 2020 games. As Stiles explains, “while both the sciences and the liberal arts laid a strong foundation for my work as a director and producer, my liberal arts studies remain key to my ability to thoughtfully craft a project, question the ‘norm,’ and think critically.”
School of Liberal Arts, 2020 Office of New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell generation has many urgent prob“ Our lems we must address, and my liberal arts education has empowered me to respond more thoughtfully and effectively to today’s challenges by equipping me with a greater breadth of knowledge, historical context for a range of subjects, and adaptability,” political science graduate Matthew Wu shares. After graduating in the first few months of the Covid-19 pandemic, Wu worked as a field organizer on a senate campaign before becoming the briefings manager for Mayor LaToya Cantrell. Each day, Wu conducts critical research and synthesizes information to provide the mayor with the most important details for her upcoming engagements. From researching zoning ordinances ahead of press conferences to working with city leaders in assessing and overcoming hurdles for business owners, Wu consistently engages the analytical and communication skills nurtured by his political science classes to prepare Mayor Cantrell for meetings, speaking engagements and events. With the goal of becoming a public interest lawyer, Wu knows his experience in local government and his liberal arts background will be invaluable.
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PAULA BURCH-CELENTANO
T
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c i s u w m o e n h k T e w AN INTERVIEW WITH COURTNEY BRYAN EXPLORING COLLABORATION AND IMPROVISATION
by
ily em
er k il w
n o s
Composer, pianist, and New Orleans native Courtney Bryan, professor in the Newcomb Department of Music, has won numerous awards and worked with artists and ensembles around the world. Bryan learned from many of New Orleans’ great musicians and composers, from Clyde Kerr and Ellis Marsalis to Kidd Jordan and Daniel Weilbaecher. As she embarks on research, writing, and composing for new musical and concerto projects with Bard College in New York and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, Emily Wilkerson sat down with Bryan to discuss her career, collaboration, improvisation, and how the foundational tools of her practice can help us prepare for the future.
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y t i l a u t i r i p s e m o h m o d e e r f e v o l
EMILY WILKERSON (EW): Tell me a little about how you came to be a composer and performer. COURTNEY BRYAN (CB): Ever since I was around four, we had a piano in the house. My oldest sisters took piano lessons, but I would just kind of play around on the piano and enjoyed hearing the sounds it made. At five, I started studying piano. I would practice these lessons and then I would take them and improvise from them. After that, I started composing my own music. I also had a wonderful kindergarten teacher who had a piano in the classroom that she would play before naptime. I stayed with her after class one day and showed her a piece I composed. After that, she started inviting me to her apartment to teach me how to write music. I learned the basics from her, and still remember drawing musical notes in pencil with her. The point is, early on I learned how to write out my ideas. And I kind of taught myself how to compose from studying piano. EW: How do the practices of composing and performing inform each other? CB: Composing and performing have always come together for me. When I was at the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) for high school, I started writing music for some of my friends who were also musicians, and that’s really how I learned to write for different instruments. I almost included the whole class in my senior recital. EW: I imagine there are a few names we might recognize that you were already composing for in high school! CB: Yes, Christian Scott and I were classmates, as well as Trombone Shorty and Natasha Harris. Everyone there really worked together. In my last year of high school I started studying composition formally through lessons with Roger Dickerson, who taught me a lot about writing for an orchestra. Mr. Dickerson also taught me about the history of black composers. Then, I went to Oberlin College and Conservatory and studied performance and composition, and later returned to New Orleans to organize my own gigs around town. My first gig was at Sweet Lorraine’s (jazz club)! After a stint back home, I studied jazz piano at Rutgers University, and straight from there I studied composition again at Columbia University, where I learned from George Lewis. I love to perform and compose, but there is always a focus on composition whether I am creating for others or myself. Composition is the anchor. I often ask myself, what is the one thing that if you didn’t do it, wouldn’t happen? I think my unique contribution to the world is my composition.
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EW: How beautiful. Considering these influences, can you share more about how you consider improvisation as you write music?
