Beyond Words

Originally published in the 2024 issue of the School of Liberal Arts Magazine

The Transformative Impact 
of Language Learning

Roxanne Dávila, Associate Dean for Language Initiatives, Interim Associate Dean of Curriculum, Senior Professor of Practice of Spanish & Portuguese

In our increasingly interconnected world, the ability to communicate across cultural and linguistic boundaries is more crucial than ever. The liberal arts are at the center of this global dialogue, fostering critical thinking and creativity while emphasizing the profound significance of languages. In today’s world, learning to communicate in multiple languages extends far beyond mastering grammar and vocabulary; it is also about understanding different cultural perspectives and historical contexts. By communicating across different languages, we can build community, make connections, and draw comparisons; all, while at the same time fostering global connectivity and cultural empathy.

The following professors’ insights showcase why studying languages and cultures is essential to the liberal arts framework. From enhancing cognitive skills to creating career opportunities and bridging cultural divides, our emphasis on languages equips students to become informed global citizens.

French

Fayçal Falaky, Chair of French & Italian Department, Director of Middle East & North African Studies Program, Associate Professor of French & Italian

Tulane’s Department of French & Italian is pioneering an educational transformation with its “French Across the Curriculum” initiative. This program, branded by the slogan “make your other major go global,” integrates French language proficiency into a variety of academic disciplines, transcending traditional boundaries and infusing new vigor into humanities education. As the chair of the department, I am proud to lead this effort, which not only elevates the role of French in our liberal arts curriculum but also prepares our students for the diverse challenges of a globalized professional environment.

Thanks to the generous support from a grant from the French Embassy in the United States and the Albertine Foundation, we are poised to expand our offerings significantly. The funding will enable us to develop additional interdisciplinary courses that continue to blend French with other fields such as psychology, law, and environmental studies. We will also be able to subsidize the costs of the Diplôme de Français Professionnel (DFP) exams. The Diplômes are professional French-language certifications that assess the ability to use French in real-world business and professional situations, providing students with credentials that are recognized globally.

Another exciting development enabled by this grant is the creation of a K-12 outreach program. This initiative will establish connections with local French immersion schools to foster early language acquisition and promote continuous language learning through to the university level.

These initiatives represent just the beginning of what we hope will be a growing trend across American universities to appreciate and use the French language as a tool for professional and personal development. By integrating French language study with substantive academic inquiry across disciplines, we will set a transformative example for the future of language education in the United States.

Haitian Creole

Laura Rosanne Adderley, Associate Professor of History

It is not uncommon at Haiti-related artistic or cultural events in Louisiana to have someone mention the visual similarities between New Orleans and the city of Jacmel in southeastern Haiti. Often, this mention relates to something visually obvious such as shared characteristics in 18th- or 19th-century architecture. Or some people may have experienced the pre-Lenten carnival season in both locales.

When the Patois Human Rights Film Festival of New Orleans hosted a screening of Kanaval: A History of Haiti in Six Chapters, this documentary, set in Jacmel, drew an audience of over 200. Members of that diverse audience could readily appreciate the African and French influences in the Haitian Creole title of the film — Kanaval — and why the organizers use the linguistic term “patois” to name a film festival designed to promote multicultural understanding.

Most of the connections between Louisiana and Haiti have roots in a multi-century history of shared European colonialism and widespread African enslavement. What captive Africans produced creatively and politically in fighting colonialism and slavery has given us much of what is valued as core cultural heritage in both places in the 21st century. It should surprise no one that in our local public history environment we find Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes, a legendary zydeco musician, ethnographer, writer, and one of the most visible advocates for the strengthening and revival of kouri-vini — Louisiana’s own French- and African-derived Creole language.

From the era of colonialism and slavery, the history of the Gulf South has been intertwined as much with the Caribbean as with North America. Between 1791 and 1804 when enslaved people in the French colony of Saint Domingue overthrew that slave society to create the free Black Republic of Haiti, displaced populations both free and enslaved came to south Louisiana, increasing the local populations by significant percentages in New Orleans and beyond. In 1811 enslaved people in south Louisiana, many with knowledge of the success of the Haitian Revolution, led the largest antislavery uprising in what is now the United States.

Given the deep connections between Louisiana and Haiti, our Haitian Creole language courses allow students to understand the multifaceted relationships between this local region and the Caribbean. Through the Haitian Creole language program, students can gain a nuanced appreciation for the historical exchanges that have shaped New Orleans and the broader Gulf South region.

Engagement with these connections may be found in multiple public culture spaces in greater New Orleans. While other U.S. cities have larger Haitian American populations and different avenues for engaging many contemporary Haitian issues, New Orleans offers students a uniquely deep opportunity for rooting their Haitian, Caribbean, and French studies in historical and global contexts.

Native American & Indigenous Languages

Judith Maxwell, Professor of Anthropology & Director of Native American & Indigenous Studies Program

Learning any new language opens our minds to new ways of thinking, of categorizing the world, of interacting with other beings around us. The languages of the Americas are rich in the lore of this hemisphere and its cultures. All of the Indigenous languages of the Americas are in danger of extinction. Hundreds are no longer spoken. Fluent speakers of many languages can be counted on the fingers of one hand, while some languages in the United States still have hundreds of native speakers. Languages of Central and South America may have hundreds of thousands of speakers, but all are in danger of being replaced by the language of their European colonizers. American linguist Michael Krauss (1998) estimated that by the end of this century over half of the surviving Indigenous American languages will have disappeared. With these languages go worldviews and epistemologies.

