Tulane School of Liberal Arts Magazine Fall 2020: The Responsibility Issue

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“ In the past six months, we’ve seen a beautiful example

of how to make a gigantic behavior change with Covid-19 by wearing face coverings and physical distancing. We have to take care of our whole community—that’s how we work toward a responsible and ‘Beloved Community.’

— ANNELIESE SINGH

”

ASSOCIATE PROVOST FOR DIVERSITY AND FACULTY DEVELOPMENT AND CHIEF DIVERSITY OFFICER

LOCATED BETWEEN NORMAN MAYER AND TILTON MEMORIAL HALL ON TULANE’S UPTOWN CAMPUS, THE OUTDOOR CLASSROOM ON THE PIERSON PATIO CREATED IN 2018 OFFERS A WELCOMING SPACE FOR SOCIAL DISTANCING WHILE LEARNING.

PAULA BURCH-CELENTANO

liberal arts TULANE SCHOOL OF

MAGAZINE

FALL 2020 | VOL. 2 | NO. 2

EDITORIAL DIRECTORS BRIAN T. EDWARDS NICOLE WESTERFIELD WRITER, EDITOR EMILY WILKERSON ART DIRECTOR ARIELLE PENTES

FROM THE DEAN In this issue of the School of Liberal Arts Magazine we take on yet another big theme: responsibility.

As the pandemic took over our lives, the summer and fall took on a different cast than most would have predicted. Calls for racial justice, to which many of our community have dedicated their careers, became more widespread than during any time in recent memory. Long-standing conversations about equity and inclusion became pervasive and urgent.

Responsibility is a concept that resonates through the liberal arts disciplines, which offer lessons that enrich our sense of it. As a keyword, it has a long history with a range of interpretations over time. In the present, we invoke our responsibility to the next generation when we discuss climate change or the national debt. We pledge our responsibility to others when we work to confront racism, misogyny, and the range of limitations that dominant groups place on subaltern ones. When we put on a facemask to protect others, we activate our responsibility. It runs through scholarship: ethnographers consider their own responsibility to their subjects; economists and historians alike feel a responsibility to their data and archives.

At Tulane, with our deep commitment to service and to the city of the New Orleans, we call on ourselves to respond. To make a pledge to social justice, to our community, and to take stock of our own history is our shared charge. As we focus on the future, to refuse to be satisfied with statements alone but to engage in the hard work of transformation, is required of us.

I invite you to journey through these pieces as they enrich our sense of the many ways members of the Liberal Arts community engage in the difficult work provoked by this concept. I hope you will be as inspired by them as I am.

BRIAN EDWARDS Dean & Professor of English School of Liberal Arts

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DESIGNER MELINDA WHATLEY VILES CONTRIBUTORS CLAUDIA CHÁVEZ ARGÜELLES MIA L. BAGNERIS FREDERICK BELL ANNIELAURIE ERICKSON BRIAN HOROWITZ ANNA MITCHELL MAHONEY LAURA MCKINNEY DAVID O’BRIEN CARLY SHAFFER ANNELIESE SINGH JOHN VERANO DEJA WELLS SPECIAL THANKS PAULA BURCH-CELENTANO ______________ 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 M. 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 Kassie Cosgrove, Director of Development, at kcosgrove@tulane.edu.

THE RESPONSIBILITY ISSUE

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WHY DOES INEQUALITY MATTER?

THE RADICAL FLORIOGRAPHY OF SARAH MAPPS DOUGLASS

AN AMERICAN NIGHTMARE

SETTING THE STAGE FOR DIFFICULT CONVERSATIONS

by David O'Brien

by Frederick Bell

by Emily Wilkerson

by Mia L. Bagneris

6 TOWARD A BELOVED COMMUNITY

with Deja Wells

also in this issue 11 EXHIBITING ACTIVISM 16 MOBILIZING A COMMITMENT TO SOCIAL CHANGE 22 PLAY IT FORWARD 24 HOW ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE MAKES WOMEN MORE VULNERABLE TO AIDS 26 THE ETHICS OF FIELDWORK 28 FACULTY SPOTLIGHTS 29 THE ESSENCE OF LIFE 30 DATA SHADOWS 36 THE POLITICS OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT POLICY REFORM 38 DIGGING THE PAST ON THE DESERT COAST OF PERU FAL L 2 02 0 | 3

/ inequality = matter?

Why does

BY DAVID O’BRIEN ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSOPHY

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In

your everyday life, you often have to decide whether or not you’re in favor of a proposed policy. Think about a policy that would prohibit the sale of large soda drinks. Would you be in favor of that? To make up your mind, you would ask what good and bad things the policy would deliver or prevent. You would decide, in other words, on the basis of the values that you think matter.

But values often conflict. Even if prohibiting large soda drinks would make people healthier, it would also make them somewhat less free (insofar as they are no longer able to purchase these drinks). So, to make up your mind about the policy, you need two kinds of information. You need to know, first, how much of a health improvement the policy promises to deliver. You could get that information from good social science. But you also need a different kind of information. You need to know how much gains in health matter, compared to losses in freedom. The methods of social science can’t give you that information. It is a task, instead, for moral inquiry. That is the kind of task that moral philosophers take up.

In my work, I focus on one particular value: the ideal of reducing inequality in how well different lives go. Just as promoting health can conflict with respecting freedom, so too the ideal of reducing inequality can conflict with other values. To see that, think about this highly simplified case:

Twin girls, sickly Sarah and healthy Hannah, are born.

Although they will later go on to have good lives, Sarah has an incurable medical condition that will cause her to suffer greatly during her childhood. Hannah, luckily, doesn’t have the condition. Imagine you find yourself with a vial that you could administer to Hannah. If you do so, she’ll experience the same kinds of suffering during her childhood that Sarah does.

I’ll call this the Twins case. I hope you agree with me that, in the Twins case, there is a lot to be said against administering that vial to Hannah. You would be causing an innocent child to suffer. That counts very heavily against administering the vial to her. Is there anything to be said in favor of doing so? If you think that reducing inequality matters, the answer seems to be ‘Yes.’ Doing so would reduce the inequality in how well Sarah’s and Hannah’s lives go. In other words, the Twins case illustrates that reducing inequality can sometimes conflict with promoting health.

And so, once again, to make a sensible decision, we need to know the relative importance of these values. We need to know how much health we should be willing to sacrifice for the sake of reducing inequality.

A brief side-note: Don’t take the wrong lesson from the Twins scenario. Sometimes, when I describe this case, people say in frustration, ‘But I would prefer to help Sarah, and not harm Hannah.’ Me too. But I’ve asked you to imagine that that’s not an option. I’ve asked you to imagine that harder choice, because I want the hypothetical scenario to function like a little science experiment, with the ‘apparatus’ set up to isolate the factor we’re interested in. Setting up our experimental ‘apparatus’ in this way helps to bring into sharp focus the question of whether there’s anything about inequality itself that’s regrettable.

As the reaction described above suggests, the Twins case focuses our attention on an even more basic question about inequality. When you

thought about the scenario, you might have found yourself wondering, not how much it matters to reduce that inequality, but whether doing so matters at all. I share those doubts. Anyone who thinks that reducing inequality really does matter, in and of itself, owes us an explanation of why inequality matters at all.

Investigating that basic question about inequality—explaining why, exactly, inequality is a bad thing—is my current research focus. Giving such an explanation is a tall order. The explanation would have to make intelligible to us why there is a reason—something that really does speak in favor of—giving Hannah that vial. Since doing so is going to seriously harm her, it had better be a very good explanation. As it happens, I think there is a good explanation to be had. I think that reducing inequalities sometimes matters, in and of itself, because some inequalities are deeply unfair. The health inequality between Sarah and Hannah is one example.

But that, so far, is only the barest outline of an explanation. Spelling it out carefully and in detail is difficult work. For one thing, since this explanation of inequality’s badness appeals to an intimate connection between inequality and unfairness, developing the explanation requires us to better understand what unfairness is.

I have just described a difficult task. And that difficult task is, I’m afraid to say, still only the first step of the work of moral inquiry. Even with a full explanation of inequality’s badness in hand, we would still only have established that inequality matters to some extent. We would not yet have an answer to the important practical question with which we began: how much it matters to reduce inequality, compared with other values.

That can make the work of moral inquiry seem overwhelming. Nevertheless, it is work we cannot avoid. To see why not, think about a real-life case. A few years ago, the administrators of Boston public schools faced a hard choice. Well-off parents were withdrawing their children from public elementary schools in favor of private schools, taking with them resources and social capital, thereby making it more difficult for those schools to educate the worse-off children who remained enrolled. To entice well-off parents to keep their children in public schools, a proposal was made: give these families preferential access to the district’s best-quality schools. The influx of resources and social capital that these families would bring would, it was hoped, benefit the school district as a whole, delivering some benefits for worse-off kids, too. But, of course, the proposal would also greatly magnify the inequality in educational achievement between children from better-off and worse-off families.

What do you think? Would delivering some benefits to worse-off children be worth it, if the price was to magnify educational inequality between better-off and worse-off children? The issues raised by this real-world case, of course, are much more complex than my highly simplified Twins case. But the basic question raised by both cases is the same: How much does it matter to keep a rein on inequality? To answer that question, we need to know how much, and why, inequality matters at all. That is why we cannot avoid the work of moral inquiry, difficult as that work is. It is work that we must do well, if we are to make sensible decisions in our everyday lives.