EW: What are some of the elements of life that inspire your work? CB: The theme of freedom continues to show up for me. Spirituality, and my own spirituality in particular, is also a theme. The word “love” and the idea of home are also very important to me. These are the concepts that inspire me and continue to show up in my work, but I also find inspiration in historical and contemporary public figures. In addition, I’ve recently made several works about police brutality with a focus on black women, such as Saved (2013), a collaboration with Kara Lynch in response to the 1911 lynching of Laura Nelson and her son, and Elegy (2018), which was commissioned by Ensemble Pi as a response to the iconic jazz piece, Strange Fruit. In 2015, I also composed Spirits, which is sometimes performed as a piano solo or with other instruments, and features a “rumble” that is present in my recent works—a dense saturation of sounds. Towards the end as I introduce other melodies, I read the names of victims of police brutality. Each time I have performed it, there are unfortunately different names to add, so I choose a few, alternating between men, women, boys, and girls. Yet Unheard for chorus, orchestra, and soprano, is a dedication to Sandra Bland and was commissioned and premiered by The Dream Unfinished, an activist orchestra for a 2016 fundraiser/concert #SingHerName. Collaborating with poet Sharan Strange and vocalist Helga Davis, I composed the music for this premiere, which has since been performed in the original and chamber versions in different cities with different conductors, choruses, and orchestras. EW: You grew up in New Orleans and the city is still your home today. Do you feel like New Orleans plays a role in your creative process and the music itself ? CB: The way that music is part of everything here is important. I think the fact that it is cool to be a young person in a band in New Orleans, and how brass bands play contemporary popular music, is inspiring! I was part of the marching band at McMain High School, and playing clarinet in the marching band during a Mardi Gras parade was a hallmark experience for me. Another inspiration for me growing up here was my church, St. Luke’s Episcopal. It is an Anglican church and the music has strong Caribbean influences. It has its own identity, and I think that church taught me how natural it is to combine different cultural influences.
CB: On one level, I am an improviser. I have the experience of improvising with others and the skills that it takes to do that. Even when I’m writing music that doesn’t include improvisation for others, it changes how I write. For example, if I’m writing for orchestra, I would write in a way that might create the same feeling of improvisation. And it really gets technical—it’s about getting into the notation in such detail that you can really help performers understand your vision. Trying to create something that moves beyond the music itself is related to improvisation, but it also relates to spirituality. Even if you’ve written out everything exactly as it can be, there are still points of tension between the artist and the music. EW: I know collaboration is a very important aspect of to your practice, as well. How does collaboration play a role in your work? CB: My teacher Kidd Jordan always emphasized the fundamentals of music. He didn’t believe in teaching style—he believed in learning your instrument and learning your theory first, then creating your own style. This question brings me back to my time with Ellis Marsalis, as well. After a two-week intensive with him, the main thing I walked away with was really how to listen to music. Listening takes a lot of skill, and this is something I always emphasize to my students. When collaborating, listening, in particular, is key. Especially if you’re collaborating across different art forms or fields, which I love to do, communication and listening are important to move forward together. If you take time to build your personal foundations, and decide what your intentions are together, then you can be free to create something new together. I think this holds true both in making music and in everyday life. EW: How can collaboration and improvisation be tools for us all as we work toward a bright future together? CB: I think collaboration is such an important skill for society. The current pandemic has definitely taught us how connected we all are. Collaboration helps us listen, work together to build structures, and learn how to be flexible. And flexibility comes out of improvisation, in finding the balance of what is and is not needed in a particular time. I’m extremely influenced by John Coltrane and his classic quartet. Coltrane was very much the leader of the group and it was his vision, but he left so much space for the other members to shine that it didn’t feel like there was just one leader. It wouldn’t have been the music we know without each member. To me, that’s the ideal: to be a leader that can give direction, while supporting others in a way that allows them to be their truest self.