In the School of Liberal Arts, we teach a variety of Indigenous languages, among them Nahuatl, Yucatec Maya, Kaqchikel, K’iche’, Ch’orti’, and Tunica. Our earliest documentation of the Tunica language comes from the late 1800s. This documentation consists of the field notes and publications of three linguists: Albert Gatschet, a Swiss ethnolinguist who visited Louisiana in the 1890s; John Swanton, who in the 1910s worked with one of the speakers whom Gatschet had interviewed; and Mary Haas, who worked with the last known native speaker in the 1930s. This speaker, Sesostrie Youchigant, died in 1948. The language died with him. Nonetheless, Donna Pierite, wife of tribal member Michael Pierite, took it upon herself to revive the language. She acquired copies of all the publications on the language and most of the field notes. In 2010, a cousin, Brenda Lintinger, sought help from me and Tulane students to aid in the effort. Since then, Tulane students and alumni have worked with members of the Tunica-Biloxi Tribe of Louisiana to bring back the language as a medium of communication and creativity.

An intensive summer class, taught during the first two weeks of June, gives Tulane students enough fluency in the language to help teach children at a week-long summer camp on the reservation. After this immersive experience, students can continue to collaborate with the tribe, preparing teaching resources and games, transcribing archival records, recording songs, and participating in cultural activities such as basketry summits, quilting circles, potting, herbalism, and stickball.

For heritage speakers, using their native language brings them closer to their cultural heritage, bolsters self-esteem, and provides a vehicle for community cohesion. During one winter immersion, a young groundskeeper who could only join the classes during his work breaks looked at me during a tutorial and, with tears in his eyes, said, “You are teaching me my language.” Tulane students are playing an important role in helping to restore access to this language and identity.

— The BIGGEST — FREE PARTY ON EARTH — THE ECONOMICS OF MARDI GRAS —

Originally published in the 2024 issue of the School of Liberal Arts Magazine

When asked about the start of the Mardi Gras season, most people might say it begins 10 days before Fat Tuesday or with the early parades like Krewe du Vieux or Chewbacchus. Some might pinpoint January 6, Twelfth Night, as the day the city begins to transform itself into the official colors of purple, green, and gold. However, those deeply rooted in Mardi Gras traditions understand that while public displays of Carnival don’t happen until early January, the preparations for the next season start almost immediately after Fat Tuesday has passed. Krewes begin to develop themes, royalty is chosen, and artisans begin sketching out designs.

In early March 2022, just days after Fat Tuesday, I received a call from Ben Dupuy, a representative of the Mayor’s Mardi Gras Advisory Council. He proposed a meeting to discuss a potential collaboration. They, along with New Orleans & Company, wanted me to conduct an Economic Impact Analysis for the 2023 Mardi Gras season, with a comprehensive report due by January 6, 2024.

There are 4 main phases of a project such as this

Planning: forming the questions being asked; figuring out what data is needed and where that data can be found

1. What economic activities in New Orleans are directly linked to Mardi Gras, and should we, for example, include tourists who visit during, but not because of, Mardi Gras in our analysis?
2. How do these direct effects multiply into indirect effects, such as the economic impact of money earned by a float builder?
3. Does this economic activity displace other potential activities, such as a household throwing a Mardi Gras party instead of another type of party?
4. What local and state tax revenues are generated from these activities?

Once the questions were clearly defined, the next step was to formulate a data collection plan, mindful of the potential for double counting. For instance, if a krewe spends money at a local restaurant, this economic activity must be included in the report. However, including both the krewe’s expenditure and the restaurant’s Mardi Gras-related revenue would overstate the economic impact. Additionally, some data would be unavailable, requiring the use of proxies. For example, without extensive surveys, it was challenging to determine household spending on Mardi Gras parties along the parade route. Fortunately, to attempt to solve this particular problem, I obtained revenue figures from local grocers, which allowed me to make informed predictions and extrapolate the necessary data.

The New
Green WaveAdvocating For Reproductive Justice

Originally published in the 2024 issue of the School of Liberal Arts Magazine

L-R KARISSA HAUGEBERG, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR & EVA-LOU JOFFRION EDWARDS NEWCOMB PROFESSOR IN HISTORY, KATE BALDWIN, PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH & COMMUNICATION, AND CLARE DANIEL AT the International Movements for Reproductive Health and Justice Symposium.

What might it look like to bring together scholars from around the world with local activists, students, and people who work in reproductive health and reproductive justice? When SLA faculty Kate Baldwin, professor of English and Communication, and Karissa Haugeberg, associate professor and Eva-Lou Joffrion Edwards Newcomb professorship in History, with Senior Professor of Practice and Director of Research at Newcomb Institute Clare Daniel, were awarded a $225 thousand grant from the Mellon Foundation to host a prestigious Sawyer Seminar on reproductive justice in the Gulf South, they began an in-depth exploration into this question. The seminar, The New Green Wave: Reproductive Justice in the Gulf South and Beyond, kicked off in October 2024. Below, Baldwin and Haugeberg share a preview of what else we might expect in the coming two years.