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PAULA BURCH-CELENTANO

AN INTERVIEW ON SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY WITH DEJA WELLS, ANNELIESE SINGH, AND BRIAN EDWARDS

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PAULA BURCH-CELENTANO

Political science junior DEJA WELLS (SLA ’22) is a Community Engagement Advocate, Newman Civic Fellow, and the director of the Diversity, Inclusion, and Equity Council of Tulane’s Undergraduate Student Government (USG). In 2019, Wells and her peers authored the Equity Fee Resolution set forth by USG, which prompted the administration to increase funding for organizations supporting marginalized groups on campus. With her commitment to equity at the forefront, Wells recently spoke with ANNELIESE SINGH, Associate Provost for Diversity & Faculty Development and Chief Diversity Officer, and BRIAN EDWARDS, Dean of the School of Liberal Arts, about responsibility and working in their respective roles to foster a “Beloved Community” at Tulane and beyond.

DEJA WELLS: How would each of you define social responsibility, both as a concept and in relation to your work at Tulane?

BRIAN T. EDWARDS: Responsibility imagines that you have some agency to make a change, or that you may respond. The word “social” is a complex word, particularly in a university community. Who belongs to it?

What is the relation of the institution’s past to the present and future? For me, the phrase “social responsibility” suggests that we have the imperative to respond in relation to the social worlds around us. I think of universities as families with long and varied histories. As each person enters the family of Tulane, we are given the task to understand our responsibility in helping it reflect the kind of present and future that we would like to see.

ANNELIESE SINGH: When I think about the word “responsibility,” I also think of the ability to respond. I think about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Beloved Community,” where we are building a community in which we are socially responsible to one another where everyone’s needs are met. People who have come before us have already built the Tulane culture we’re living in now in 2020, and now we can think about the Tulane of 2030. Our social responsibility includes asking, “Is this a Tulane that affirms all community members, or do we want to grow into something different?”

DW: Your answers made me think of my involvement in the Ripple Effect with the first-year students during the 2020 move in, which is a program that explores racial inclusivity on campus. One of the examples I would give to new students was centered around being accountable for your classmates’ access in our classrooms and on campus. If it were just you, that engagement alone isn’t enough for you to learn. You learn from your peers and the questions they may ask that you weren’t even thinking about.

You also learn from the answers they have, and the experiences they have. So, my next question bridges your responses and just that—the importance of individuality and learning from others. In what ways do you challenge yourselves not to uphold normative ideals in your everyday life?

AS: When I think about normative, I think about something I want to resist and question. I want Tulane to be a place where we can question the things that we have been socialized to accept. For instance, I was socialized to perform my gender and sexuality in binary ways, but I also got to question these things as a queer, non-binary person when I was a student at Tulane. As a mixed-race person, I grew up learning normative ideas about race that were not helpful in ending racism. These normative cultures didn’t really help me come to understand the world or myself. Asking critical

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questions is an important equity and justice practice. I even ask exactly what does my role as Chief Diversity Officer mean? It implies that there’s one person, and I want to question that idea. There’s not one person. It takes all of us.

BTE: I have trouble accepting an unproblematized sense of what is “normal.” So much of what is said to be “normal” has been constructed, and there’s often a lot of power at stake in maintaining it as “normal.” I remember the first time I had the opportunity to live in another language and being fascinated by the many different ways you express the “same” idea in different contexts. There is no “normal” in language, and this is part of why I’m so committed to students learning a second language. My perspective has been influenced as much by travel as by critical theory written about the everyday performance of self, of gendered and other identities. What does it mean to have multiple selves that we perform? How can we even use the word “normal” anymore?

DW: Both of your responses resonate strongly with me. I remember being a very young child and thinking about what it meant to question society’s “norms.” And now that’s kind of radicalized my approach to universities. I haven’t had a choice to think of institutions as experiences, only to question them. In some ways I think I’m upholding a normative of what a

university experience looks like, but I’m also actively working against it by existing in spaces that society tells me I’m not supposed to be in. Moving into the context of campus life, how do you describe what social responsibility looks like at Tulane?

BTE: One of the exciting things about universities is that there’s a constant flow of new people, and therefore new ideas and energy, like a river. The course of a river seems hard to change; although, here in New Orleans we know that the Mississippi actually has shifted over time. For me, Tulane’s profound relationship to New Orleans is key to our future. In the School of Liberal Arts, we are constantly thinking about that relationship and our sense of responsibility to the environment that we live in, both in terms of the climate and to the people and arts that sustain this city, and developing sustainable ways to bring both city and university into greater dialogue.

AS: I keep returning to the idea of the “Beloved Community”—I know this is something that we can build here at Tulane. I think this is a gift we were given by the Civil Rights movement, and now the Black Lives Matter movement, among many others.

What would it look like to build a culture at Tulane where everyone’s needs are met?

Of course, it’s complicated. We have to keep asking ourselves, “How does internalized patriarchy live in all of us?” “How does internalized whiteness live in each of us?” Not just in folks who are subjugated, but in everyone.

We can build a Tulane culture where we lean into these critical questions every day.

DW: Considering the positions that you are in as campus leaders, how do you give access to others?

AS: Building bridges may sound a little cliché, but this is so critically important. Even when we have deep divides. I don’t want to cancel anyone in this work of equity and justice. It’s 2020—if I cancel people, then I don’t get to grow and learn something about myself. I’m not talking about exposing myself to all types of harm. Boundaries are important. But that’s why I’m loving higher education right now.

We can lean into courageous conversations and discomfort in healthy ways so that being at Tulane means we are changing.

“…we are

building a community in which we are socially responsible to one another where everyone’s needs are met.” _________ ANNELIESE SINGH

BTE: I believe that the people you bring into an institution is one of the more influential changes you can make as a leader. Sometimes this is about people we hire, and sometimes it is about the practices we put into place. In the last year, we’ve made a substantial change in how we conduct hiring by having an “equity representative” on every faculty search committee. Their job is not to argue for any individual person, but to make sure that our hiring process has considered implicit and other biases at every step of the process.

DW: How do we foster a community-based culture—a community in which all students are in self-affirming company? And how have you been able to implement these efforts in your respective roles?

AS: I think historically Tulane has been a mostly white male institution and the vestiges of that carry over into 2020. A community-based culture means that we are not just “diversifying” from white men and women, then including other people; we are actually starting over. A lot of people assume that my role is only to support black, indigenous, and people of color students, faculty, staff, and that’s not what it’s about at all. It’s about questioning the cultures that we have here, looking at the practices, and pinpointing those that are exclusionary. For example, racism seems insurmountable, but I think we can reduce racism in our everyday practices and policies right now as we build the “Beloved Community.”

BTE: Universities tend to be places that encourage thinking forward to new social conditions, but there’s also sometimes an event that pushes discussions forward in more dramatic fashion. The killing of George Floyd and the subsequent protests about systemic racism this summer are such a moment. The possibility for change can seem impossible even through it is sometimes right in front of us. Universities are places where we are able to deconstruct and then reconstruct aspects of the social—of the community—that we’ve been exploring and debating for years.

As educators, we have to be optimists. I frequently say that if you are not an optimist as an educator, you are in the wrong business, because our students will outlive us. So, as educators our job is to work with you, our students, toward that future.

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COURSE SPOTLIGHT

Critical Inquiry Praxis

&

Taught by Krystal Cleary, a professor of practice in the Department of Communication and the Gender and Sexuality Studies Program, CRITICAL INQUIRY AND PRAXIS examines how feminist scholars, activists, and culture workers have bridged their academic scholarship and research with lived experiences and social change. Students engage with readings, class discussions, and presentations by guests to discuss gender, sexuality, class, race, nation, and ability as intersecting identities, analytics, and systems of power. Throughout the course, Cleary encourages students to reflect upon their personal identities and relationships to power as young scholars and changemakers. Students also have the opportunity to participate in the course’s service-learning component, working with organizations such as SAGE New Orleans - NOAGE.

COURSE SPOTLIGHT

&

Art Activism ART AND ACTIVISM: RIGHTS OF NATURE explores the potential to transform political and personal experiences through art and action. Led by AnnieLaurie Erickson, an associate professor in the Newcomb Department of Art, the course addresses how and why artists make meaning as they confront contemporary social and environmental issues. Discussions of visual and textual studies comprise the foundation of the course and are supplemented by visits with local activists and fieldtrips to artist studios and exhibitions. The course’s studio component is open to a wide range of photographic, performance, sculptural, and other creative techniques.

Students enrolled in ART AND ACTIVISM can also take part in a service-learning project, which has involved working with an art/activist community partner on social or environmental projects such as Antenna Gallery’s Signals and the Fossil Free Festival.

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exhibiting

ACTIVISM

FREEDOM FLIES BY KATE ROSE (SLA '21), LINOLEUM BLOCK PRINT, 15 X 6 IN, WAS INCLUDED IN THE “ART FOR ACTIVISM” EXHIBITION IN SUMMER 2020.