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FA C U LT Y S P O T L I G H T
———— meet the ————
DYNAMIC NEW FACULTY
of DIGITAL MEDIA PRACTICES
Digital Media Practices (DMP) is a program that provides students with the opportunity to develop and refine their skills in digital media as they relate to the creative industries, a vital and growing element of New Orleans’ landscape. This School of Liberal Arts coordinate major encompasses three main areas of study and practice: narrative and documentary filmmaking, emergent journalism, and interactive media. These areas include courses focused on practical filmmaking and the film industry, screenwriting, sound practice, podcasting, digital journalism, game studies, and creative data visualization. Program director Rick Snow and fellow professors Nathan Halverson and Matthew Martinez are excited to welcome three new faculty members to DMP this fall.
CASEY BECK
is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, writer, and cinematographer. Her debut short film Mongolia: Land Without Fences premiered online on FRONTLINE/World in 2007. After completing a Fulbright scholarship in Argentina, she was the first unit director of Ballplayer: Pelotero, a New York Times Critic’s Pick. She was a recent finalist for the KQED Homemade Film Festival and has produced films for NowThis, MTV, FoodMattersTV, and The Documentary Channel (Pivot). Beck is particularly interested in helping students expand their understanding of cinematic storytelling, with an interest in redefining genre and incorporating experimental, immersive, and social justice practices into her courses.
JON CHAMBERS
works to investigates how we negotiate our physical and virtual lives within overlapping themes of consumerism, surveillance, play, environmental impact, and future histories. Chambers will be leading the Creative Coding and Data Visualization area of the DMP program, which encompasses new courses in interactive media, coding for the internet, game design, critical gaming, data visualization, data literacy, and machine learning ethics. Chambers has shown work nationally and internationally in screening venues, galleries, and online including the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Athens Digital Arts Festival in Athens, Greece, Powrplnt in NYC, and ProgramaLaPlaza in Madrid, Spain.
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WILLIAM SAAS
specializes in the critical analysis of economic policy rhetoric and brings extensive experience in podcasting as a medium for promoting justice. He extends this expertise through production of Money on the Left, a podcast that aims to cultivate and promote new, intersectional, and democratic approaches to economic thought and public policy development. In partnership with the independent magazine Monthly Review, the podcast hosts interviews with renowned authors, leading scholars and journalists. Saas’ new “Introduction to Podcasting and Social Justice” course examines the historical, political, and ethical dimensions of podcasting as a medium for advancing social and economic justice in the United States and across the world.
A NOT-SO-MINOR SLAM UPDATE Our former School of Liberal Arts Management Minor is now the STRATEGY, LEADERSHIP and ANALYTICS MINOR.
In other words (or letters): SLAMM has become SLAM!
We established our original Management Minor in 2015 to offer management skills to students majoring in Liberal Arts, and it quickly became one of the most popular minors at Tulane. Encouraged by its continued success, and after what seems like more than a thousand new minors later, we’re setting our expectations even higher. During 2019-20, Dean Brian Edwards appointed a task force to examine student interests, review enrollment data, and revisit the curriculum. He requested recommendations on how to leverage a unique liberal arts approach to innovation across a range of fields and industries — including those yet to be developed. We consulted with alumni, employers, and recruiters. Most importantly, we listened... to what was working, and to what was not.
So what’s behind the name change, you ask?
The newly rebranded Strategy, Leadership and Analytics Minor (SLAM) focuses on key aspects of what will distinguish and prepare our graduates for the careers of the future. SLAM broadens the aim of its predecessor as a leadership-driven program with a strong focus on analytics, offering a range of modules that provide pathways to modern professions, from wealth management to creative industries and more. With a robust curriculum in place, we launched national searches in 2020-2021 for full-time faculty to help develop and lead these new courses, successfully recruiting four impressive educators (more on each of them below) who truly complement a range of professors from across Tulane.
.
Together, we've launched what we affectionately refer to as Version 2.0 of SLAM: a renewed program for the careers of today and tomorrow.
INTRODUCING… Tulane alumna ALLYSON
HEUMANN heads a successful consulting firm that addresses a broad range of business issues, from macroeconomic modeling and data analytics to C-suite education.
RON GARD specializes in digital media, entrepreneurship, and financial analysis, and is the CEO of Limited Times, LLC, a Louisiana-based law and technology company.
Independent director and producer JOLENE PINDER has served as the Executive Director of the New Orleans Film Society and holds a range of expertise across leadership, strategic planning, sponsorship, and fundraising.