When we tell people about the grant, one response we get frequently is “What is reproductive justice?” This is usually a good place to start because, for the purposes of our Sawyer Seminar, we follow SisterSong’s definition of reproductive justice as “the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities. “This helps people understand, for example, the critical links between racial justice, environmental justice, and reproductive health and rights. Our seminars will include scholars and partners from many disciplines and backgrounds. One of the best things about this grant is our opportunity to collaborate with community partners while also connecting with international scholars working on reproductive justice in other national contexts. Our kickoff began with a symposium in October — International Movements for Reproductive Health and Justice — featuring scholars visiting us from nations including Ireland and Mexico.

In conceiving this seminar series and related activities, it has been very important to us to think outside the box. For example, whenever possible, we plan to rethink the traditional academic conference format, in which scholars typically read and respond to written papers. For the October conference, each panel paired visiting scholars with a local community partner. Our conference partners included some of the most dynamic voices in reproductive justice and health in Louisiana. Petrice Sams-Abiodun, vice president of Strategic Partnerships at Planned Parenthood of the Gulf South; Tyler Barbarin, director of Grants and Development at the Louisiana Abortion Fund; Alex Moody, staff attorney for Lift Louisiana, an organization that advocates for women’s reproductive health, rights, and justice in Louisiana; Martha Silva, professor of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Tulane University; and Latona Giwa, executive director of the Midwest Access Project, a national nonprofit that seeks to improve the lives of marginalized women and their families. A moderator introduced each guest, asked the community partner to describe their organization’s relevant work, and then asked the scholar for an example from their research to demonstrate the past or present state of reproductive justice or health, from their perspective. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, we reserved time for the panel of scholars, activists, and practitioners to engage in conversation about the ways their research interests and work experiences intersected. These panels were organized around themes that include history, Latin America and the borderlands, parenting, and injustice.

One of the first things we did after brainstorming this format was host a meeting with potential community partners — inviting them to the literal and figurative table to provide feedback on our proposal. We discussed the best practices for using humanities and the arts to have an impact within our communities without it being a one-way street, to open a dialogue in which our invited scholars are learning from our community members, and vice versa. Our community partners advised us how to best shape our seminars. For example, one of our community partners advised that if we want to engage a range of communities, we should be creative in where we host our events, and take into account access to transportation, parking, and childcare. Another community partner suggested that we might encourage audience participation with table readings of a play, story workshops, or artist demonstrations. Could we include a skill-building workshop within each seminar? For example, have a follow-up workshop on how to do grassroots messaging, or how to tell stories effectively for advocacy, how to use media and/or disseminate research for public engagement? We also talked at length about ethical research within communities.

Finally, we have been thinking about the impact, the longer-term piece that will be archived so that the seminars can be accessed and stored for posterity and future engagement. Highlighting dialogue between scholars and activists and underscoring what they can learn from each other are distinguishing features of our seminar. To help achieve some of these goals we’ve hired a graduate student assistant, Darcy Roake, who is completing a PhD in History, and a postdoctoral fellow, Sarah Hedgecock. In addition to helping us plan the upcoming seminars, they have created a website and are working on a podcast series so that people can continue to engage with the materials from the seminars and build upon the exciting work done throughout this project.

The Many Methodologies of Research

Katharine Jack, Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Programs & Professor of Anthropology

Originally published in the 2024 issue of the School of Liberal Arts Magazine

When I was a child, National Geographic magazine was a coffee table staple in my home. I was always so excited when a new issue would arrive in the mail. I would immediately plunk myself down on the living room floor and start leafing through the pages, fascinated by the descriptions of the research and the incredible photographs of people, places, and animals. I have little doubt that this early and sustained exposure to research had an enormous impact on my own trajectory that led me to become a biological anthropologist studying wild primates. Today’s social media, web pages, and on-demand streaming enable us to easily share our research with even wider audiences.

What is missing from these sources, however, is the behind-the-scenes accounts of how researchers move from an idea to the output we are viewing: the films, the performances, the manuscripts, the books. Below, several of our amazing faculty share snippets of their own research journeys. They describe the earliest stages of research, which can begin with an idea, a question, or even a conversation. They discuss the ins and outs of finding funding to support the project, take us through their project planning, data collection, and finally the dissemination of their results. The collaborations forged and friends made along these journeys are among the unspoken benefits of this work. One of the best parts of my job is learning about the incredibly rich and diverse research our faculty are engaged in and helping them to secure the funding they need to continue their work or launch their next project.

A Spark of an Idea

Chelsea Stieber, Associate Professor & Kathryn B. Gore Chair in French

New research often presents itself as just a flicker or a spark of an idea: a thought we jot down in passing, an inkling we ferret away into a footnote, or a long-held suspicion we never manage to get around to investigating. The potential is there but we need time to grow it into something sustainable. The means by which we find time and energy to do that looks quite different for every scholar. In my own area of study — the literature, politics, and history of Haiti and the French Caribbean — one of the primary avenues to grow new research is through individual fellowships. These competitive financial awards, associated with institutions like libraries, research centers, universities, and federal agencies, afford scholars an intense period of initial research — as short as a few weeks or as long as several years — that allow us to build that spark into a fire. In order to access manuscript collections, rare print materials, or secondary collections related to the revolutionary Caribbean, for instance, scholars in my field secure fellowships at the New York Public Library’s Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, the Library of Congress’s Kluge Center, or the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University, to name only a few.

