Casey Beck’s film “Smells Like” is the poignant story of Juan Flores, an activist fighting for his community’s basic right to clean air. Residing in one of the Gulf South’s “fenceline communities” — neighborhoods that share a backyard with the nation’s biggest oil refineries and petrochemical plants — Flores and his neighbors have spent decades exposed to toxic air pollution causing serious risks to their health.

On January 25, 2024, Amnesty International published Beck’s film as part of a larger report entitled The Cost of Doing Business? The Petrochemical Industry’s Toxic Pollution in the USA, detailing the health and human rights consequences posed to populations living along the Houston Ship Channel, where Flores resides. An award-winning documentary filmmaker, Beck is the director of the Tulane School of Liberal Arts popular Digital Media Practices (DMP) program. Her 16-minute film brings an essential element of humanity and personal narrative to the comprehensive report.

Home to over 600 petro-chemical plants, the 52-mile Houston Ship Channel is labeled a “sacrifice zone,” due to high pollution levels that disproportionately impact Black and Brown communities. The report coincides with a Human Rights Watch publication on Louisiana’s Cancer Alley, another crisis-level “sacrifice zone,” and emphasizes the “devastating human rights toll” on residents in these areas, where populations suffer heightened rates of asthma, cancer, and other diseases, with little to no accountability from the petrochemical industries polluting them. The report criticizes these zones as “a manifestation of environmental racism,” where the rights of marginalized people are sacrificed or ignored in exchange for corporate profit. Fenceline communities like those in Flores’ Harris County, Amnesty International reports, have an average life expectancy that is 20 years lower than those in majority white neighborhoods 15 or so miles away.

“Smells Like” is an activist’s fight for the well-being of his family and community; the film recounts the damage of deadly chemical spills and long-term effects of pollution on residents, including Flores’ young daughter. In a business-centric state like Texas, Flores says, plants continue to push job creation as an excuse for overlooking human rights issues. He otherwise describes his neighborhood as a safe, small community where everyone knows each other, and he challenges the notion that residents should abandon their homes due to environmental hazards — instead advocating for their rights and safety. Flores leads an initiative distributing air quality monitors to households throughout his community.

As the director of DMP, Beck shows her students the power of visual storytelling in compelling audiences to confront uncomfortable truths and advocate for change. Within the program, students are given the opportunity to explore various forms of content creation and media production through workshop-style classes, developing and refining skills in filmmaking, screenwriting, audio production, interactive media, game design, podcasting, and interdisciplinary media.

Produced by Mary Cardaras, funded by the Pulitzer Center and Invoking the Pause, and in partnership with Public Health Watch, “Smells Like” is part of a series Beck is directing on the intersection of environmental issues and race.

Watch Beck’s film.

The best academic leaders know how to challenge the narrative — especially in fields largely dominated by white voices — in order to work towards a more racially and culturally accurate picture of the humanities.

Tulane’s Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) awards were created to recognize such initiative and leadership within the Tulane community. This year, two of those awards went to John “Ray” Proctor and Charles Mignot: School of Liberal Arts faculty members who — from the performing arts to language learning — stand out for the way they create spaces that are inclusive and representative of all students; center minoritized people and highlight their accomplishments; and emphasize overall care and advocacy of students' valuable contributions in academia and beyond.

John “Ray” Proctor, an Assistant Professor of Theatre, received the North Star Faculty EDI Leadership Award for his commitment to EDI on Tulane’s campus and within the wider New Orleans community. Proctor, who actively participates in events such as Black student graduation ceremonies and orientations for queer and BIPOC students, served as EDI Director for the 2023 inaugural Newcomb Tulane College Summer Research Institute: EDI and Race — a program aimed at expanding student understanding of EDI and the impacts of race on scholarly research. Last spring, he also organized the Rac(e)ing Shakespeare workshop, which invited scholars to explore race within Shakespearean research and performances in the Southern United States. 

In addition to these events, Proctor also collaborates with the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South (NOCGS) each February as co-organizer of the “African American Women Affecting the Arts” event.

“This gathering reflects his and our interest in centering Black women’s creative expression and experiences and bridging the academic and public,” said NOCGS Clark Executive Director Rebecca Snedeker. “Dr. Proctor is a visionary, kind, dependable, and fun partner, and we deeply appreciate this ongoing collaboration.”

Andrea Boyles, Associate Dean for Diversity, Equity, and Belonging (EDB) for SLA, nominated Proctor for the EDI award. Also mentioning Proctor’s partnership with No Dream Deferred, a local African American theater company, Boyles says that this award honors “the many ways Ray routinely invests labor and time towards equitably advancing the experiences and overall quality of life for minoritized and underserved people across communities.”