MARCUS COLEMAN is the Program Director for the Grow Louisiana Beginning Farmer Training Program and a member of the Racial Equity in the Food System Workgroup. His background includes work in agricultural economics, higher ed leadership and food systems.
Visit liberalarts.tulane.edu/SLAM to learn more about the comprehensive offerings of this popular minor! W I NT ER ’ 2 1 -’ 2 2 | 23
GLOBAL ASIA & its Postcolonial Past
BY CHERYL NARUMI NARUSE, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH AND MELLON JR. PROFESSOR IN THE HUMANITIES
What images does Singapore invoke? For fans of travel TV shows, the country might be known as a foodie paradise made possible by the island’s history as a culturally diverse port city. Or for architecture nerds, perhaps images of Singapore’s skyline come to mind, with its iconic structures like Marina Bay Sands, the Helix Bridge, and Supertrees. History buffs and business people are likely familiar with Singapore’s impressive economic development that began with its 1965 independence, transforming from a British colony to a so-called “Asian Miracle” country that now boasts a GDP higher than three-quarters of the world’s nations. Singapore is so remarkable that other nations are trying to replicate it—China, Rwanda, and even the United Kingdom. My work explores how these futuristic, exuberant qualities of Singapore are part of its positioning as “Global Asia,” and how the state’s socioeconomic policies combine with a cultural imaginary that promote Singapore as an alluring Asian setting that enables finance, corporations, and the global elite to flourish. By examining contemporary Singaporean literature and culture to study the economic, cultural, and political representation of Global Asia, my upcoming book animates the limitations in imaginings of “the global” leveraged by governments, corporations, or academic programs. It finds that Global Asia functions as an ahistorical and decontextualized trope, separating Singapore from its postcolonial past and presenting it as a just-exotic-enough Asian nation. This is why, as I discuss in my book, a novel like Kevin Kwan’s Crazy Rich Asians, which is centrally about Singapore, could be transformed into an Asian American film. Is the current Hollywood adaptation imaginable had Kwan’s novel been set in Hong Kong, Malaysia, or Korea? I think the answer is no. Such literary and cultural artifacts like Kwan’s novel and its adaptation are especially useful to understand how Global Asia emerges from a genealogy of postcolonial capitalism, a term I use to describe capitalist formations that profit from a historical consciousness of colonialism. Although the global might signal an exciting, progressive future, I argue that we must confront its colonial genealogy of racial capitalism. In other words, understanding Singapore requires looking at its history, as much as imagining it as the future.
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N E W FA C U LT Y S P O T L I G H T
ARIELLE PENTES
Thomas Pringle
How do we see and understand changes in our environment?
PHOTO BY JOSH EDELSON/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
This is a key question for Thomas Pringle, a new professor in the Department of Communication and the Environmental Studies program. Pringle’s work investigates how media outlets communicate environmental knowledge to publics, focusing on specific historical case studies and how ecological crises are portrayed in the news, through documentary films, and on social media. He examines these elements to gain a better understanding of how people come to know what an environmental crisis is and how they might contribute to that understanding. In the fall of 2021, Pringle taught “Environmental Communication,” which focuses both on ecological risk communication and the environmental toll of media communication systems. He is also teaching “Approaches to Environmental Studies,” which addresses the interdisciplinary nature of understanding environmental problems with more nuance. While housed in the Department of Communication, these courses call on disciplines ranging from sociology and climate science to anthropology. Ultimately, Pringle aims to equip students with a toolbox to help them realize how heavily mediated our knowledge of the environment is so that when we consider our environment, we think about how and by whom it is defined as well as how social histories shape how environmental crises unfold today. Pringle received his M.A. in Cultural Studies from McGill University and his Ph.D. in Modern Culture and Media from Brown University. He is writing a book titled The Climate Proxy, which examines the mediation of climate crises like wildfires and droughts in the United States, Canada, and South Africa.
