"Mobility"
February 29, 2012
Inaugural Tulane University Graduate Student Conference on "The Global Gulf"
This inderdisciplinary event features graduate students whose work focuses on people, goods, and ideas in motion. Unlike most academic gatherings, this conference brings together emerging scholars from a range of disciplines to offer fresh perspectives on the connections between the Gulf South, the Caribbean, Europe, and Africa.
Twelve graduate students from Anthropology, History, French, Spanish, and Science & Technology Studies departments are scheduled to participate. These students attend Cornell, Stanford, SUNY-Buffalo, The University of North Texas, The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, Tulane, and The Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales in Paris.
Papers address subjects such as the emigration of free people of color from New Orleans to the Atlantic world, the colonial encounters between France and Spain in Florida, the significance of baseball to Nicaraguan national identity, and the role of secondary British ports in the trans-Atlantic slave trade.
Tulane graduate students from the Anthropology, French, History and Latin American Studies departments conceived of and organized the conference, which consists of four panels arranged by topic (see schedule below). Each panel features two to three graduate student presenters followed by commentary from a senior scholar in that field.
The conference's sponsors include Tulane's New Orleans Center for the Gulf South, Tulane History Department, Tulane Graduate Studies Student Association, and Tulane Graduate and Professional Student Association.
The conference will culminate in a special keynote address by Ira Berlin, Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland. Berlin is the award-winning author of Many Thousand Gone: The First Two Centuries of Slavery in Mainland North America and The Making of African America: The Four Great Migrations.
The Tulane community and the general public are invited to attend any of the four scholarly panels and/or Dr. Berlin's speech.
For more information
Contact Rien Fertel at 504-415-9576
Conference Coordinating Committee
Scarlett Andrews, Latin American Studies
Rien Fertel, History
Daniella Santoro, Anthropology
Liz Skilton, History
Walter Stern, History
Conference Schedule
All panels take place in the Bechler Room (#202) at the Lavin-Bernick Center.
8:30-9:45 a.m. "Race, Nationality, and Mobility in Transnational Contexts"
- William R. Pritchard, Department of History, SUNY-Buffalo
"'Looking after the interests of Liberia': Black Ministers and Social Mobility in Post-Emancipation New Orleans" - Amanda B. Magdalena, Department of History, SUNY-Buffalo
"Residuos de Cultura: Baseball as a Venue of National Identity Formation and Expression in Nicaragua, 1889-1968" - Christopher Wilkins, Department of History, Stanford University
"The Captain's Table: Frederick Douglass, Social Politics in American Diplomacy, and U.S. Territorial Expansion in the Reconstruction Era" - Commentator: Steve Striffler, Professor of Anthropology and Doris Zemurray Stone Chair in Latin American Studies, University of New Orleans
10:00-11:15 a.m. "Bodies in Motion"
- Ana Cleaver, Department of History and Civilisations, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales
"A Wave in the Global Gulf: The Emigration of Free People of Color from New Orleans to the Atlantic World, 1818-1831" - Valerie P. Jiménez, Department of History, Northwestern University
"Diaspora in the Borderlands: Black Creoles and Mexican Émigrés in Nineteenth Century New Orleans and Veracruz" - Matthew Olson, Department of Anthropology, Tulane University
"The 'Unthinkable' Comes to Port: St. Domingue Refugees and Disavowal of the Haitian Revolution in New Orleans, 1809-1811" - Commentator: Thomas Adams, American Council of Learned Societies New Faculty Fellow, Department of History, Tulane University
1:00-2:15 p.m. "Colonial Encounters"
- Ana Cleaver, Department of History and Civilisations, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales
"A Wave in the Global Gulf: The Emigration of Free People of Color from New Orleans to the Atlantic World, 1818-1831" - Valerie P. Jiménez, Department of History, Northwestern University
"Diaspora in the Borderlands: Black Creoles and Mexican Émigrés in Nineteenth Century New Orleans and Veracruz" - Matthew Olson, Department of Anthropology, Tulane University
"The 'Unthinkable' Comes to Port: St. Domingue Refugees and Disavowal of the Haitian Revolution in New Orleans, 1809-1811" - Commentator: Thomas Adams, American Council of Learned Societies New Faculty Fellow, Department of History, Tulane University
2:30-3:45 p.m. "Mobility and Immobility in New Orleans"
- Darla Thompson, Science and Technology Studies, Cornell University
"Harnessing Labor: Iron Collars, Slaves, and the Political Economy of Punishment" - Nicholas Foreman, Department of History, University of North Texas
"No 'Black Neighborhood': the Retained Mobility of Free People of Color in New Orleans's Vieux Carré, 1804-1820" - Shane Lief, Department of Linguistics, Tulane University
"The Sonic Home: The Movement and Music of Congo Square" - Commentator: Marc Perry, Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology, Tulane University
6:00 p.m.Keynote Address/Sylvia R. Frey Lecture
- Ira Berlin, Distinguished University Professor, Department of History, University of Maryland
"Atlantic Creoles in the Lower Mississippi Valley: Slavery's Long Evolution" - Freeman Auditorium, Woldenberg Art Center
Reception to follow