In New Orleans — where Francophone heritage includes Creole, Haitian, Acadian, and Caribbean populations, to name a few — an inclusive and diverse study of French culture and language feels all the more crucial.

Charles Mignot, Senior Professor of Practice in French, Director of Linguistics, and Director of the French Language Program, received the Compass Faculty EDI Excellence in Teaching Award, recognizing his success with incorporating EDI methods into his pedagogy. Juliette Papadopoulos, a Ph.D. candidate in French Studies who nominated Mignot, praised his focus on diversity within his courses, where he regularly challenged colonial and Eurocentric views. In an intermediate French class, for example, Mignot encouraged Papadopoulos to include an intercultural module on the topic of race in France, allowing her to dedicate time to teaching the issue. The topic proved very engaging.

Promoting regular practices of co-teaching and collaboration, Mignot encourages his graduate students to contribute to the curriculum, fostering an inclusive environment where mentees create their own intercultural lessons for the classroom — such as the one Papadopoulos led on indigenous tourism and reconciliation efforts in Canada. Through Tulane’s Language Learning Center, Mignot also developed Francophones à la Nouvelle-Orléans (previously Français à la Nouvelle-Orléans) for beginner French speakers. Online courses in this Open Education Resource focus on communication skills rather than traditional grammar structures and promote accessible language learning for all. Within this resource and other teaching materials, Papadopoulos commended Mignot for providing students with a “more global and more inclusive vision of the Francophone world, while questioning the historical whiteness and Eurocentric perspectives that have dominated the French curriculum.”

In a city steeped in diverse cultural influences, the recognition of faculty members like Dr. Proctor and Dr. Mignot speaks to SLA’s commitment to fostering an inclusive academic community, celebrating diversity and minority voices, and valuing the labor and leadership it takes to advance such efforts.

Tulane School of Liberal Arts professor Alexis Culotta and School of Science and Engineering professor Aron Culotta have received a $150,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to develop an interactive platform for visualizing connections between artworks and artists. The project is one of only 15 such Digital Humanities Advancement grants awarded by the NEH in January 2024.

The new tool, called the Artistic Network Toolbox (ANT), will allow researchers to upload datasets capturing relationships like apprenticeships, collaborations, and influences between artists or artworks. With a simple click, it will generate a customized website that supports exploratory network analysis of artistic production to investigate questions like how influential an artist was in the spread of a new style or technique.

“Imagine if a button click transformed a spreadsheet of artwork data into an interactive visualization of artistic connections — shareable among colleagues and classrooms for elaboration — without requiring coding or advanced computational expertise,” said Art History Professor of Practice Alexis Culotta. “The award allows us to turn this idea into reality with the development of an open-source, user-friendly platform to curate, visualize, and share the relationships between art, its creators, and its contexts.”

The project will develop social network analysis algorithms similar to those used to study the spread of ideas in online social platforms like Facebook for data curation, visualization, and analysis.

“ANT has the potential to transform the study of art history and its networks, where a finished work’s genealogy is often told through relationships — apprenticeships, collaborations, patronage, etc. — that mandate both micro-examination of works side-by-side and macro-examination of the social-cultural environment,” Aron Culotta said.

For example, users could upload artwork data from a given workshop or school and see interactive maps of master-apprentice links and knowledge transfer between cities. Or they could visualize networks showing how artistic styles evolved and spread geographically. Data sets can then be edited and refined by other users.

The tool is aimed both at students, who can visualize and explore different eras of art production, and at scholars, who can initiate interdisciplinary collaborations without the burden of expensive, non-intuitive, or siloed technological interfaces. The ultimate goal is democratized access to advanced visualizations for exploring artistic creation, thereby providing new ways of understanding the history of art.

In the realm of cutting-edge interdisciplinary research, Tulane Liberal Arts Associate Professor of Philosophy and Director of Cognitive Studies Daniel Burnston is part of a collaborative team breaking new ground in studying cognition. Burnston’s group received $165,000 in funding from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement’s (RCSA) Scialog: Molecular Basis of Cognition initiative to spearhead a project titled Mapping Inner Worlds: Representational Spaces and Mental Life.

Collaborating with Psychology Professor Wilma Bainbridge from the University of Chicago and Psychology Professor Bob Wilson from the University of Arizona, the team will explore the organization of categories and knowledge in the mind and brain. It is frequently hypothesized that mental categories for objects are organized into a “space,” with similar categories closer together and distinct categories further apart. But there are many ways the brain can represent objects—perceptually, conceptually, and linguistically. This research will use cutting-edge experimental and computational methods to tease apart the different spaces and show how individuals and groups categorize the world differently.