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rganized by Tulane alumni EMERY GLUCK (SLA ‘18) and BRANDON SURTAIN (A ‘20) and current student CARLYN MORRIS (SE ’22), the “Art for Activism” exhibition was created to raise awareness for the Black Lives Matter movement. Featuring work by more than 40 Tulane alumni, students, and community members, the group recognizes “the power that art has to inspire discussion, revision, and a shifting of opinions and culture in a way that words often can’t.”

The exhibition was on view from

August 10 to September 3, 2020 in the School of Liberal Arts’ Carroll Gallery, and a silent auction of the work on display took place on August 20. Of the more than $7,000 raised in the auction, 30% was given to the participating emerging artists and 70% was donated to Mobilizing Millennials, a New Orleans-based organization whose mission is to register and galvanize youth populations, such as Millennials and Gen Z, to vote as well as promote civic and political literacy.

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The Radical Floriography of Sarah Mapps Douglass

BY MIA L. BAGNERIS DIRECTOR, AFRICANA STUDIES AND ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, NEWCOMB ART DEPARTMENT

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PREVIOUS SPREAD: SARAH MAPPS DOUGLASS (1806-1882), LADY WHILE YOU ARE YOUNG, AND BEAUTIFUL…, C.1836-1837, ELIZABETH SMITH FRIENDSHIP ALBUM. RIGHT: E.W. CLAY, FROM THE “LIFE IN PHILADELPHIA” SERIES, 1828.

TEXT: HOW YOU FIND YOURSELF DIS HOT WEADER MISS CHLOE?” “PRETTY WELL I TANK YOU MR. CESAR ONLY I ASPIRE TOO MUCH!” (EMPHASIS ADDED).

S

ometime in 1836 or 1837, Sarah Mapps Douglass, a thirtyyear-old schoolteacher and prominent member of Philadelphia’s free Black elite, painted a lovely watercolor of a floral bouquet in the friendship album of Elizabeth Smith, the teenaged daughter of committed white abolitionists Gerrit and Ann Smith.

A large pink rose blossom and diminutive rosebud dominate the charming composition, while more humble flowers—a dainty sprig of blue forget-me-nots and two specimens of the purple, yellow, and white wild pansy known as heart’s ease—accent the larger stem. This seemingly innocuous little painting might initially strike the viewer as little more than a conventional display of feminine accomplishment de rigueur of the period, just the sort of trifle that one refined lady might offer another as a token of friendship. However, beneath the image Douglass penned a powerful inscription whose sharp puns dramatically transformed the significance of her flower picture:

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“Lady, while you are young and beautiful ‘Forget not’ the slave, so shall ‘Heart’s Ease’ ever attend you.”

Somewhat of a fad among fashionable young women of the period, friendship albums were bound volumes kept by individuals that contained blank leaves upon which the owner’s invited friends would offer gifts of writing or, occasionally, drawings or small paintings. Existing at the nexus of public and private, the albums might be displayed in a parlor and even loaned out over the course of a few days in order to be inscribed. Therefore, while the offerings made therein were personally addressed to the book’s owner, they were also meant for the consumption of a select public.

In contrast to Douglass’s pointedly political offering, most album contributions celebrated the bonds between writer and recipient with sentimental paeans to friendship or offered some other gender-appropriate message conveyed in the polite language of refined femininity.

Four albums belonging to and circulated primarily among free Black women during this period have begun to receive scholarly attention; however, Smith’s largely unexamined album offers a unique opportunity to consider how elite free Black women involved in the interracial anti-slavery movement performed their raced, gendered, and classed identities when that performance was addressed primarily to white associates rather than to and for each other. Moreover, as a historian of art and visual culture, I am also interested in the images that Douglass and her peers made in friendship albums because, although they are almost entirely unknown to scholars of American art, they represent the earliest documented signed works of art by African American women.

Like her peers, Douglass seems to have painted flowers almost exclusively. Part of the culture of sentimentality that defined women’s expression in the nineteenth century, the rise of the “language of flowers” coincided with the popularity of friendship albums in the U.S., peaking between 1830 and 1850, and flower references—visual and verbal— dominated Black women’s contributions to their friends’ album books.

To be sure, most of these offerings were fairly mundane expressions of period sentimentality. However, in addition to showcasing her exceptional artistic skill, many of Douglass’s entries convey greater depth than those of her peers, serving as early Black feminist meditations on period respectability politics.

The politics of respectability that informed the lives of all free black Philadelphians particularly dictated the those of elite free African American women who were held to rigorous standards of dress, comportment, and gender-appropriate accomplishment as a public statement of their ladyhood and the fitness of African Americans for full inclusion in American society. This amounted to nothing short of a political act because, as E.W. Clay’s popular Life in Philadelphia cartoons exemplify, for most white Philadelphians, the words “Black lady” constituted an oxymoron.

Produced at the same time that Douglass and her peers showcased their ladyhood in friendship albums, Clay’s series lampooned the pretensions of the free Black community, often using buffoonish caricatures of Black women who dared aspire to the title of lady.

Yet, it is precisely to a “lady” that Douglass addresses the pointed puns of her verse on the opening pages of Elizabeth Smith’s friendship album. The artist’s mode of address might be considered simply appropriate for—or even meant to convey deference to—Smith, whose status as a lady would never have been in question. However, in addressing young Elizabeth Smith as “lady,” Douglass’s work also boldly claims

the title for herself—as Smith’s friend, granted a privileged space in her album, and as one whose mastery of pictorial and poetic floriography demonstrate her proficiency in the parlance of genteel femininity.

Moreover, the imperative mode of Douglass’s address is also exceptional, both for its boldness and for its transformation of the conventional friendship token into an explicitly political gesture. With her beautiful picture and punning text, Douglass proclaims abolitionism as an unequivocally appropriate vocation for ladies, using the language of feminine refinement to command her audience’s attention to a struggle that convention insisted should not be a lady’s concern. Challenging the popular abolitionist slogan “Am I Not a Woman and a Sister?” Douglass refuses to deal in interrogatives that question her status as an equal; instead, she issues a bold imperative to her white friend, claiming her place as woman and sister, and in so doing, creating a space for the other free Black women who engaged with Smith’s album to do the same.

…a fad among fashionable young women of the period, friendship albums were bound volumes kept by individuals that contained blank leaves upon which the owner’s invited friends would offer gifts of writing or, occasionally, drawings or small paintings.

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MOBILIZING

a COMMITMENT to SOCIAL CHANGE

BY EMILY WILKERSON

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emain curious about the world. This is a motto by which Sunita Patel (NC ’00) lives, works, and teaches. Patel is a lawyer and Assistant Professor of Law at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she directs the Veterans Legal Clinic.

Patel’s roles as lawyer and educator grew from her activist background and an education she embarked on years ago at Tulane University studying history and Africana Studies. “I came to Tulane with an interest in learning about the history of the South,” explained Patel. “I was already an advocate for racial justice, and I knew that Africana Studies at Tulane would sharpen my understanding of race and social justice.”

While she didn’t know it at the time, studying with School of Liberal Arts Professor of history Laura Rosanne Adderley would become pivotal to her experience at Tulane and her career. “Professor Adderley presented material that sparked a deep curiosity of the history of Black people in the U.S. and around the world, as well as intersections with post-colonial history, particularly South Asia and its African diaspora. As an immigrant, I feel it is very important to understand the history and legacy of the land I occupy. Her Black history classes provided a foundation that has stayed with me ever since.”

Shortly after leaving Tulane, Patel investigated jail and prison policies in the South with the Southern Center for Human Rights. She later finished law school and received a prestigious Soros Justice Advocacy Fellowship to represent non-citizens in immigration detention in New York and New Jersey. Matters of mass incarceration, experiences of non-citizens, and civil rights have been threads throughout her career, from creating a community visitation program at the Orleans Parish Prison as a Tulane student to working at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) as an attorney for social movements in the U.S. and around the world. Regardless of title or endeavor, Patel mobilizes a commitment to social change through her scholarship and legal practice.

During her tenure at CCR—a dream job, as she describes it—Patel worked on high-profile cases such as Doe v. Jindal in Louisiana, which ruled the state’s Crime Against Nature by Solicitations (CANS) statute violated the 14th Amendment. Additionally, she served as co-counsel in the district court and Second Circuit leading to the Supreme Court case Abbasi v. Ashcroft, which defended the civil rights of a group of Muslim, South Asian, and Arab non-citizens who were detained and deported on the basis of their race and religion by the INS and FBI after the 9/11 attacks. Patel also worked on the groundbreaking case Floyd v. City of New York with CCR, known to most as New York City’s stop and frisk case. Reflecting on the stop and frisk case in particular, Patel points out that not only was it unusual that the case even went to trial—during which a large municipality’s racist practices

were laid out as systemic problems to the public—but the case was also a vehicle for grassroots strategizing around police reform, political change, and the broader narrative around policing practices. “It was through a really dedicated campaign of Black and Latinx people bravely speaking out at city council hearings and to the media that eventually there was a change in perspective and language around stops and frisks and policing. The trial really anchored media attention in a way that helped change the political landscape and popular views of policing in NYC,” said Patel.