Beyond these more traditional individual fellowships, my field is moving increasingly toward new types of cross-institutional collaborative grants that seek to connect humanistic research with the wider communities and publics it impacts. For instance, Tulane School of Liberal Arts professors and graduate students have contributed to two exciting projects that received grants through the National Archives’ National Historical Publications & Records Commission (NHPRC): Keywords for Black Louisiana (Johns Hopkins University), a community-engaged digital edition of annotated, transcribed, and translated manuscript documents from 18th-century French and Spanish Louisiana; and the Revue des Colonies (University of Maryland), a documentary edition of the first French periodical directed by people of color that published Black authors from France, the Caribbean, and New Orleans. Students involved in these projects had opportunities to engage in community outreach, website text encoding, editing, as well as traditional archival research.

The NHPRC grants are multi-year and collaborative, expressly dedicated to making public research that has historically been contained within the academy, precisely by engaging in the communities whose histories are concerned. They emphasize outreach and stakeholder engagement, and foster connections between humanistic research and the public. These grants attest to the deep cultural and historical significance of New Orleans and the importance of making the stories of the Black lives and legacies tied to the city accessible to the widest public. What is more, they offer innovative frameworks for initiating new humanistic research that forges meaningful, durable connections between the university and the community.

Challenging the Traditional

John “Ray” Proctor III, Associate Professor of Theatre & Dance

In the year before the pandemic, the Folger Institute — in an effort to determine how the Shakespeare Folger Library could exist outside of the building itself — started pursuing a refresh that would help bring Shakespeare to a wider audience. Professor of English Michael Kuczynski and I partnered on a grant proposal that asked “How does America negotiate its North vs. South identity through Shakespeare?” Folger not only accepted our proposal but awarded us a twin grant alongside the University of Buffalo, so that the South and North could host conferences to discuss Shakespeare in our regions.

In the current field of Shakespeare in America, scholars have been addressing the ways his work has been used as a tool of colonialism: to divide people culturally and racially, to oppress and gatekeep. The discussion is becoming “How do we keep Shakespeare alive and relevant?” But when people of color and women ask, “Relevant to whom?”, such questions push the establishment to realize all voices need to be brought in, including LGBTQI, AAPI, Black and Indigenous people, and anyone else who is not a cis-gendered white man.

With the Folger’s funding, we were able to invite 30 scholars from across the United States to participate in “Rac(e)ing the Shakespearean Archive: Antebellum, Civil War, and Reconstruction New Orleans.” We talked about Shakespeare academically, in literary studies, in performance — everywhere. We were also able to visit The Historic New Orleans Collection to view Shakespeare-themed Mardi Gras float drawings from 1896, tour Le Petit Theatre to explore what live theater looks like in New Orleans, and attend a production of “8 Othellos” at the André Cailloux Center for the Performing Arts and Cultural Justice.

It’s an exciting time for what Shakespeare could be in the city of New Orleans. There’s so much potential — not just that Shakespeare offers more or further cultural elitism — but we have the opportunity to invite the traditionally underrepresented and disenfranchised into theater, academics, and the world of Shakespeare. With representation from the Departments of English, Art History, Theatre & Dance, and the Digital Media Practices Program, among others, the School of Liberal Arts can become a home for Shakespeare and an example of how to better utilize his works for the discussions taking place now.

Driving Critical Changes

Andrew McDowell, Assistant Professor of Anthropology

The World Health Organization (WHO) approved Xpert, a diagnostic tool the size of a desktop computer, in 2012. The test promised to identify tuberculosis (TB) earlier and immediately provide information about the best course of treatment. At the time, we expected that the introduction of this innovative tool would lead to a massive decrease in rates of TB globally. Twelve years later, however, rates remain steady, and many people are still being diagnosed by century-old, imprecise technology. WHO experts awarded me a grant to find out why.

In July 2022, I gathered a team of anthropologists, public health scholars, social scientists, and undergraduate students at Tulane, Harvard, Oxford, and Maastricht University to study Xpert implementation’s successes and failures. We assumed that people in ministries of health, TB hospitals, laboratories, and clinics in countries where TB was common knew more about Xpert than anyone else. They could help us understand what made new technology possible and where they faced or solved challenges. We dove deeply into situations in the Philippines and Nigeria and surveyed 47 people in national TB bureaucracies. We also conducted 11 focus groups with 69 people working in 15 countries.

Our team worked tirelessly to make sense of the implementors’ different perspectives, transcribing pages and pages of narrative and searching carefully for patterns and repeating ideas across contexts. We were surprised to find that, in many countries categorized as low-income, the WHO itself had recommended against this technology as the preferred test for TB due to concerns about its cost. In what would become a 50-page report to the WHO, two undergraduate volunteers began the work of writing about the data we had analyzed and creating figures to best represent it. Drafts and ideas bounced between scholars, continents, and time zones. We had Zoom after Zoom about critical but accessible ways to suggest to our funders that their own recommendations were often as much of a barrier to Xpert use as shortages in electricity, money, and laboratory expertise. Eventually, our final report illustrated that while countries had made impressive progress using these tools when available, policy decisions had slowed access to Xpert, and countries shared little knowledge about overcoming obstacles internationally.

Months later, a WHO guideline development group asked me to present our findings. These expert groups make global recommendations based on available data. They asked many questions, but finally we arrived at the concluding and critical question: “I read your report as a strong call to recommend this technology to all, is that correct?” I agreed. When the group published their recommendations, they used our work as the proof that higher-quality technologies could be implemented despite logistical and financial challenges. They changed global policy and recommended that Xpert be made accessible to all people in all countries, not just rich ones.