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OPINION
The Future of Higher Education Needs to Embrace Religion
I
BY ILANA M. HORWITZ, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF JEWISH STUDIES; FIELDS-RAYANT CHAIR IN CONTEMPORARY JEWISH LIFE
spend a lot of time thinking about the future of higher education and the future of religion. Many people—and for a long time, I was one of them—see these as separate entities. In non-sectarian universities like Tulane, it is acceptable to teach students about different religious traditions (commonly via a comparative religion course), or to engage with religion in spaces like Hillel or the Catholic Center, but it seems less appropriate for professors to talk with students about how their religious perspectives influence their educational experiences more broadly. However, my research on American teenagers and their families tells me that it is often difficult to separate learning and religion, especially in the classroom. In fact, when we try to separate them, we are doing a disservice to students and to higher education institutions. We’re also ignoring how people learn. Consider the story of Chris, the son of a working-class family of farmers in rural Pennsylvania. Chris was a stellar athlete in his public high school and earned great grades. He was conscientious and cooperative, and he avoided almost all alcohol and drugs despite significant peer pressure. Although it is common for teenage boys in working class communities to fall into a state of emotional, cognitive, and behavioral despair, Chris felt socially supported and optimistic about his future. In my forthcoming
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book, God, Grades, and Graduation: Religion’s Surprising Impact on Academic Success (Oxford University Press, 2022), I argue that Chris’ steadfast belief in God and his involvement in church played a key role in promoting his wellbeing and his unlikely ascent to college. If religion has no place in college classrooms, what does that mean for someone like Chris? Is he supposed to avoid talking with professors about how religious beliefs shape his understanding of the world? Religion is not like a coat and hat that one puts on and takes off — it seeps into people’s lives, leaving an indelible mark on their attitudes and behaviors. Expecting students to put aside their religious commitments during class discussions ignores a fundamental principal of how people learn: students are not clean slates. They already have prior frameworks about how the world works based on their earlier life experiences. When they learn new information in a class, they can decide to accept it, or, they might see it as irreconcilable with what they already know and reject it. Let’s say a student who identifies as atheist takes a psychology course and learns that people who believe in God are happier and healthier in adulthood. This might seem so far-fetched to a student who believes God doesn’t exist that he will simply reject the empirically based information. Or, the student might question their atheism.
It is certainly not the educators’ job to advise students on their repolitical gap is partly explained by a religious gap since Republicans are far ligious perspectives, but acknowledging that students’ personal perspecmore religious (based on common measures of religiosity). For example, tives matter opens up space for learning. Spaces outside the classroom like Democrats are about three times more likely (14%) than are Republicans Hillel or the Catholic Center are optimal spaces for students to engage, and (5%) to say they don’t believe in God.3 Among those who do believe in potentially wrestle with, their religious perspectives. However, seeing these God, more than two-thirds of Republicans (71%) believe that God has the extracurricular spaces as the only settings for this type of student learning power to direct or change everything that goes on in the world, compared dismisses how and where learning happens. Deliberating on religious matto just over half of Democrats (54%)4. Republicans’ dissatisfaction with ters in classroom settings proved to be important for Chris—it gave him higher education partly reflects their view that college professors dismiss the time and space to identify his disagreement with his church on several religion and only expose young people to secular ideas. social and political issues. If we dismiss religion in academic spaces, we rob As a new faculty member in the Jewish Studies department at Tustudents of the chance to wrestle with issues that matter to them. lane, my goal is to prompt students to consider the intersection of religion People like Chris aren’t the only ones who stand to lose if higher and contemporary American life. For example, in my “Contemporary education discounts religion. When I began studying how Americans’ reAmerican Jews” course, my students tackle questions such as: Are Jews ligious upbringing shapes their academic success, some of my colleagues White? Is it still safe to be Jewish in America? Did American Jews ruin dismissed the possibility that religion Hanukkah? Why do Russian Jews matters. Academics tend to be