After working on these big cases, Patel decided to start teaching and writing to theorize her experience with other law scholars. Her commitment to racial justice continues in her community of Los Angeles with the clinic she started at UCLA and as a core faculty member of the world-renowned UCLA Law Critical Race Studies program. In the Veterans Legal Clinic, Patel works with students on a range of poverty and criminal justice legal matters on behalf of housing insecure veterans, including quality of life ticketing by the city, acquiring cash entitlements, and policy research to support social change

campaigns. As one of the directors, Patel offers guidance and support, but the students lead the process by forming attorney-client relationships and performing the legal work.

“In my teaching and mentoring, I return to Professor Adderley again and again,” said Patel. “She modeled several aspects of excellent teaching and membership in an academic institution. Not only did she set high expectations in the classroom and provide excellent instruction, but she also instilled that as a woman of color, it is imperative to be yourself for the students who see themselves in you, to be an advocate in your institution and community, and to understand that the connection between your research and the real world is critical.” From her own experiences, Patel believes that receiving a well-rounded education is essential to becoming a critical thinker. “Regardless of your career trajectory, I tell students to take a few things away from their education: learn to be a strong writer and listener, perform well in a classroom, engage others with whom you disagree, and most of all, remain curious about the world and the reasons for its cruelties. That foundation is best laid in the liberal arts.”

SCHOOL OF LIBERAL ARTS ALUMNA SUNITA PATEL (THIRD FROM RIGHT) WITH MEMBERS OF THE UCLA VETERANS LEGAL CLINIC, FOR WHICH SHE SERVES AS A DIRECTOR. PHOTO COURTESY UCLA LAW.

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AN

AMERICAN

N I GH TMA

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IN

1958, my great-great uncle was fatally shot by a Milwaukee police officer.

My uncle’s name was Daniel Bell. He was 22 years old, the age I am now. I learned about this story this past summer from a book written by my greatgreat aunt, Sylvia Bell White. Sister: An African American Life in Search of Justice, chronicles the story of my ancestors who were raised in Springfield, Louisiana, about 60 miles northwest of New Orleans. Segregated, subjugated, and exasperated, my aunt and her twelve brothers migrated north to Milwaukee in search of better opportunities and a chance to achieve the American Dream.

However, when they arrived, they were met with the American Nightmare.

PAULA BURCH-CELENTANO

MARE

BY FREDERICK BELL (SLA ’20)

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My uncle, Daniel, had just celebrated his birthday with friends and family. As he left the gathering, driving one snowy February evening, two white police officers engaged him in a traffic stop. He didn’t have a driver’s license and knew how unjust the justice system could be during Jim Crow. Daniel fled and the officers pursued him on foot.

Once they had him within their grasp, one of the officers shot Daniel at close range in the back of the neck. As he lay there bloody, one of the officers placed a knife in Daniel’s right hand remarking, “He’s just a damn n----r kid anyway.”

W PREVIOUS SPREAD: SCHOOL OF LIBERAL ARTS ALUMNUS FREDERICK BELL IN FRONT OF "I AM A BLACK MAN," A MURAL BY TATTOO ARTIST AND MURALIST JARRAD MCKAY ON ST. CLAUDE AVENUE IN NEW ORLEANS. ABOVE: DANIEL BELL, JANUARY 1958. PHOTO INCLUDED IN SISTER: AN AFRICAN AMERICAN LIFE IN SEARCH OF JUSTICE BY SYLVIA BELL WHITE AND JODY LEPAGE.

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We have to engage, relentlessly and continuously, to produce the outcomes that are just and equitable.

Their ploy probably would’ve been successful had it not been for the fact that Daniel was left-handed. This blunder would take nearly 20 years to uncover, but my aunt, Sylvia, and her brothers would go on to reveal the ugliness that lay beneath. After an all-white jury initially exculpated the officers, a federal jury would go on to hold the policemen accountable and award the Bell family $1.6 million.

As I was learning about this dark chapter in my family’s history, I couldn’t help but notice the parallels between then and now. There was a young Black man restricted and suffocated by the sting of racism. A power imbalance between that man and two agents of the state. And an initial institutional failure that denied justice. These are American problems that have withstood the test of time. Every generation has

been forced to grapple with this reality. I can’t remember a time when this country wasn’t discussing the death of a Black man at the hands of police. I was 14 years old when Trayvon Martin was murdered by someone masquerading as an officer. I was 16 years old the summer when Eric Garner, Michael Brown, and Laquan McDonald were killed. Just as I was getting ready to head off to college, Alton Sterling was gunned down in Baton Rouge. My collegiate years would then be punctuated by deaths of people who looked like me. It was physiologically traumatizing to constantly see Black, lifeless bodies splattered across the television. It made me and so many other Black people question our fundamental worth in this country.

The incidents this past summer felt all too familiar. The deaths of Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and countless others were Daniel Bell all over again. My uncle deserved better, and these Black lives deserved better. This national reckoning is welcomed, but it is important to understand just how pervasive the problem of police brutality is, and how silence equals complicity. Anything short of active and aggressive anti-racist action, begets responsibility for the consequences.

This is why the Black Lives Matter movement has taken to the street marching, speaking, and imploring the world to pay attention, listen, and act. It is ultimately an affirmation of humanity. Because to wake up as a Black person in this country is to incessantly and warily come to terms with your own mortality. To wake up as a Black mother in this country is to grieve—to grieve for the lives they created, nurtured, and valued like a work of art.

The premise of this country was based on individualism and an underlying skepticism, but faith, in the government. Trust in the social

contract supposedly made room for the grand idea of the American Dream. But for too many Black, indigenous, and people of color in this country, that trust has been broken. And for some, it was never there to begin with. That is the American Nightmare.

So, how do we proceed? We must demand more of our institutions. Yes, they have routinely failed us, and because of this we sometimes sink into cynicism. But if we give in, the powers that be win and their carelessness can run amok. We have to engage, relentlessly and continuously, to produce the outcomes that are just and equitable.

In the fall of 2019, I participated in a program with New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell called Action New Orleans (ANO) to complete my public service requirement at Tulane. The entire program was shaped

by Cantrell’s grassroots origins. Her history as an activist advocating for the Broadmoor neighborhood in the wake of Hurricane Katrina reimagined public service with an emphasis on justice and equity. My work with ANO led me to my role as a field organizer for a U.S. Senate candidate in South Carolina this year. Utilizing some of the same skills and practices I learned during my time with ANO, I have been organizing to empower and inspire a community to shape its own destiny.

It is difficult work, but this will be our path away from these seemingly inescapable generational curses. Because from Daniel Bell to Frederick Bell—two generations apart—little has changed. In honor of my uncle and other Black Americans who have been pressed under the thumb of systemic oppression in this country, I plan to keep up the fight—listening, learning, and leading—so that for generations yet born, the American Nightmare can end, and the dreams of our ancestors fulfilled.

COURSE SPOTLIGHT

Media

&

Criminal Justice

MEDIA AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE examines the interrelationships between crime, criminal justice, and media. Led by Betsy Weiss, a visiting assistant professor in the Department of Communication and Digital Media Practices, this course explores how television, film, newspapers, and electronic media represent, influence, distort, and filter crime and justice issues. The effects of media images of crime and violence on individuals, groups, and public policy is a key point of discussion, and together Weiss and students explore how media can also be a mechanism to examine political ideology, corrections policy, and causes of crime.

Students enrolled in this course complete 20 hours of service learning with New Orleans community organizations involved with criminal justice such as SisterHearts and the Vera Institute of Justice.

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q Play it FORWARD

BY EMILY WILKERSON

T

o become a jazz musician at the age of 14 requires a great deal of passion and dedication. LaTasha Bundy (B ’14, SLA ’14, MA ’21), a born-and-raised New Orleans musician, has carried both with her from a very young age. Today, Bundy is a master’s candidate in musical composition who has studied with composer Roger Dickerson and New Orleans musicians such as Clyde Kerr, Jr. and Christian Scott aTunde Adjuah. Completing her third degree from Tulane University in Spring 2021, Bundy also collaborates with and receives guidance from School of Liberal Arts professors and renowned musicians Courtney Bryan and Richard Snow on a weekly basis.

What does one do with all of these lessons from teachers and contemporaries? Pass it on, of course. “It’s just something you do,” Bundy explains.

“I’ve had the elders teach me, and the generation under them have also taught me. You pass on your knowledge and practice to the next people— that’s a New Orleans musician thing.”

Since 2013, Bundy has helped Scott transfer his hand-written music to digital sheet music. Then, when Bundy was working at the annual Stanford Jazz Workshop one year, Grammy-nominated musician Patrice Rushen sparked her interest in film scoring programs at universities. She began looking into offerings and started exploring software programs such as Cubase, a digital audio workstation (DAW), where she could teach herself how to create music for movies and video games. Not surprisingly, she was soon ready to help the next generation learn this skill.

Throughout June and July 2020, Bundy taught New Orleans’ youth computer coding at the Ellis Marsalis Center for Music in the city’s Ninth Ward neighborhood. While teaching is not new to Bundy —over the years she has taught students trumpet and piano—lessons took on a new format this summer, occurring through one-on-one Zoom video calls due to the Covid-19 pandemic. While coding is a part of many schools’ curriculum in the city, it is generally only offered in the private schools. Bundy decided to help teach coding this summer because it is an important skill within the music industry and beyond. As Bundy explains, “we want to make sure the kids in the

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neighborhood are not left behind if their schools aren’t offering it.”