Our small grant and a diverse, dedicated team helped drive a major global policy shift that extended high-quality diagnostic services to millions and takes us one step closer to global health equity.

Celebrating a Centennial of Indigenous American Study

Marcello Canuto, Director of the Middle American Research Institute & Professor of Anthropology, and Quinn Armstrong, Senior Communications Specialist in Advancement

Originally published in the 2024 issue of the School of Liberal Arts Magazine

Canuto showcases artifacts from the MARI archives.

A hundred years later, what has been the effect of a donor's gift? The Middle American Research Institute (MARI) has been conducting and sponsoring influential ethnographic, historical, linguistic, and archaeological research in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, Belize, and El Salvador since its establishment in 1924. Through field research, publication, student training, and the establishment of a world-renowned museum collection. MARI has made a significant impact on the scholarship of indigenous cultures of Middle America. Thanks to the tireless efforts of innumerable scholars, the Institute has consolidated its status amongst the most esteemed research institutes focusing on indigenous Middle America.

“A century ago, Tulane acknowledged that Indigenous America had a complex and rich history that was important and worthy of serious and targeted academic interest,” said Marcello A. Canuto, MARI director and Tulane archaeologist, who specializes in Maya archaeology. “Thanks to a significant donation, Tulane founded the Middle American Research Institute to advance the study of indigenous America in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. As MARI marks its centennial, we will continue our commitment to the study of ancient indigenous American peoples and their accomplishments.” - MARCELLO CANUTO 

A Timeline of MARI’s History

1924

Thanks to an endowment from Samuel Zemurray, Tulane establishes the Department of Middle American Research (later renamed MARI) to house the William Edmund Gate’s library, which eventually seeded the creation of the Latin American Library decades later. William Gates becomes the Institute’s first director.

1926

Frans Blom becomes the Institute’s second director.

1933

Frans Blom travels with a team to Uxmal, Yucatán, to make molds of the Nunnery Quadrangle architectural complex. The molds were displayed at the 1933 Chicago Century of Progress Exposition (World’s Fair), exhibiting the zenith of late Maya art and architecture to an eager United States public for the first time.

1930's

MARI participates in the first aerial survey of the Maya region.

1938

With a growing anthropological collection, an expanded library, and a new publication series, the Department of Middle American Research changes its name to the Middle American Research Institute.

1942

Robert Wauchope becomes MARI’s third director.

1947

Robert Wauchope becomes a member of the Committee on Latin American Studies at Tulane to develop an educational program on Latin American Studies in collaboration with Vanderbilt, University of Texas, and North Carolina. This initiative eventually gives birth to the Stone Center for Latin American Studies.

1970s

E. Wyllys Andrews V becomes MARI’s fourth director.

1980

Roland Scott Hall endowment is established to support MARI’s research initiatives.

1983

Robert Wauchope endowment is established for publications in Middle American Anthropology in MARI.

1990's

MARI Director E. Wyllys Andrews V directs the Copán Acropolis Archaeological Project. Copán is one of the most important archaeological complexes in the ancient Maya world, and the long-running project sparks important breakthroughs involving dynastic sequences, epigraphy, and chronologies.

2009

Marcello A. Canuto becomes the Institute’s fifth director.

2012

Maria Luisa De Ajubita Franklin Endowed Fund at MARI is established for graduate students in Anthropology to conduct field research in Mexico and Central America.

2013

Yvonne Effinger celebrates the remarkable impact a MARI education had on the life of her husband, Lt. Col. Clinton “Clint” Effinger III, by making a gift to enhance the stewardship of its artifact collections. With her support, priceless historical collections, including Aleutian objects donated by Clint, are protected from damaging UV and infrared light — securing them for generations of future scholars.

2019

A gift from the Hitz Foundation helps create MARI’s Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Lab, which analyzes and computes archeological data. This lab uses lidar remote sensing technology, which enables MARI to gather highly precise data over large vegetation-covered areas, uncovering exciting new discoveries. MARI Director Marcello A. Canuto and Tulane Research Professor Francisco Estrada-Belli were part of a team that discovered dozens of ancient cities in Guatemala, including some 60,000 structures, with this innovative technology.

2024

The Hitz Foundation builds upon its previous cutting-edge grant with a $1.5 million gift, further increasing the ability of MARI’s GIS Lab to use lidar technology to conduct archaeological research. Thanks in part to the forward-thinking philanthropy of the Hitz Foundation, MARI became an early leader in this mapmaking technology.

The Clinton and Yvonne Effinger Excellence Endowed Fund was created by their family to help MARI build on its century of trailblazing scholarship and lead the way in Maya archaeology for another 100 years.

2024 / 2025

MARI begins a new collaboration with the Universidad del Valle and the US State Department to systematically train members of various community-based forestry concessions in the Maya Biosphere Reserve (MBR) of Guatemala to conduct archeological resource management using modern technology. Community members will be trained to use lidar data, digital maps, and advanced survey methods to record archaeological sites in two different forestry concessions. With these tools, local stakeholders will be able to accurately and efficiently record cultural resources in their concessions. Aside from boosting the archaeological understanding of this understudied portion of the MBR, this training will also allow local communities to examine and report on the amount and impact of looting on the cultural resources located in their concessions. This partnership of archaeologists, government officials, and local stakeholders is unique to the MBR and will result in a protocol for long-term preventive protection measures, as well as the formation of a cadre of technicians trained to register and evaluate cultural heritage. This project is designed to be scalable and transferable to other forest concessions in the MBR.