liberhate Bernie and love Trump? Why do al and secular and my conversations Orthodox Jews have more in common with academics taught me that many with Evangelicals than with Reform are unaware that about one-quarter of and Conservative Jews? Many Tulane Americans organize their lives around students have prior experiences with religion. Higher education is supposed religious rituals and movements— to prepare young people for the world rather than dismissing this fact, I they will soon enter and contribute to. encourage them to draw on those exWe are leaving students ill prepared periences with the new historical and if we let them graduate oblivious to social scientific lenses they learn to use the significant role that religion plays in college. For example, one of my stuin American society. Many students dents recently shared that he felt like in the United States leave college an anomaly among his friends because not knowing they live in the most he deeply believed in a higher power devout country among rich Western but didn’t actively participate in Jewdemocracies—a country where six in ish practices, such as keeping Kosher 10 adults report praying at least daily, or observing Shabbat. I explained that while three in 10 believe the Bible is his position was not unusual as there is the literal word of God. a growing number of Americans who Not only do millions of Ameriidentify as “spiritual but not religious.” ————— cans organize their lives around reliFor his final research project, he degion, but, as David E. Campbell and cided to use social scientific methods Robert D. Putnam describe in their to study how this phenomenon was book American Grace, Americans are also profoundly polarized along reliplaying out among students at Tulane. Encouraging students to examgious lines—the deeply religious on one side and the avowedly secular on ine their own notions of religion through a social scientific perspective the other. Intensely religious people are not the only ones to blame for this acknowledges how students’ perspectives and experiences influence their divide. Nonreligious individuals have also contributed to this polarization learning, and it ensures that students graduate from Tulane recognizing by dismissing and even disparaging those who are religious. And college the central role that religion plays in America today. campuses, especially elite ones, may be perpetuating this problem by saying that religion has no place in higher education. __________ Consider this rift between Republicans and Democrats about the 1 value of higher education from studies by the Pew Research Center. Only Pew Research Center, September, 2017, “Partisans Differ Widely 21% of Republicans feel warmly toward college professors. By comparison, in Views of Police Officers, College Professors” 2 more than twice as many Democrats—50%—feel warmly toward college Pew Research Center, July, 2017, “Sharp Partisan Divisions in 1 professors. Here is another grim indicator of how unpopular higher edViews of National Institutions” 3 ucation is among right-leaning Americans, also from Pew: just over onePew Research Center, April 25, 2018, “When Americans Say third of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents (36%) said They Believe in God, What Do They Mean?” 4 that colleges and universities have a positive effect on the country, comPew Research Center, April 25, 2018, “When Americans Say 2 pared to twice as many (72%) Democrats and Democratic leaners. This They Believe in God, What Do They Mean?”
Religion is not like a coat and hat that one puts on and takes off — it seeps into people’s lives, leaving an indelible mark on their attitudes and behaviors.
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GR OO VE
Keeping the
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SUMMER COURSE/ CREATIVE INDUSTRIES SPOTLIGHT For the past eight years, William (Bill) Taylor has been teaching courses on the music business for the School of Liberal Arts in addition to his work in the New Orleans community. Since 1997, Taylor has worked with renowned organizations and institutions such as WWOZ, Tipitina’s, and the Trombone Shorty Foundation, where he is now executive director. This summer, Taylor bridged these experiences with his desire to introduce students to New Orleans’ dynamic cultural history and offerings in his course “Keeping the Groove,” presented as part of the Creative Industries Summer Program. Throughout “Keeping the Groove,” students gained a greater understanding of the city’s music culture, heard from many musical guest speakers, learned how the music business functions, and explored how this particular community approaches challenging situations. Taylor’s experience working with musicians and businesses on relief efforts in the years following Hurricane Katrina became an important foundation for class discussions as students navigated a changing cultural landscape during a global pandemic. Through coursework and a service-learning component with the Trombone Shorty Foundation, Taylor’s course gave students a pathway to learn from, engage with, and consider how the musical cultures of New Orleans can help us navigate the future.