Daryl Dickerson, the Director of Music Education and Audio Engineering at the Ellis Marsalis Center, is thrilled with Bundy’s commitment to the students and the center. “LaTasha’s experience in music, as well as in music production, allows her to engage our students not only in sound design and studio recordings, but also in music theory. Her exuberant spirit captivates her students’ mind, body, and soul,” said Dickerson. “As director of education, I wish I had a hundred teachers that carried her passion.”

Teaching Swift code to students between the ages of seven and 14 this past summer is just the first step of her work with the Ellis Marsalis Center. Bundy also participates in the Mellon Graduate Program in Community-Engaged Scholarship at Tulane, an innovative initiative of the School of Liberal Arts and the Office of the Provost in which graduate students work with faculty and community members as mentors on a specific project. As part of her work as a Mellon fellow, Bundy will continue her work at the Marsalis Center in 2021 with the older youth creating a new plugin for various computer audio programs. “We’ll start by recording notes with professional musicians in a real studio space with real equipment. Then we’ll work with different articulations of those notes, such as different volumes, and use a sampler and midi controller to transfer those sounds into a new digital composition.” Keeping the youth’s professional development and personal investment at the forefront, the students will also learn important aspects of recording in general—including mic placement, how to use an audio interface, and how to create certain sounds from plugins—so if they want to make a track at their house, they know how. Students helping develop this plugin will also receive royalties whenever their music is sold.

Reflecting on her personal experiences at jazz camps, from the Louis Armstrong Summer Jazz Camp to local high schools and universities, Bundy speaks about her work with students excitedly. “It’s amazing to work with these children. Particularly the little ones—they get really excited about figuring out this new puzzle, which is really fun for them. But they’re actually learning a concept of something much bigger.”

“ You pass on your

knowledge and practice to the next people— that’s a New Orleans musician thing.”

—L ATASHA BUNDY

.

THE ELLIS MARSALIS CENTER FOR MUSIC IN NEW ORLEANS’ NINTH WARD NEIGHBORHOOD HOSTS MUSIC PERFORMANCES AND PROVIDES A SAFE, POSITIVE ENVIRONMENT WHERE YOUTH DEVELOP MUSICALLY, ACADEMICALLY, AND SOCIALLY. PHOTO PROVIDED BY THE ELLIS MARSALIS CENTER FOR MUSIC.

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how ENVIRONMENTAL DAMAGE makes WOMEN MORE VULNERABLE to AIDS

BY LAURA MCKINNEY ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY AND DIRECTOR OF ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES

A

round the world we see encouraging declines in the number of people newly infected with the virus that causes the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, otherwise known as AIDS. But hard-won gains in preventing and treating this “disease that changed everything” are not equally distributed across places and groups of people. The AIDS crisis has, in fact, widened inequalities in health and well-being the world over. In poor nations, AIDS remains a leading factor contributing to health declines—more than 95% of the 33.2 million individuals infected with the human immunodeficiency virus (or HIV) that causes AIDS reside in such countries, and the spread of HIV/AIDS has been especially detrimental to women in poor nations. The number of women infected with HIV has increased dramatically in recent years, and young women in less-developed nations are about twice as likely as men to become infected. Strikingly, AIDS is the leading cause of death among women of reproductive age.

How can we understand women’s special vulnerability to AIDS, especially in poorer

countries? Theories of gender inequality provide clear insights by highlighting the ways in which women have fewer resources and less control than men over decisions about sex and health practices. In particular, women in less developed nations face many barriers in getting needed access to vital educational and health resources, including schools and contraceptives.

If gender inequalities, poverty, low levels of education, and access to health care make for a deadly brew that undermines the well-being of women across the less-developed world, these harmful forces can be exacerbated by events and trends that further social disorder. In many poor countries, civil wars and violence obviously undermine the health and longevity of women, as well as men. In addition, the spread of the AIDS disease can be spurred by environmental crises and degradation, which is intensified in many places by global warming. So far, the potential impact of environmental degradation on the spread of HIV/AIDS has received insufficient scholarly attention. Drawing insights from eco-feminist perspectives, we can take a step in the direction of correcting this deficit.

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ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES ON WOMEN’S HEALTH The crux of the connection between women’s health and the environment largely centers on gender norms governing divisions of labor in households. Women are the ones typically charged with providing household members with vital resources like food and water gleaned from their immediate surrounding environments. Because women supply the bulk of food, water, and other basic necessities to family members, any crises leading to basic resource scarcities complicate the challenges women face as their own vulnerabilities to disease and hunger increase. In many less-developed countries, for example, women and their families rely on subsistence farming, so any declines in soil fertility and water supplies quickly compromise their ability to provide for themselves and their households.

Environmental crises that constrain food production lead to malnutrition which, in turn, makes people more susceptible to many infectious diseases, including HIV/AIDS. The connections play out in various ways:

COURSE SPOTLIGHT

Global Social Change Laura McKinney’s course GLOBAL SOCIAL CHANGE examines the implications of global change for individuals and groups. The course places emphasis on how changes such as globalization of the economy, international development, urbanization, immigration, social movements, and gender relations come about. While the course is international in scope, McKinney focuses material and discussions on Latin America, Asia, and/or Africa each semester.

F Meeting women’s needs is often subordinated to meeting men’s needs, so females disproportionately suffer from malnutrition and associated declines in immunity when food and water are scarce.

F Severe hunger may increase the likelihood of risky sexual behavior and HIV transmission among women who end up trading sex for needed household resources.

F Resource scarcity reduces the prospects for women to generate income from handicrafts and other cottage industries that rely heavily on natural inputs. Declines in earning capacity spurred by ecological decline can further entrench women in poverty.

That makes women more vulnerable to many health problems, including AIDS, because poverty is a major culprit in perpetuating HIV transmission.

F In areas of resource scarcity, women often travel longer distances over increasingly dangerous terrain to secure food, fuel, and fiber. Formerly inconsequential tasks, such as walking to a nearby source to draw water, turn into physically strenuous searches

lasting many hours, or even days. Women’s time for other pursuits is strained and their physical strength taxed, making them yet more vulnerable to malnutrition and disease.

F Accumulating evidence shows that high rates of HIV infection are found in areas with contaminated water. As clean water becomes increasingly scarce, women are more likely resort to using water that is infested with worms and parasites. Their overall health is compromised, and they become more susceptible to life-threatening infections—including urogenital inflammation, which is a known risk factor for HIV infection.

attendant threats to female life expectancy.

Clearly, developmental and epidemiological approaches to improving women’s health may benefit from incorporating environmental factors as a key area of concern.

As the world seeks to eradicate the HIV/ AIDS epidemic, all key players must recognize the strong connections between environmental degradation and threats to the health and well-being of women. Ignoring environmental shifts and crises could lead experts, officials, and health providers to miss crucial processes.

Women are key players in their families and communities, and their well-being is intertwined in myriad ways with the health of the natural environments surrounding them.

FROM RESEARCH TO POLICY My published research confirms the relevance of the causal links outlined here. Women in less-developed countries are, indeed, unduly harmed by ecological losses that exacerbate hunger, reduce the availability of public health resources, lower their autonomy, and contribute to the spread of HIV/AIDS and

PHOTO PROVIDED BY LAURA MCKINNEY, TAKEN AT ONE OF HER STUDY SITES IN UGANDA.

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The Ethics of Fieldwork: An Interview on Responsibility with C LAUDIA CHÁVEZ ARGÜELLES

A MURAL IN ACTEAL, MEXICO, COMMEMORATES THE DAY OF THE ACTEAL MASSACRE, DECEMBER 22, 1997.

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CLAUDIA CHÁVEZ ARGÜELLES, an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology, approaches her research and fieldwork with goals of collaboration and social transformation. This fall she spoke with us about her work as an activist anthropologist with Indigenous Mexican communities, her background as a lawyer, and broadening our perspectives of “justice” and “accountability.”

EMILY WILKERSON: You are a cultural anthropologist—what exactly does this mean?

CLAUDIA CHÁVEZ ARGÜELLES: As a cultural anthropologist, I study people’s everyday lives and their communities, including their behaviors, interactions, beliefs, and institutions. Every aspect of the human experience can be approached from a cultural anthropological perspective: law, politics, sexuality, health, religion, and so on. We look for patterns of meaning to develop explanations of social phenomena, with a particular emphasis on intersectional power dynamics. The subfield of cultural anthropology revolves around the understanding that there are many other ways of seeing the world aside from Western perspectives—we seek to make “the familiar strange, and the strange familiar,” as the famous epithet says.

EW: And you were a civil and family lawyer in Mexico before becoming an anthropologist. Can you tell me about this transition?

CCA: This transition took place in the context of the 2001 constitutional reform on Indigenous rights in Mexico. State officials presented this reform as the beginning of a new era of their relationships with Indigenous peoples. However, Indigenous peoples were not properly consulted in its creation, and the reform violated previous agreements between the state and the Zapatista National Liberation Army. This situation sparked my curiosity about the practical reach of this legal recognition and the ways it would affect Indigenous practices of justice. To approach these issues, I first needed to understand how Indigenous peoples conceive of their normative systems and how they navigate Indigenous, state, and international laws when seeking justice. Cultural anthropology equipped me with the theoretical and methodological tools that I needed to embark on this study and engaging in ethnographic fieldwork transformed my perspective on legal recognition, pushing me to rethink my identity as a mestiza and a lawyer.

