The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) has awarded the School of Liberal Arts’ New Orleans Center for the Gulf South (NOCGS) and the Department of Jewish Studies’ Michael R. Cohen grants for collaborative programs in 2019 in the amounts of $160,371 and $143,700, respectively.
NOCGS will present the second iteration of the workshop “New Orleans: Music, Culture, and Civil Rights,” a Landmarks of American History and Culture Workshops for School Teachers program, next summer with continued support from the NEH.
Last year, NOCGS was selected as one of only fifteen Landmark grant recipients across the country. These NEH programs are aimed at enhancing humanities education in kindergarten through twelfth-grade classrooms, and as Clark Executive Director of the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South Rebecca Snedeker remarked, “many people want to learn about civil rights and to learn from the city of New Orleans, and we expect our application numbers to continue to grow.”
Offered through the NOCGS Music Rising at Tulane program, next summer’s workshops will welcome 72 educators over two weeks from local and national schools, and will include lectures, site visits to important cultural institutions such as Preservation Hall and St. Augustine Catholic Church, and inquiry-based learning, all designed to complement each other. For the workshop’s culminating session, participants will visit the New Orleans Jazz Museum for a final panel comprised of contemporary New Orleans musicians and scholars addressing the question, “How does New Orleans support its musical traditions and foster new development today?”
The School of Liberal Arts is also proud to announce that Michael R. Cohen, Professor and Chair of the Department of Jewish Studies, has received an NEH grant for the collaborative seminar “Privilege and Prejudice: Jewish History in the American South,” with colleagues Shari Rabin and Dale Rosengarten of the College of Charleston. The two-week seminar will take place in Charleston next year, and the grant has been awarded through the NEH Summer Seminars and Institutes for College and University Teachers program. Read more about the award and seminar here.
During the “New Orleans: Music, Culture, and Civil Rights" workshops, educators from around the country visit sites such as Preservation Hall to learn about the city's history. In this historical photo from the Hogan Jazz Archive Photography Collection, Preservation Hall Jazz Band members, Alcide "Slow Drag" Pavageau, bass; Jim Robinson, trombone; Emanuel Sayles, banjo; Willie J. Humphrey, clarinet; Josiah "Cie" Frazier, drums; Percy Humphrey, trumpet; and Sweet Emma Barrett, piano, pose outside of Preservation Hall, located at 726 St. Peter Street, New Orleans, Louisiana.
As part of the “Privilege and Prejudice: Jewish History in the American South” seminars, participants will learn about religious histories, Jewish economic activities, and the role of food in the Southern Jewish experience, among many other topics. Baker’s Meat Market, with a kosher department at the back, pictured here, served traditional Jewish food with a Southern flair. It was located at 556 King Street, Charleston, South Carolina. Photograph ca. 1950. Courtesy of Special Collections, College of Charleston Libraries.
To learn more about the “New Orleans: Music, Culture and Civil Rights” workshops next summer, read about last year’s workshop in the School of Liberal Arts’ most recent issue of Reflections.