“Our lives are determined by how we categorize and interact with the world around us, but our mental categories are complex and multifaceted,” Burnston explains. “To understand this complexity, we need detailed experimental tools, computational modeling approaches, and philosophical insight. Our project will bring those perspectives together to advance our understanding of the mind.”

More than just an RCSA initiative, Scialog—a fusion of "science + dialog"—is a catalyst for accelerating breakthroughs and fostering intensive interdisciplinary conversations. Beyond financial support, the Scialog initiative provides an environment where early career faculty from institutions across the country can share big ideas and push the boundaries of their fields.

“The Scialog environment is totally unique, in that it brings together high-level theorists and experimentalists from multiple disciplines and puts them in close conversation about big-picture questions,” continued Burnston. “This breaks down disciplinary boundaries, encourages combining distinct methodologies, and opens up space for creative solutions to major theoretical issues in understanding the mind."

This is the second year that Burnston has received funding from Scialog. His first project focused on how brain systems are organized to implement distinct behaviors depending on context. His group analyzed whether populations of brain cells could be described via a topological structure, and whether organized behavior could be the result of predictable trajectories through that structure.

The Scialog initiative is also sponsored by the Frederick Gardner Cottrell Foundation, and the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR), with additional award funding from The Kavli Foundation, the Walder Foundation, and the Azrieli Foundation.

With Carnival season now in full swing, Mardi Gras fervor permeates almost every aspect of life in New Orleans. Beyond its famous revelry and deep cultural significance, a recent study by Economics Professor of Practice Toni Weiss presents the profound economic impact Mardi Gras has on the city.

Examining both the direct and indirect economics of the 2023 Mardi Gras season, Weiss discovered that it generated nearly $900 million in total fiscal benefit for the city. In fact, Mardi Gras accounted for over 3% of the total Gross Domestic Production (GDP) of Orleans Parish in 2023.

“This economic activity in turn supports tens of thousands of jobs, our creative and cultural workers and economy, and thousands of small businesses, with those dollars turning over countless times throughout our community,” said Elroy James of the Zulu Social Aid and Pleasure Club and James Reiss III of the Rex Organization, Co-Chairs of the Mayor’s Mardi Gras Advisory Council, in a joint statement. The Mayor’s Advisory Council, along with New Orleans & Company, commissioned Weiss’s report.

Mardi Gras krewes work year-round creating costumes, throws, and floats, holding balls and events, and otherwise preparing (and spending) for the 38 parades held within Orleans Parish. On its part, the City of New Orleans invests money into the significant public services, safety, and sanitation required to stage Mardi Gras. Weiss’s study shows that for every $1.00 the City of New Orleans spent on Mardi Gras in 2023, there was a $2.64 return.

“It’s fun and it’s part of our culture, but it also just economically makes sense,” Weiss said, in a Fox 8 Live interview.

As part of her comprehensive research, Weiss surveyed and interviewed parade attendees—both tourists and locals—gathering data on Carnival spending for commodities like lodging, events, food, and drink. Krewes reported their total annual costs to Weiss, while local businesses outlined revenue patterns during the Carnival season as compared to the rest of the year.

Beyond the specific spending and revenue during Carnival season, Weiss's study comments on the "economic dynamism" fueled by the deep cultural association of Mardi Gras as central to New Orleans' identity. The celebration's impact is not limited to the season, as it draws visitors to the city throughout the year: tourists who don beads and purchase Mardi Gras apparel, take place in “mini” Mardi Gras celebrations and parades, and tour facilities like Mardi Gras World. It also inspires Mardi Gras-themed events around the country.

“My strong sense is that the actual impacts of this internationally renowned celebration are even greater than can be accurately measured,” Weiss says.

The 2023 report marks Weiss’s fourth study of this nature, with the first conducted in 2009. Accounting for updates in methodology, increase in size and length of parades, inflation, and other changes since the last study in 2014, Weiss sees this study as an accurate “post-COVID benchmark” for which to compare further studies.

“Thanks to the help of Carnival, city and business leaders throughout New Orleans, and the participation by krewes and their members, this is the best-informed and most accurate study of Mardi Gras I have been involved with to date,” says Weiss. Her work reinforces the School of Liberal Arts’ commitment to in-depth research and community engagement, bringing together Tulane scholars and community leaders to explore the great scope of creativity and hard work that contributes to the Carnival spectacle.

“The mere idea of a New Orleans devoid of Mardi Gras feels almost inconceivable,” Weiss notes. “Rarely do we witness such events that are so profoundly integrated into the essence of a place, shaping its unique character and fostering an unparalleled sense of unity among its residents.”