EW: What are some of the most important values that drive your work?

CCA: A commitment toward decolonization, social justice, anti-racism, reflexivity, collaboration, compassion, and accountability. The Zapatistas have inspired many of these and other horizons that guide my work, like their firm belief that another world is possible; the notion of horizontality as a form of leadership, which is opposed to verticality and hierarchical understandings of power; and the practice of sentipensar (feel-think), which means to co-reason with the heart.

My training in activist/politically engaged/feminist anthropology has also shaped how I understand my accountability as a scholar.

Activist research entails co-creating transformative knowledge with a group of people you share political goals with, and collaborating in their struggle as a key part of the research process. This approach questions positivist notions of objectivity and disrupts the traditional power dynamics of research, fostering a more egalitarian distribution of its benefits among participants.

EW: You’ve been researching and writing about the transgenerational effects for Maya victims of state violence and their ideas of justice for multiple years now, particularly focusing on the 1997 Acteal Massacre in Chiapas, Mexico, against the Indigenous organization Las Abejas. What does your field research look like in Chiapas, and how do you enact your training as an activist anthropologist?

CCA: When the Mexican Supreme Court of Justice freed those who the survivors saw as the perpetrators of the Acteal Massacre, I realized that my training and connections as a lawyer and an anthropologist could be useful to the community of survivors. I took on the task of tracing the routes of multiple representations of the massacre in the judiciary, media, academia, and across advocacy networks in order to demonstrate their distortion of survivors’ testimonies and historicize the construction of the “legal truth” about the Acteal case. In this sense, my work aims to visibilize deadly erasures that have been made in the name of objectivity, positivism, and justice.

Before beginning to track these connections, I first had to become familiar with Indigenous survivors’ perspectives and discuss with Las Abejas and their lawyers the possibility of using research as evidence in their struggle for justice in international arenas. As part of the collaboration we negotiated, I participated in the preparation of a psychosocial expert testimony along with other specialists in topics of state and gendered violence.

The expert testimony was based on participant observation, workshops, and extended interviews with Las Abejas’ survivors, past and present authorities, and mestizo lawyers, activists, priests, scholars, and doctors. To avoid asking survivors to retell their experiences of the massacre, I conducted extensive archival research and systematized seventeen years of survivors’ testimonies of the event. We aimed to prove that the massacre’s effects have extended beyond the day of the slaughter to the present. Las Abejas submitted the expert testimony before the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) in 2016. Four years later, they are still demanding the IACHR to issue its Merits Report. Following their struggle for justice continues to be part of my research.

EW: What advice do you offer your students embarking on field research?

CCA: In my course “The Politics of Fieldwork,” I guide students to develop a collaborative, ethical, and decolonizing approach to ethnographic fieldwork, sensitive to racialized-gendered dynamics. I encourage students to be honest with themselves about their motivations for conducting research, and to keep asking themselves “why” several times until they feel they have fully understood what is really propelling them in this path. As a question of responsibility toward the people you are going to work with, I think it is critical to know yourself before embarking on fieldwork. It is not enough to have an extensive knowledge of the topic you are studying; you also need to explore its ties to your personal history. Fieldwork is a transformative experience for all of those involved, and you need to be very clear about what you are bringing to the table. This applies to our everyday interactions beyond fieldwork as we develop more awareness about the interconnectedness of our liberation.

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FA C U LT Y S P O T L I G H T S

Andrea Boyles Visiting Associate Professor Andrea Boyles examines race, gender, class oppression, and community disorder through the lens of sociology, criminology, and ethnography. Joining the Department of Sociology and the Africana Studies Program in the School of Liberal Arts this year, Boyles brings her scholarship on black resistance and resilience, civil unrest, crime, racial-spatial politics, and black citizen-police conflict to the forefront of her teaching. From her foundation as a sociologist, Boyles relies on patterns as context for emerging issues in historically marginalized communities, as well as on a global scale.

Adding her background in critical criminology and ethnography to her work, Boyles simultaneously works from hands-on experience and theoretical, Black cultural perspectives in a multifaceted approach to research and teaching. Her unwavering call for collective action can be felt in her classrooms, a space where her dedication to community engagement is upheld and she emphasizes the importance of every individual being a critical participant in the process of advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion. Boyles holds a B.A. in English and M.A. in sociology from Lincoln University of Missouri, and a Ph.D. in sociology from Kansas State University, with concentrations in gender and criminology. Her most recent book, You Can’t Stop the Revolution: Community Disorder and Social Ties in Post-Ferguson America, was published in 2019 by UC Press, and her work on race and inequality has been featured in Newsweek, The Atlantic, and on Minnesota and St. Louis Public Radio, among many others.

Cecilio M. Cooper Visiting Assistant Professor Cecilio M. Cooper joins the Department of English and the Africana Studies Program in the School of Liberal Arts this year with a focus on the history, theory, and criticism of Atlantic World culture. Cooper embarks on a cross-disciplinary approach to research, examining objects and materials across time periods through several overlapping fields such as science and technology studies, visual studies, political theology, trans studies, and African American studies. Their classes intersect these fields and explore how written language shapes the way we imagine and traverse space. Cooper also encourages their students to think critically about how the language and style we use to write about individuals, animals, and plants is racially inflected. It is with this same critical approach that Cooper often turns to maps in their research as sites for investigating cosmology, territory, and visual culture. Cooper holds a Ph.D. in African American Studies and a graduate certificate in critical theory from Northwestern University. Their interdisciplinary archival research has been supported by the John Carter Brown Library, Yale Center for British Art, American Antiquarian Society, Helmerich Center for American Research, and Duke University’s Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Cooper’s first book manuscript examines how blackness figures in cosmological constitutions of territory throughout Europe and the Americas.

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THE ESSENCE OF LIFE:

Musings on Epidemics from a Russian Historian

PORTRAIT OF THE RUSSIAN POET ALEXANDER PUSHKIN; PAINTING

BY PYOTR KONCHALOVSKY, 1932.

BY BRIAN HOROWITZ SIZELER FAMILY PROFESSOR OF JEWISH STUDIES

T

hroughout the last twenty years I have focused my research on Russian and Jewish writers. My investigations have led me into the belly of Russian culture—spending great lengths of time with the works of internationally reknowned novelists Dostoevsky and Tolstoy—and also into the Jewish world of synagogues and learned scholars. The people I have studied encountered and survived plagues, and during this moment of our pandemic I’ve found myself returning to them to gain insight and, perhaps, comfort.

This first person that has been weighing on my mind is Alexander Pushkin, known as the Russian Shakespeare, although in truth many in Russia know Shakespeare as the English Pushkin. During the cholera epidemic of 1833, Pushkin was unable to leave his country estate in the village of Boldino.

It was a terrific period of blossoming for him, known as the “second Boldino autumn,” and he wrote some of his best poetry in the country, including his magnificent work “The Bronze Horseman.” But it became clear that he had witnessed a great deal, and the deaths from the plague forced him to ruminate and examine his own mortality. In letters to his wife and friends, he began to imagine his own death, to feel that his time was limited.

When he returned to the capital, St. Petersburg, he faced pressure from various directions. Not everyone admired his unearthly talent. Tsar Nicholas envied him and unleashed the obsequious courtiers who pursued the poet. They trumpeted the cruel opinion that his muse had abandoned him; his talent was finished. They also spread the painful rumor that his wife had cuckolded him and with the tsar, no less. In 1833, Pushkin had boldly mocked cholera, but the spreading epidemic of disdain for his ideas and his creative self, turned out to be fatal. In January 1937, he died in a duel to protect his wife’s honor.

Another hero who has influenced me greatly is Mikhail Gershenzon. Plague emerges here again around a debate over revolution, which erupted in 1905 and then twice in 1917. My story takes place in 1910, after the failed 1905 uprising, and concerns two intellectuals born as Jews, although one converted to Russian Orthodox Christianity and the other was non-practicing. The two men wrote a series of letters in 1909 and 1910 in which they argued about Landmarks, a controversial book that condemned revolutionary violence.

Gershenzon, the editor of Landmarks, sharply criticized radicals. He argued that intellectuals in Russia had occupied themselves exclusively with overthrowing the tsar and look where it ended—with nothing achieved. It was time, he claimed, for people to look inward for their happiness and stop expecting change to occur from outside, via a transformation in the political situation. His interlocutor, Semyon Vengerov, disagreed with

Gershenzon. In his criticism, Vengerov repeated the refrain that the radicals made up Russia’s best people, its idealistic intelligentsia. An attack on the intelligentsia, Vengerov claimed, was morally despicable.

Vengerov invited Gershenzon to come from Moscow to St. Petersburg to “have it out, one-on-one.” Gershenzon asked for a rain check, noting the cholera epidemic that prevented travel. Vengerov mocked him, “Cholera isn’t interested [in infecting] those who defend Landmarks.” Gershenzon did not travel to meet Vengerov but waited until the epidemic was over before heading from Moscow to St. Petersburg. The two were reconciled later after the Bolshevik Revolution when their situations as outcasts and representatives of the old guard grew close. At that time Vengerov could not refuse to admit his mistake; the Russian revolutionaries had chosen the wrong goal, and he and Gershenzon were now paying a dear price.