On Advocating for Democracy in Venezuela

Originally published in the 2024 issue of the School of Liberal Arts Magazine

What can I, as a sociologist specializing in culture and politics, do to intervene in the ongoing crisis in Venezuela?

We normally think of scholars analyzing such conflicts and their resolution years, decades, or centuries after the fact. But there is indeed a role in the present. Political actors rarely have the time to take inventory of what has happened and put it in the context of larger bodies of knowledge, but scholars have the space to do so. Moreover, when scholarly work is paired with an effective media engagement strategy, they can put forward arguments that can both convince political actors and perhaps more importantly, shape the environment to which they respond — including the questions that journalists ask and demands that citizens make.

The government of Nicolás Maduro initiated a presidential election on July 28 hoping it would help Maduro gain the legitimacy he has lacked since the rigged elections of 2018. Instead, it has pushed Venezuela into a new political crisis that continues to unfold. This complicated situation represents significant progress and dynamism from where Venezuela was only a year or two ago when Maduro was progressively consolidating his authoritarian hold on the country. My research and advocacy during my 10 years at Tulane has focused on the Venezuela crisis, and I have worked with scholars, civil society groups, and diplomats to facilitate a negotiated solution.

Venezuela has been in a state of almost continual conflict during the 25 years since Hugo Chávez became president in 1999. Chávez, who sought to revolutionize Venezuelan society and make it more democratic, egalitarian, and participatory, was reelected in 2006, declaring that Venezuela was in a transition to socialism. Flush with oil resources, he invested in everything from infrastructural projects to participatory budgeting. However, without a clear commitment to transparency and accountability, many of these resources were misspent or lost to corruption. And with an inflated currency and price controls, the non-oil domestic economy suffered.

When Chávez died in April 2013, his designated successor Maduro faced the challenge of managing a government and coalition made in Chavez’s image, without the resources — the oil price steadily dropped after 2013 — and without Chávez’s charisma. He did so by using a highly centralized state apparatus to repress opposition to his rule. He brutally repressed protests in 2014 and 2017, canceled a recall referendum in 2016, and manipulated the 2018 presidential election to such a degree that the opposition boycotted, and most Western democracies did not recognize it. When Maduro tried to begin his second term in January 2019, the opposition-controlled National Assembly declared the presidency vacant. They, in turn, installed National Assembly President Juan Guaidó as the interim president, and he was recognized by the U.S. and most other Western democracies. The U.S. also levied significant economic sanctions that have had an important impact on Venezuela’s economic decline. In the past 10 years, around 20 percent of Venezuela’s population, over 7 million people, have left the country, fleeing miserable conditions and an endless political conflict.

Years of research in political sociology show that acute conflict generates and is furthered by strong centripetal forces that keep actors from engaging in politics. Actors in conflict gain more from rallying their bases and dehumanizing their opponents than from pursuing the interests of those they represent and negotiating with their adversaries. Over 25 years, Chavismo — the movement begun by the late President Hugo Chávez and continued by Maduro — has portrayed itself as a revolution destined to save Venezuela, and its opponents as a conspiring elite in cahoots with imperial powers. The political opposition has portrayed themselves as heroic democrats and Chavismo as illegitimate, incompetent, and corrupt. In these circumstances, each side reviles the possibility of negotiating with their treacherous “other” and labels those who do as traitors.

In such a context, international engagement can be key. In 2017 I wrote several newspaper opinion pieces and testified in the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee advocating for a multi-lateral effort, not including the U.S., that would engage the Maduro government in support of a return to democracy in Venezuela. That same year, the Lima Group of countries in the region was formed. However, rather than a “group of friends” it quickly became a group of adversaries strongly criticizing the government in non-diplomatic — if not inaccurate — terms. In 2018 and 2019, my colleagues and I argued against U.S. military involvement and for European engagement of Venezuela — thinking they would be in a better position than the U.S. to engage the Maduro government and facilitate a return to democracy. In 2019 the International Contact Group was formed from the European Union, in collaboration with several Latin American countries. This group had an important impact in promoting and laying the groundwork for negotiations. But it was the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs that took on negotiations in earnest. Working with colleagues, especially at the Washington Office on Latin America, I had a hand in advising them on Venezuela and the evolution of the conflict.

I wrote a series of pieces with one of the legends of the field of political transitions, Abraham Lowenthal, emeritus professor at the University of Southern California. We worked together to apply the classic insights of the scholarship on democratic transitions to the Venezuela case. It is common for people living in authoritarian contexts to think that nothing like what they are living has ever happened before and therefore all previous solutions are irrelevant. To a certain extent, they are correct. Every authoritarian context has its own unique character and details. And there exist no recipes for how to fight authoritarianism. However, there are strong commonalities between these contexts and a pretty consistent set of strategies that have been used to confront them.

Actors in conflict gain more from rallying their bases and dehumanizing their opponents than from pursuing the interests of those they represent and negotiating with their adversaries.

Smilde testifies on Venezuela before the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

One of the key strategies is to participate in elections even when they are unfair. This can be a hard sell in a context such as Venezuela, which for more than 50 years enjoyed a solid electoral democracy. However, the research is clear that electoral boycotts tend to only strengthen authoritarians and demobilize opposition movements. In contrast, participating in elections and denouncing their abuses every step of the way puts an authoritarian government on the defensive. In the best case, it can lead to a “stunning election” in which an opposition wins, despite the odds. In any case, it can degrade and demoralize the authoritarian coalition and set in motion processes of change.

