Denise Frazier

Dr. Denise Frazier is the assistant director of the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South at Tulane University, where she works with ED Rebecca Snedeker to support cutting edge research and artworks, and designs public-facing programming that is grounded in our surroundings and relates the local to the global. She coordinates the logistics of NOCGS’s place-based educational experiences and manages the center’s publicity and communications.

Dr. Frazier’s scholarship and work as a performer and musician inform her programming and keen eye toward identifying scholars and artists to participate in the center’s granting and fellowship initiatives. Her participation in multiple boards throughout New Orleans— Music and Culture Coalition of New Orleans, Antenna Gallery, Make Music NOLA, the NOUS Foundation, and No Dream Deferred — have situated Dr. Frazier in a wide network of prominent culture bearers with whom she calls on to collaborate in her role at NOCGS.

Dr. Frazier received her PhD (2009) in the Latin American Studies Department at Tulane University, studying hip hop performance and culture as social resistance in 21st century Cuba and Brazil. She is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese. In addition to her scholarship, Dr. Frazier is the manager, co-founder and violinist/vocalist/percussionist of Les Cenelles, a technological-acoustic ensemble that performs African Diasporic music and chronicles ecological realities. Dr. Frazier is a company member of Goat in the Road Productions, a theater company committed to telling lesser known stories surrounding sexuality, politics, liberation, and colonialism. Her essay on Afro Creole folk music recently appeared in Southern Cultures.