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Riffing
A SHORT STORY BY JALON YOUNG (SLA ’22)
It was two blisters instead of one this time. Two circles of distorted and pulsing flesh at her
left ankle and heel. Sitting on a bench in front of a late-night diner, Bren crossed her leg foot-to-knee observing the sore brought on by her no-good shoes that tried her every day. Maneuvering her foot to return sensation to the paining areas, Bren wanted to cry. Or emit a moan. Yet that required energy the world milked from her day in, day out. Bren glanced through the restaurant window at the clock. 12:15. The night was thick, too thick given the eclipsed stars and with the moon — Bren’s only guiding light toward home — being partially hidden by fast-approaching clouds. The wind of rain to come blew gently, just enough to momentarily break the Mississippi heat, just enough to bring leaves to gather at her sore feet. And in this moment, Bren recollected her mother. Luanne. A short and stout woman with a gentle, underlying hue of wine at her earth-colored cheeks and hands. She would walk two miles from her various jobs of cooking, laundry-working, sweeping off front stoops to the one-room shack where the colored children — sitting shoulder to shoulder — learned from books tattered and held together by any adhesive available. And from there she would walk home. One child carried, another hanging to the bend of her arm, bags of hand-me-downs or groceries dangling from her fingers. Be it rain or sweltering heat, she moved along the unpaved road to a home sometimes empty, sometimes filled with a husband’s drunken lamentations. Stuck sifting for mites in the bag of rice nearing its end and praying that the children will at least have enough. So, when Luanne sat in church and hollered out, “Come here, Lord!” Bren knew she meant, “Damn this world.” But church was not equipped to allow expression of such a grief. Mama love too easy and live too hard, Bren would tell her brother. I ain’t gone be like that. I can’t.
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Yet, here she was, bearing weeping feet, praying the lights would still be on when she got home, wondering if her mother, too, had to scrub the stain of a white man’s hand touching her behind just to ask for a Coca-Cola refill. And when the hand was hesitantly removed, the white face turned to the well-accustomed red, scornful look as he yelled, “Black bitch!” Spit springing at -ch and landing on an area shock disallowed her from pinpointing, customer faces giving not looks of pity but of the same scorn. The only difference between Bren and her mother was her child wasn’t dangling from her arm and, instead, stuck out from an outfit unfit for an expecting mother. Bren distracted herself by rubbing her leg to the harmonica riff bouncing from the juke joint across the street. “Soak them in Epsom salt for an hour. Be like new come morning.” Bren, assuming herself to be the only one sitting in front of the diner, turned her head startlingly toward the voice. “Jean? Girl, I reckoned you was home by now.” A tall woman of indigo-flowing skin approached her, dropping a cigarette to the pavement. She carried a solemn face that seemed to always search for signs, or spirits. Like a preacher in search of a shoulder to touch. “I would be if there was something to go home to,” Jean said, releasing a sigh as she eased on the bench as if it were a struggle to simply sit, to simply rest. “Same here. And these feet too weary to travel anywhere.” “Oh, girl. What you mean ‘same here’?” Jean said with a chuckle from the chest. “You too young to act like trouble following you. You ain’t but how old? Twenty?” “Twenty-two,” Bren said as she allowed her ulcered foot to touch the ground. The coolness of the concrete shocked the foot into relief. “And why you speaking like you old? Just found your way out of the twenties.” “Honey, around these parts of the world, my age has my body searching for a dying bed.” They each laughed, and their laughs came out sincere yet labored like their bodies. Labor was like that; even in moments of joy and leisure, it found its way into the body. “Jean, let me ask you a question.” Bren stretched her legs, slowly reclining her back to bring it comfort. “Shoot it to me,” Jean said. “Have you ever loved?” Jean leaned forward as if the question knocked wind from her chest. Her elbows rested on her knees, hands dangled in the space between. She released a grunt before answering, “Question is, has love ever loved me?” “I hope I ain’t cause any harm by the question. I know you’re married and all, but what I learned from my folks is marriage can be just a mask.” “Oh, no harm felt, honey.” Jean allowed silence to follow her response, for silence was a companion. Silence was never truly silence. Jean knew this. Answers roamed in silence, revelations clung to the neck of silence. Yet, she avoided the question. Too much sorrow, too much bereavement in it. Instead, she relied on, “You hinting around to Little One’s daddy?” A wash of mourning crossed Bren’s face. “Sadly,” she replied. “You know his whereabouts?”