On this point the Venezuelan opposition has long been divided with a consistent coalition believing elections were the way forward and another coalition promoting abstention. Depending on the character of the historical conjuncture, one or the other side has dominated. As recently as 2020 the opposition boycotted legislative elections. In 2021 they participated even while working to suppress turnout since a good showing did not fit with their more immediate political aspirations.

In research carried out with a then Tulane student, Rowan Scarpino (SLA ’23), we showed that the capacity of the U.S. to impact the Maduro government is quite limited. And indeed, despite the Biden administration’s efforts, the Maduro government did not actually behave much different this year over the last presidential election in 2018 — it manipulated the electoral playing field in similar ways. The influence the U.S. does have in Venezuela is more over the opposition. The Biden administration made clear it wanted them to go to an election and that it would not undertake another regime change initiative. As a result of this and their own learning process facilitated by public debate, the opposition responded to each obstacle placed in their path by reconfiguring and continuing forward and maintaining a unified electoral strategy.

There is still much to be done to return Venezuela’s conflict into the space of democratic institutions. But public scholarship has played an important role in pushing this process forward and will continue to do so.

Environment Up Close

Nathaniel Rich, Visiting Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies

Of all the transformations to campus life since my last day as a college student, the second-most dramatic to me was the surging interest in a program that didn’t formally exist 20 years ago: environmental studies. (The most dramatic? Food-delivery robots.)

Originally published in the 2024 issue of the School of Liberal Arts Magazine

Readers over 30 might ask the same question I asked upon being appointed as a visiting professor of environmental studies: What is environmental studies? It’s a reasonable question. As I soon learned, universities across the country have been asking it themselves, with increasing urgency.

I had been aware, from visits to college campuses over the last decade, of a growing mutiny within the humanities disciplines. It was often expressed as a frustration with the blithe manner in which climate change was discussed — or altogether ignored — in the classroom. 

Why was this subject of all subjects, the issue of greatest existential significance to this generation of students, encountered so sparingly, and superficially? Where, asked humanities students, were the great climate novels, histories, and works of art? A corresponding question was posed in the earth sciences: Why did so few non-scientists seem to understand the nightmarish ramifications of the data they analyzed every day in the lab?

I recognized in these questions my own frustrations with the ways we have come to write, and think, about environmental crisis — frustrations that have driven my fiction and nonfiction over the last dozen years. The fundamental information was well understood, after all. Journalists have been explaining for decades now the public story of climate change: the political story, the scientific story, and the economic story.

But what about the human story? What is the specter of climate change doing to us? What does it mean to live at a time when each year is the warmest year on record, and the coldest year of the rest of our lives? How does the knowledge of what’s already upon us, and what’s to come, change the way we navigate the world? How does it shape the way we plan for the future? How does it inform the decisions we make about what kind of work we want to do, where we want to live, and whether we want to have children?

Such questions lack easy — which is to say, objective — answers. This makes them the kinds of questions that the arts are uniquely capable of examining. Art is, by nature, subjective — partial, emotional, and allergic to grand proclamations. It does not traffic in “takeaways” or “angles.” It offers, instead, paths to deeper reflection, and scrutiny — especially self-scrutiny. It helps us to know ourselves. 

The first step to defining the Environmental Studies Program (EVST) is to isolate what it is not: an environmental science course or degree. We desperately need a new generation of scientists capable of taking on the novel challenges of this age. But we also need scholars who can grapple with the societal implications. Our classes in environmental studies serve students who want to understand how these great crises operate on the soul, as well as on our culture, politics, and economy.

It is difficult to think of a university better situated to serve as the home for a robust center of environmental studies than Tulane, situated as it is in the American city that, by many measures, is most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. We are a few miles downriver from the concentration of petrochemical plants now internationally known as “Cancer Alley,” occupying the former plantation grounds that lined the lower Mississippi River. We are in a city that has survived many existential threats and that understands more will continue to come, as often as every hurricane season.

We’ve entered a strange time, one that will not only be dominated by catastrophe but also by uncanny wonders: the decay of great cities and landscapes, climate migration and rewilding, the abandonment of poisoned territories and the engineering of artificial ecosystems. The great transition now underway offers us an enormous challenge, and an opportunity. Students at Tulane now have a unique opportunity to mediate between these public, global crises and our private lives. How do we preserve our humanity in an increasingly alien world? Serious, imaginative, uninhibited inquiry is sorely needed to help us through. We may not know what the future holds, but we can try to know ourselves.

Political Economy Alum Advocates
for Children
in Ukraine

Originally published in the 2024 issue of the School of Liberal Arts Magazine

Our mission is to ensure no child is left alone with the experience of war.

An alert came across my phone the morning of July 8: “Incoming ballistics, seek shelter.” I hurried down the hallway of my Kyiv apartment, the walls trembling as Patriot missiles intercepted the incoming Russian strike. I rushed outside, where black smoke clouds enveloped the city, and found refuge in the underground metro. Once the explosions subsided, I made my way to work, arriving just in time for our morning meeting — as if it were any other Monday.