To these anecdotes, I want to add another that deals with the present pandemic and concerns a young woman in Moscow. Her dilemma is this: she wanted to attend an annual “meeting” devoted to the memory of innocent citizens repressed by the Stalin regime, but was unsure whether the risks of catching Covid-19 either from a co-participant or the police—if she were arrested—was worth it. Most of life’s essential events, she told me, occur in private, but some are communal, public, and require a mass of people. She wanted to pay respects to her ancestors and to give voice against political repression but was unsure whether she would go. Her situation reminded me of the dilemmas of young people in the U.S. Can political protest be done safely during a pandemic?

My daughters recently went to a protest, but I worried about masks, social distancing, getting infected. Was my worry a form of inaction? I wanted to encourage my daughters to stay home. Some things cannot be done in private, but public activity is dangerous these days. What does that realization signify for the body politic? Ruminations of these people—Pushkin and his creativity, Gershenzon and Vengerov’s debates over politics, the Moskovite’s appreciation of public memory, and my daughters’ desire for a better world—are linked by the coronavirus. And yet again my mind wanders.

Plague doesn’t really change the essence of life. Pushkin hadn’t lost his talent, in fact it was ripening with age; intellectuals still debate about revolution; and protestors take to the streets when the political establishment cannot respond to their needs. Fathers too continue to worry about daughters and second guess whatever decision they make. This plague, like those before it, begins to appear merely as one of many considerations that perplex the mind. Set against the pandemic, my own life returns to a new normal in which Covid-19 is given its due (I have a mask at the ready), but in which responsibility to other values gradually dislodges the monopoly of fear.

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DATA SHADOWS ANNIELAURIE ERICKSON, an associate professor in the Newcomb Art Department, explores ways in which photographic experimentation can reveal things that often go unseen.

Each of Erickson’s projects maintains a specific research interest and visual outcome, but all of her work sets out to deconstruct complex systems through investigations into pressing social and environmental issues.

Erickson’s ongoing investigation into the physical apparatus of Big Data aims to illuminate the structures of surveillance capitalism. She has traveled extensively over the past six years to document massive data centers around the world for her Data Shadows series.

The photographs from this collection — such as Hardware Mirror 19, 2017, which is pictured here—are used as the base imagery for interactive eye-tracking installations and in the production of both traditional and sculptural photographic works.

Erickson’s interactive installations question the boundaries between our physical and virtual selves and examine the relationships between our bodies, our environment, our data, and the power structures that attempt to control them all.

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SETTING

the

STAGE

for

DIFFICULT

CONVERSATIONS 32 | TUL A NE SCHOO L O F LIBER A L A RTS M AG A ZIN E

E

“One

of the greatest strengths of our theatre department is that it is comprised of a group of people working cumulatively to problem solve and create,” said John (Ray) Proctor, an assistant professor in Tulane’s Department of Theatre and Dance. “We have students whose majors are all across the board, from biomedical engineering to physics and dance; people who want to study acting because they love acting, because they are passionate about it.

This makes our work together fascinating.”

Joining Tulane in 2016, Proctor has an active career writing, directing, producing, and acting in plays across the country. His work focuses on what happens during the creation of theatrical productions, centering on the semiotics of race on stage. “By default,” Proctor explains, “the American theatre cannon is comprised of a majority of white playwrights and white theatre history, and the fact is that audiences read the presence of race on stage. We’re moving to a place where we are no longer color-blind casting, but color-conscious casting; asking in what ways race and gender change a role.”

Assistant Professor Jenny Mercein, who also joined the Department of Theatre and Dance in 2016, shares Proctor’s dedication to activating the stage as a space for considering the specifics of racialized and gendered identities. Whether prioritizing texts by marginalized voices on their syllabi or ensuring discussions of race and gender can occur openly and respectfully in the classroom, Mercein and Proctor continue to question the historic norms of their discipline. Mercein was trained as an actor, and while she remains involved in theatre and television, like Proctor, she loves teaching and working on projects that inspire dialogue on important contemporary issues. Since 2018, Mercein has been involved in Roleplay, a live theatrical production and documentary project about sexual violence created collectively by Tulane students and the local theatre company Goat in the Road. Working together, the students and their mentors, including former Tulane adjunct professor Darci Fulcher and documentarian Katie Mathews, developed Roleplay in response to the startling results from the university’s 2017 Sexual Misconduct Climate Survey that revealed 41% of female students and 19% of male students experienced sexual harassment while at Tulane.

S

BY EMILY WILKERSON

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Proctor and Mercein continuously advocate for plays that engage with the world as they work with faculty across their department to plan a full season for the stage. “It is a wildly difficult process,” Proctor explains, “because we are serving our students and our students have different needs, from costume design, to acting, lighting, and more.”

Generally, a committee of about six individuals, ranging from faculty to undergraduate and graduate students, come together to review proposed productions from across the department. However, for the 20202021 season, the department decided to join The Jubilee—a yearlong, nationwide theatre festival featuring work generated by those who have historically been excluded—at the suggestion of fellow theatre professors Amy Chaffee and Monica Payne.

As with most aspects of life, the Covid-19 pandemic changed their plans. Rather than have a live production in Fall 2020, Mercein proposed hosting a festival of short plays online. “And in the tradition of improv theatre,” Mercein explained, “we said yes and let’s make those five plays on the theme of social justice.” REFRAMED 2020: A Festival of New Plays on Social Justice took place in October 2020 and allowed participants to respond to the events of 2020 through five new ten-minute plays. The fact that the plays were rehearsed and performed online also enabled the department to invite Sylvia Cervantes Blush, Timothy DuWhite, Zhailon Levingston, Lori Elizabeth Parquet, and Zury Ruiz—five professional BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) directors and playwrights in New York and Los Angeles—to work with the students.

These decisions bring Proctor back to a quote form playwright Lynn Nottage, whose play Intimate Apparel the department staged last year: “Representation is activism.” Proctor clarified, “If we look at the root of the protests that are happening around the world, I think we have a responsibility as a theatre department to represent the patchwork that is America.” To do so, Proctor and Mercein explain, means moving beyond adding one voice. It means examining the environment on stage, in the classroom, and in the world by engaging individuals who are represented on stage and investigating what it means to be the ‘other’ in these spaces. To achieve this, the faculty prioritize creating spaces that are safe for each and every person. Proctor explains, “An actor has to feel safe being vulnerable while acting and rehearsing, safe enough to explore brave choices. Sometimes it is both difficult and complicated being the only person of color in a cast, company, or department, and those entities need to become aware of and sensitive to the fact that our individual perspectives inform our interactions and experiences in creative processes.”

Engaging in these discussions about race, gender, and power in the classroom, Mercein and Proctor believe they will make an important impact at Tulane and beyond, particularly by incorporating the perspectives of a more diverse audience in New Orleans and around the world. And they see the REFRAMED productions as an important aspect of taking a leap into these difficult discussions. “Just because talking about race and gender is challenging doesn’t mean we can avoid these conversations,” said Proctor. “I think we in theatre— with all of our different backgrounds—get to play, explore, and create experiences that help us get through the most complicated times. And out of these experiences, we develop a vocabulary to have difficult and important conversations.”

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STUDENTS AND FACULTY, GUEST WRITERS AND DIRECTORS, AND MEMBERS OF A LOCAL THEATRE COMMUNITY ALL COLLABORATED VIRTUALLY FOR THE FALL 2020 SEMESTER TO CREATE REFRAMED 2020, AN ONLINE FESTIVAL OF SHORT PLAYS.

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THE POLITICS OF

SEXUAL HARASSMENT POLICY REFORM 36 | TUL A NE SCHO O L O F LIBER A L A RTS M AG A ZIN E

BY CARLY SHAFFER (SLA ’22) AND ANNA MITCHELL MAHONEY DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH, NEWCOMB INSTITUTE AND PROFESSOR OF WOMEN’S POLITICAL LEADERSHIP

A

ccording to the Center for American Women and Politics (CAWP), more women are running for elected office than ever before. Increases in Congressional and state legislative candidacies may mean more women than ever serving in elected office, too. What effect will these women’s presence bring about? Will it change politics as usual? Women in office have had to deal with many challenges including having their issues left off the agenda, exclusion from powerful committees, and hostile work environments. Although sexual harassment, ranging from crude comments to assault, has been a pervasive force within state legislatures since their inception, written policies against it are often inadequate and rarely enforced. Will more women in office mean more and better sexual harassment policies?

Sexual harassment—quid pro quo or a hostile environment—consistently makes victims feel unsafe, unwelcome, and unimportant in the workplace. It tends to run particularly rampant in male-dominated institutions, such as state legislatures, where women are underrepresented numerically and marginalized by political norms. To address this social problem, organizations have created systems to investigate accusations and hold their members accountable. Unfortunately, decades after the first responses were put in place, sexual harassment still occurs, and experts warn that some processes are more effective than others in addressing the issue.

