Tag Archives: THNOC

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Making New Orleans Home: A Tricentennial Symposium

The Historic New Orleans Collection will join the City of New Orleans 2018 Commission’s Cultural and Historical Committee to present “Making New Orleans Home: A Tricentennial Symposium,” Thursday, March 8, through Sunday, March 11, 2018.

Comprising individual lectures and panel discussions, the four-day symposium will be held at locations throughout the city, including Tulane University, the Hotel Monteleone, Xavier University, and the University of New Orleans. Additional evening events will take place at The Historic New Orleans Collection and the New Orleans Jazz Museum at the Old US Mint.

Schedule

Thursday, March 8, 2018
Tulane University, McAlister Auditorium, McAlister Drive and Freret Street

6:30 p.m. Welcome address
Michael Fitts, president, Tulane University
Symposium address

Priscilla Lawrence and Sybil Haydel Morial, co-chairs, Cultural and Historical Committee,
City of New Orleans Tricentennial
Introduction

Emily Clark, chair, Symposium Program Committee, and Clement Chambers Benenson Professor in American Colonial History, Tulane University
Keynote address
Cokie Roberts, NPR and ABC News political commentator

Friday, March 9, 2018
Conference sessions: Monteleone Hotel, Queen Anne Ballroom, 214 Royal Street
Block party: 500 block of Royal Street

8:45–9 a.m. Introductory remarks
Priscilla Lawrence and Sybil Haydel Morial
9–9:40 a.m. Balbancha: How American Indians Kept New Orleans in their Homeland
Daniel H. Usner, Holland N. McTyeire Professor of History, Vanderbilt University
9:40–10 a.m. Break
10–10:45 a.m.

 

 Revisiting the Devil’s Empire: French Colonial New Orleans
Shannon Lee Dawdy, professor of anthropology, University of Chicago

Traces of Endangered Pasts: New Orleans Archaeology at the Tricentennial
D. Ryan Gray, Richard Wallin Boebel Endowed Professor in Anthropology, University of New Orleans
10:45–11 a.m. Break
11–11:40 a.m. Self Expression and Enslaved People
Sophie White, associate professor of American studies, University of Notre Dame
11:40 a.m.–1:15 p.m. Lunch (on your own)
1:15–1:30 p.m. Afternoon welcome
Daniel Hammer, deputy director, The Historic New Orleans Collection
1:30–2:10 p.m.

 

 Making New Orleans Home at the Table
Jessica Harris, culinary historian and professor, Queens College, CUNY (retired)
2:10–2:30 p.m. Break
2:30–3:15 p.m. The Transatlantic Slave Trade: A Shared History
David Fleming, director, National Museums Liverpool (UK)
3:15–3:30 p.m. Break
3:30–4:15 p.m.

 

 New Orleans and the Slave Trade
Walter Johnson, Winthrop Professor of History, professor of African and African American studies, and director of the Charles Warren Center, Harvard University
interviewed by Lawrence N. Powell, professor emeritus of history, Tulane University
5–7:30 p.m. Block party, 500 block of Royal Street
Featuring performances by Leroy Jones’ Original Hurricane Brass Band and the Dukes of Dixieland

Refreshments will be available for purchase.

Viewing of New Orleans, the Founding Era, an exhibition at The Historic New Orleans Collection

Saturday, March 10, 2018
Conference sessions: Xavier University, McCaffrey Ballroom, University Center (3rd floor), 1 Drexel Drive
Evening program: New Orleans Jazz Museum, 400 Esplanade Avenue
Food and drinks available for purchase at both venues.

8:45–9 a.m. Welcoming remarks
C. Reynold Verret, president, Xavier University
9–9:45 a.m. Featured address
The Great Migration
Isabel Wilkerson, author, The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration
9:45–10:15 a.m. Break
10:15–11 a.m. Panel discussion: Religion

  • Voodoo and the Racial Politics of Identity in New Orleans
    Kodi Roberts, assistant professor of history, Louisiana State Univeristy
  • The Politics of Prayer: Free Women of Color and the Pursuit of Freedom in Antebellum Louisiana
    Noël Voltz, assistant professor of history, University of Utah
  • From Code Noir to Respectability: Jews and Judaism in New Orleans
    Hasia Diner, Paul and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History and professor of Hebrew, New York University
11–11:45 a.m. Panel discussion: “Creating Home: 300 Years of Builders and Architects in New Orleans”

  • Ann M. Masson, architectural historian, Tulane School of Architecture
  • Tara Dudley, lecturer, School of Architecture, The University of Texas at Austin
  • Jonn Ethan Hankins, executive director, New Orleans Master Crafts Guild
11:45–2 p.m. Lunch (on your own)
Book signing with Isabel Wilkerson
2–2:40 p.m. New Orleans in the American Revolution
Kathleen Duval, Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Professor of History, University of North Carolina
2:40–3 p.m. Break
3–3:45 p.m. Panel discussion: Haiti and New Orleans

  • Exiles from Saint-Dominque: Caribbeanizing New Orleans
    Nathalie Dessens, professor of American history, Université Toulouse
  • The Refugee Predicament: From Saint-Domingue to Cuba to New Orleans, 1803–1809
    Rebecca J. Scott, Charles Gibson Distinguished University Professor of History, professor of law, University of Michigan
3:45–4 p.m. Break
4–4:45 p.m. Panel discussion: New Orleans Music: Past, Present, and Future

  • Home Is Where the Heart Is
    Bruce Boyd Raeburn, head of special collections and director emeritus, Hogan Jazz Archive, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University
  • Building and Rebuilding the “Land of Dreams” with Music
    Nick Spitzer, producer, American Routes, and professor of anthropology, Tulane University
  • The New Orleans Second Line Tradition: Musical and Cultural Implications
    Dr. Michael White, Keller Endowed Chair in the Humanities, Xavier University
4:45 p.m. Invitation to evening event
Greg Lambousy, director, New Orleans Jazz Museum
6:30–10 p.m. Minting NOLA Music at the Jazz Museum

 

Sunday, March 11, 2018
University of New Orleans, Senator Ted Hickey Ballroom and Gallery Lounge, University Center, 2000 Lakeshore Drive. Parking will be complimentary in all university parking lots, including the University Center lot. Food and drinks available for purchase.