Since graduating in 2023, I’ve been living in Kyiv and working in partnership development for Voices of Children, a Ukrainian nonprofit dedicated to providing psychological and psychosocial support to children and their families. Our mission is to ensure no child is left alone with the experience of war by protecting, empowering, and advocating for Ukrainian children. As the only native English speaker, I manage international fundraising development and donor relations, ensuring effective communication with our English-speaking partners. My role has encompassed everything from writing grant reports for major donors to representing our organization at key global events — including the Council of Europe — all to amplify the voices of Ukraine’s most vulnerable.

After my first visit in 2015, my connection to Ukraine grew during a 2018 visit to a summer camp for children affected by the Donbas war. Spending time with kids my age and hearing their stories of loss and trauma profoundly impacted me. My experiences in Ukraine inspired me to shift my studies from Social Policy & Practice to Political Economy with an International Perspectives concentration.

During that same semester, I took Professor Marcus Coleman’s Global Food Economy course and analyzed Ukraine’s agricultural commodities, exploring the invasion’s impact on food security. The project led me to spend the summer of 2022 in Ukraine, delivering humanitarian aid and studying food distribution systems. Working with local groups across the country gave me life-changing insights into Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Throughout my senior year, I continued to study Ukraine and the war through the liberal arts curriculum, from Walter Isaacson’s Digital Revolution class to Digital Photography. Integrating Ukraine into class projects deepened my understanding of international conflicts and helped develop the skills I use in my work today.

Every visitor to Voices of Children’s office in Kyiv is greeted by photographs of my colleagues as children, with the caption, “We were all children once.” Seeing the display on tough mornings like July 8 reminds me of the many children seeking help at our centers. I think of our psychologists in Kharkiv, who continue to provide essential support even under constant threat and wearing body armor. I recall the stories shared by returned Ukrainian children of uncertain journeys home from deportation, navigating minefields and gunfire. I am inspired by the vision of our founders and the dedication of my colleagues, whose belief that every Ukrainian deserves a childhood has supported some 103,000 beneficiaries — and counting.

Documentary Filmmaking Inspires a Return to Greece

Originally published in the 2024 issue of the School of Liberal Arts Magazine

BRITTANY FOWLER, in conversation with CASEY BECK, DIRECTOR & PROFESSOR OF PRACTICE OF DIGITAL MEDIA PRACTICES PROGRAM, and STUDENTS

Witting (SLA ’25)

In the summer of 2023, three Digital Media Practices (DMP) coordinate majors — Kalina Kula (SLA ’25), Natalie Maher (SLA ’24), and Alana Witting (SLA ’25) — traveled to Greece for a study abroad program in environmental media productions, where they created a documentary-style marketing video for their community service partner, Ecogenia.

The students were so moved by their experience that after encouragement from Casey Beck, they decided to research and apply for grant funding. They were awarded a Gordon Summer Fellowship from Newcomb-Tulane College, allowing them to return to Greece last summer for a new project — a documentary-style advocacy film, produced in partnership with Mudhouse Residency in Crete, which was released in October. They sat down with Beck to discuss how mentorship and networking opened the doors for their continued film work.

BECK: What about your first program motivated you to create this new project, apply for a grant, and go back to Greece to work with Mudhouse?

WITTING: After learning how to create and how to piece together these stories, I thought it would be an even greater experience to do it on our own.

MAHER: There’s something really valuable in working with nonprofits, and that is what led us to this project with Mudhouse. We felt very connected to Greece, its history and the cultural heritage, and how much pride the people there have for the country, and felt drawn to go back.

KULA: The culture was so visible, and you could actually feel it the whole time. International work was so enticing because the Greek lifestyle was magnetic. And the whole time we were there we’re thinking how impassioned all of the leaders of the program were.

BECK: What have you learned through your experience that you’ve been able to incorporate into your work?

MAHER: There were moments when we were shooting at Mudhouse where we were figuring out if we need to have people sign talent releases. And in my head, I heard you saying, “You really should.” Or how you place a lavalier microphone and set up interview questions.

KULA: There was a lot of adapting on the go and learning the struggles of using equipment and producing in the field, not just the classroom — and that’s how you learn. I also took a class last semester called Decolonizing the Camera, and it taught me how to ask questions about consent in filmmaking because these are real people whose stories you’re telling. That’s something I brought to this project and something that is really hard to learn just in the classroom.

BECK: How has working with DMP professors impacted your academic, and ultimately your career goals? After all, that’s what we are trying to do: prepare you for life after graduation.

Kula (SLA ’24)

WITTING: I think a big thing was working with women who I feel like I can see myself in. It’s a very male-dominated world so it’s really cool to have those examples in our professors and with Mudhouse. Seeing examples of women who are doing the work inspired us to believe we could do it too.

KULA: We were able to take what we learned in class and apply it to an actual project for a real client. That’s not something a lot of students get to do. We were getting real-world experience by creating something that was going to be viewed and helpful to Mudhouse.

MAHER: I’ve always liked writing and conducting written interviews, but the Ecogenia trip made me realize how much I like documentary work and talking to people. There’s so much value in documenting people and places, especially in the increasingly visual society and culture that we live in. It goes far beyond the written word. And even beyond filmmaking, DMP gave me opportunities to meet people and make connections. My experiences with Ecogenia and then Mudhouse taught me a lot about staying in touch: people remember you, and the work you do for them, and those relationships can last.

Maher (SLA ’24), Witting (SLA ’25), Kula (SLA ’25), and Beck in Greece.