Today, most chambers have some sort of document prohibiting such behavior, but a majority of states are revising them in the wake of the Me Too movement, which inspires survivors from all walks of life to share their stories of sexual harassment and assault and take legal action against those who victimized them. The Me Too movement has rocked state legislatures across the country, with 101 legislators (and counting) facing accusations in 30 states in just the past three years.

In 2017, the National Conference for State Legislatures (NCSL) met the moment, publishing ten essential criteria for robust anti-harassment policies. These range from clear definitions and examples of harassment to the possibility of outside investigation and an appeals procedure. We began investigating state legislatures’ response to sexual harassment in March 2019 by obtaining as many state legislatures’ policies as possible to see how well they adhered to the NCSL guidelines. Some legislatures did not make their

policies available to the public, indicating a concerning lack of transparency.

However, we were able to collect 50 policies covering 64 chambers in 40 states, which we then analyzed and scored for best practices. Of the 50 policies, the average score was 7.33 out of 10. We determined that policies were most likely to include a confidentiality guarantee (found in 96% of the 50 policies), diversity of contacts to report harassment to (96%), and a retaliation ban (100%). An appeals process, found in only 24% of the 50 policies, was least likely to be included.

Clearly, change must transpire, but state legislatures face a number of challenges in mitigating sexual harassment. For example, studies indicate that training sessions may backfire by making victims resentful and providing employers legal compliance without real changes in culture. Institutions like state legislatures, often characterized as “old boys’ clubs,” are sometimes more concerned with preserving the status quo rather than making room for people of all genders to thrive. Elected officials deserve protection against harassment, but so do staffers, interns, pages, and lobbyists—all of whose jobs revolve around their abilities to serve and please others. State legislatures’ existing mechanisms to police themselves through ethics committees have not resulted in robust enforcement. Despite these challenges, state legislatures, as lawmaking bodies and models for private employers, must be leaders in establishing safe worker protections. By failing to respond to victims’ experiences, state legislatures discourage passionate, qualified people—particularly women—from running for office. With women’s representation in state legislatures hovering at 29%, these institutions must communicate that they are welcoming places to work.

All institutions, from legislatures to higher education, must deal with how power and identity shape workplace culture. Whether trying to produce the best public policy for constituents or world class research and teaching, workplaces must create safe, welcoming environments where people can thrive and do their best work. Regular monitoring and revising of workplace policy to be in line with best practices plays an important part in preventing sexual harassment. How state legislatures deal with sexual harassment matters for who considers running for office and what they choose to work on once they win a seat at the table.

SEXUAL HARASSMENT RESOURCES, POLICIES, AND PREVENTION In 2017, Tulane University was one of the first universities to conduct a campus-wide climate survey on sexual assault, sexual harassment, and sexual misconduct. In response to the findings in that report, the university created a committee to focus on faculty harassment out of the existing Sexual Violence Prevention and Education Committee and mandated sexual harassment training for all faculty and staff.

All In: Tulane’s Commitment to Stop Sexual Violence affirms the right of all students to access an education free of sexual violence and supports the belief that every member of the Tulane community has a part to play in a safer campus. The All In website offers resources for students, staff, faculty, and individuals in the community who have experienced sexual misconduct and/or are interested in learning how to support efforts to reduce and respond to sexual violence, including: TULANE’S OFFICE OF INSTITUTIONAL EQUITY 504-862-8083

TULANE’S TITLE IX OFFICE 504-865-5615

CAPS FOR COUNSELING SERVICES 504-314-2277

SAPHE: SEXUAL AGGRESSION PEER HOTLINE & EDUCATION 504-654-9543

RAINN SEXUAL ASSAULT HOTLINE 1-800-656HOPE (4673)

TREVOR PROJECT LGBTQ LIFELINE 1-866-488-7386

Visit allin.tulane.edu for more information on Tulane’s sexual harassment policies and additional resources.

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DIGGING THE PAST on the DESERT COAST OF PERU

BY JOHN VERANO, PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY

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I am not about to give up on Peru, however, and am working now on the ormally when people I meet ask what I do for a living I say that logistics of returning to fieldwork there in the summer of 2021.

I’m an archaeologist, a profession with which most everyone is Colleagues and friends sometimes ask me “Why only work in Peru? familiar. But while this is true, my interests are not in the material Why not in Mexico or other countries?” While I have many colleagues in culture of the past—stone tools, ceramics, architecture—but in the study Mexico and South America and am happy to collaborate with them on of the skeletal remains of ancient people. My academic training is in huconferences and writing projects, my heart remains in Peru. It is a beautiful man osteology, with specializations in paleopathology (the study of ancient country with impressive biological diversity and exceptionally rich archaedisease), bioarchaeology (the application of biological anthropology to arological sites. And not just Machu Picchu, where I have studied the skelechaeological research questions), and forensic anthropology (the recovery tal remains recovered by Hiram Bingham; but at many important but less and examination of human remains in modern medicolegal contexts). widely known ceremonial centers on the north coast, where I have spent Since coming to Tulane in 1994, I have taught courses in human most of my professional career. Although I pass through several large cities osteology, paleopathology, forensic anthropology, mummy studies, and on my way to the north coast each year, I the bioarchaeology of human sacrifice, a tend to spend my time in small towns that new research interest of mine these days. have hosted me during my archaeological I am pleased to see a real interest in these and museum projects. These field projects courses among undergraduate and graduemploy local university students and field ate students here at Tulane. Anthropology workers who have come to know us as is a diverse and dynamic field, and is relresponsible citizens and professionals and evant to exploring issues of race, gender, have developed an appreciation of what we diversity, and inclusion. Both the past hisdo by working alongside us day after day tory and present dynamics of human popin the field. I never forget that I am a guest ulations are topics that anthropologists are in their country, and that I am fortunate to in a unique position to explore given their have the opportunity to do research there. long tradition of studying cultural diversiAs a way of showing my appreciation ty worldwide. In my own case, although I for the welcoming hand Peru has offered devote most of my research to prehistoric me, I have been a Fulbright Lecturer there societies, my forensic work and teaching JOHN VERANO WITH EXCAVATION TEAM twice now, and, more recently, a visiting involves modern issues of medicolegal and MEMBERS AT THE SITE OF EL BRUJO, professor for a graduate program in forenCHICAMA RIVER VALLEY, PERU IN THE SUMMER OF 2005. human rights investigations. Three of my sic anthropology. These programs involved Ph.D. students have gone on to careers in teaching at several universities and mentoforensic anthropology and are currently ring undergraduate and graduate students, as well as collaborating with working on the identification of missing persons in Mexico and invesprofessional colleagues through lectures and scientific conferences. I’m tigations of human rights violations for the International Committee of frequently asked to give talks at museums and universities throughout the the Red Cross. country, and public lectures and interviews for documentaries have become Since childhood I have had a strong interest in bones and fossils. important ways to share my research, to demonstrate my professional comIn my undergraduate and graduate student years I participated in armitment to Peru, and to highlight the richness of Peru’s prehistoric past. chaeological excavations in Virginia, California, Illinois, Italy, and Costa As a result, I have made many lasting friendships and professional contacts.

Rica. Then, in 1983, I was introduced to Peru. One of my archaeology Today archaeologists working in all parts of the world are consultprofessors at UCLA was developing a five-year excavation project at a ing with local communities and descendant groups who have a stake in large ceremonial center on the north coast of Peru and was looking for preserving and presenting their past, including myself. We also adhere to a biological anthropologist. That was more than 35 years ago, and I’ve national laws regarding cultural patrimony and its conservation for current been returning to Peru every year since. I would have been in Peru this and future generations. I love the work I’m doing in Peru—a place that for past summer with two graduate students if it were not for the coronavirus many years I have considered my second home. And I am pleased to know pandemic, which has made fieldwork impossible for now. Like many of my I can give something back, not only to my Peruvian colleagues and students colleagues I had to make other plans for the summer, from organizing field but also to the general public. and lab notes to working on research grants and articles for publication.

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School of Liberal ArtsSUMMER PROGRAMS 2021 From the halls of the U.S. Congress to the virtual reality studios of Los Angeles, the frontlines of international conflict, and the minds of medical experts, Tulane's School of Liberal Arts Summer Programs offer unparalleled experiences that will set you apart from the crowd. Whether in person or online, develop a new specialization and earn credits toward your degree this summer!

Summer programs in 2021 include:

F Science, Medicine, Technology & Society F Summer Minor in U.S. Public Policy F Creative Industries F Environmental Studies Minor

F Stacy Mandel Palagye & Keith Palagye Program for Middle East Peace Registration opens in Spring 2021.

For more information, visit summerprograms.tulane.edu.

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TRAVIS HENRY

TULANE RESPONDED TO COVID-19 IN THE ONLY WAY IT KNOWS HOW—BY ADDRESSING THE CHALLENGE HEAD-ON. THE UNIVERSITY ERECTED 18 TEMPORARY STRUCTURES TO ALLOW SOCIALLY-DISTANCED, IN-PERSON CLASSES TO CONTINUE.

TULANE UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF LIBERAL ARTS 102 NEWCOMB HALL NEW ORLEANS, LA 70118

CHERYL GERBER

STUDENTS ENCOURAGE ONE ANOTHER ON MCALISTER WAY TO BE COVID-19 SAFE BY MASKING UP AND LOOKING GOOD.