10:30–10:45 a.m. Welcoming remarks
Matt Tarr, Vice President for Research and Economic Development

Introductory remarks
Mary Niall Mitchell, Ethel and Herman L. Midlo Chair in New Orleans Studies, Joseph Tregle Professor in Early American History, University of New Orleans
10:45–11:30 a.m. Panel discussion: Immigrants

  • Faith, Hope, and Charity: Irish Communities in New Orleans
    Laura D. Kelley, adjunct professor of history and program director, Tulane Summer in Dublin program, Tulane University
  • Immigration in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans
    Justin A. Nystrom, director, Center for the Study of New Orleans, Loyola University, New Orleans
  • Three Centuries and Counting: Germans at Home in New Orleans from the Start
    Daniel Hammer, deputy director, The Historic New Orleans Collection
11:30–12:15 p.m. An Ethnic Geography of New Orleans: Residential Settlement Patterns across Three Centuries
Richard Campanella, geographer, Tulane School of Architecture
12:15–2:15 p.m. Lunch (on your own)
1–2:15 p.m “Congo Square” and “Storyville”
University of Louisiana at Lafayette Wind Ensemble
conducted by William J. Hochkeppel, director of bands, University of Louisiana at Lafayette
works composed by James Syler, University of Texas at San Antonio
commentary by Freddi Evans, author, independent scholar, and arts educator
2:15–3:15 p.m. Civil Rights roundtable

  • Sybil Haydel Morial, author and former associate vice president for external affairs, Xavier University
  • Alexander P. Tureaud Jr., educator, author, public speaker, and artist
  • Raphael Cassimere Jr., professor emeritus of history, University of New Orleans
  • Doratha “Dodie” Smith-Simmons, civil rights activist, New Orleans Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), NAACP Youth Council

moderated by Lawrence N. Powell, professor emeritus of history, Tulane University
3:15–4 p.m. Whither New Orleans? The Future of A Great American City
Leslie M. Harris, professor of history and African American studies, Northwestern University
4 p.m. Closing remarks
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Creole World by Richard Sexton

Great exhibit at the Historic New Orleans Collection’s Laura Simon Nelson Galleries of photographer Richard Sexton’s details of Caribbean life. It includes New Orleans, Colombia, Haiti, Ecuador and of course Cuba. The exhibit is designed well, with the New Orleans scenes hung next to their Caribbean counterpart, both photos sharing the exact same architectural or at least many composite details.

The exhibit reminds one that the Caribbean face of New Orleans is most likely another reason for its emotional distance from the rest of America. Those places have no great hold on  the American imagination, as seen in the lack of the same architectural styles of Washington DC, or in Savannah or even San Antonio.

America turned its back after its imperialism was slowed by Bolivar, Castro and others and left little New Orleans (and Miami too) without any older sisters to sit with, remembering the past.

On viewing this exhibit, I was reminded of one of my favorite quotes from those dark days of 2005 post-levee break reconstruction, said by a well known Cuban architect in a piece in The Atlantic. Andrés Duany, a co-founder of the Congress for New Urbanism, and a persistent advocate for traditional small-town design, gets to the essence of New Orleans as a Caribbean city said then:

“When I originally thought of New Orleans, I was conditioned by the press to think of it as an extremely ill-governed city, full of ill-educated people, with a great deal of crime, a great deal of dirt, a great deal of poverty,” said Duany, who grew up in Cuba. “And when I arrived, I did indeed find it to be all those things. Then one day I was walking down the street and I had this kind of brain thing, and I thought I was in Cuba. Weird! And then I realized at that moment that New Orleans was not an American city, it was a Caribbean city. Once you recalibrate, it becomes the best-governed, cleanest, most efficient, and best-educated city in the Caribbean. New Orleans is actually the Geneva of the Caribbean.”

Sexton’s Creole World Blog

exhibit and book information

And for those that remember the old Tally Ho Restaurant that was here at the corner of Chartres and Conti, it is a treat to walk through the gallery and remember the ghosts of past grits and red beans had at that counter….

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Creole World Exhibit

Richard Sexton’s Creole World: Photographs of New Orleans and the Latin Caribbean Sphere (THNOC 2014) continues to garner praise and attention.

The New York Review of Books recently featured the tome on its website. Writer Nathaniel Rich began with a quote from 19th-century travel writer Lafcadio Hearn about New Orleans: “While it actually resembles no other city upon the face of the earth, it owns suggestions of towns in Italy, and in Spain, of cities in England and in Germany, of seaports in the Mediterranean, and of seaports in the tropics.” The review goes on to say that “there’s no better illustration of this than the photographs of Richard Sexton.”

The concept behind Sexton’s Creole World project was also the subject of an lengthy article in the Miami New Times. Sexton discussed the similarities between New Orleans and Miami with the paper prior to a book signing and presentation in Coral Gables, saying that “New Orleans was the lone historical example of kind of a Creole-Caribbean place getting assimilated into the United States and an Anglo-Saxon culture with a different history. New Orleans is the historical example (of that); Miami is the modern example.”
The exhibition is on view at the Laura Simon Nelson Galleries for Louisiana Art at 400 Chartres Street, through December 7.