“Naw. Picked up and left quicker than I could say the word baby.” Bren waited a beat. “You still haven’t–” “I know about brothers too happy in the feet,” Jean interrupted, knowing the words to come. “Never chase after wandering men. That’s what my mama said. Don’t even bring yourself to miss em. Funny thing is you never know you got a wandering man till your soul dried up. He’ll be lying in bed, clothes hung up in the closet, dirty shoes on the porch. Dirt from em still fresh. And he be gone. Just gone.” “You still haven’t answered by question, Jean.” “Bren, girl, in so many words I have.” Jean, still leaning forward, turned her head to look at Bren. “I got four boys bout grown, all raising hell and bringing it home to me. Clinging to my skirt tail like they still babies. I got a husband with no get-and-go about him, probably sitting in the same spot I left him this morning. On top of that, ain’t got no type of love in him.” Jean returned her gaze to the pavement. Speaking sorrow to another was not the burden. It was the receiver’s eyes. Every depression, every mourning was held there, and given back in undulating agony. “I’ve walked this earth thirty years with no name, no land, no money, no loving. Can you dig that? Thirty years and all I got to show for it is grief.” Bren returned to the harmonica riff. She was left bereft by the answer. But that was Jean. A straight speaker. No sense in metaphors, slick poems, smooth talking. Jean sensed Bren’s depletion. “But this just sorrow from the belly speaking,” she said, nudging Jean with a grin of light. Perhaps a dim light but light indeed. Bren emitted a sighing laugh. “I seen my mama love a man bent on working others into grief. Laid on her dying bed holding to a love running, always running. You see, is it possible to get love? I mean love. You ain’t got to walk for it, run after it, pine for it. Can you have that? Is there a love like that?” Jean placed her hand on Bren’s knee. “Surely there is. It’s got to be. And we got to believe that to keep from going under.” “Mm. Lord knows I’m scared.” “Of course. You s’posed to be. Bringing a little one into the world and all. And besides, you got ole Jean. Might get crossed up in my feet sometimes. But you got me. Sure as you born.” Bren smiled, caressing the words laid before her. There was a fullness that embraced the air, a reassurance not easy to come by. Like finding a sermon without a church, a lesson with no teacher. Bren felt foolish yet not shamed. Here she was bent on a love as if it was the only one offered. As if children didn’t cease their play, their laughs when a friend slipped on a mud patch. As if women didn’t halt their rocking, standing on the porch-front until the sixteen-year-old girl shuffling from work made it into the house. As if men didn’t slip silver dollars into the pockets of boys weeping for presence long gone. As if friends didn’t sit on benches, talking to the other burdened down by weary feet and a mourning spirit. Bren smiled, indeed, a smile that stretched the skin under her chin. Jean looked at her, smiling the same smile. “Let me get you home, girl. Ain’t no way you make it alone with those feet.” They rose up laughing and began to walk in the dark eased only by the peeking moon. W I NT ER ’ 2 1 -’ 2 2 | 31
PROMOTIONAL IMAGERY CREATED FOR “THE BODY REMEMBERS” PERFORMANCE FEATURED CONTEMPORARY DANCE PIECES CHOREOGRAPHED BY THEATRE AND DANCE DEPARTMENT FACULTY LESLIE SCOTT AND DIOGO DE LIMA. THE PERFORMANCES WERE PAIRED WITH POETRY READ BY KELLY HARRIS-DEBERRY AND SOUNDSCAPES PERFORMED ON THE MUSIC BOX VILLAGE’S MUSICAL ARCHITECTURE.
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“I was thinking a lot about all the things that we’re just not hearing, we’re just not seeing [during the pandemic]. We were talking about it like a phantom hug — almost like you can remember the last time you were hugged, even though it might be a long time ago. The ways in which our body holds on to some of that sensory information, I think, is such fertile ground to spring from.” ————— LESLIE SCOTT DEPARTMENT OF THEATRE AND DANCE
UPTOWN CAMPUS THE DAY AFTER HURRICANE IDA MADE LANDFALL. AUGUST 30, 2021
CHERYL GERBER
TULANE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LIBERAL ARTS 102 NEWCOMB HALL NEW ORLEANS, LA 70118
