On Wednesday, December 6, students from SLA’s 2023 Philanthropy and Social Change course gathered in Dixon Recital Hall to present a total of $12,000 in grants to three New Orleans artists and community leaders. The awards, sponsored by the Doris Buffett Learning by Giving Foundation, are the culmination of a class that teaches students the process and value of philanthropy through a social justice lens. Friends and families of the winners were also in attendance for the event, which was hosted and organized by the students.

Throughout the ceremony, student speakers and award recipients alike emphasized the role of music and the performing arts in preserving and promoting the unique cultural heritage of New Orleans, and across the African diaspora.

The first award of $2,000 went to Elenora Rukiya Brown, a visual storyteller, artist, and masking Indian queen. As an artist, Brown tells stories of her Chahta American Indian identity and African culture through dolls, or “soft sculptures,” quilts, and other mixed-media pieces. Quinn Cappiello, a student from the course, presented the award, saying “The way Eleanor uses and shares her talents to promote craftsmanship as healing for youth is truly inspiring.”

After greeting the crowd with “Halito,” the Chahta word for hello, Brown gave an emotional speech about her love for New Orleans and the resilience of its people. “It’s in your DNA to create and to give from your heart,” said Brown.

Avery Liggon, another student from the philanthropy course, presented the next award to Nkem Big Chief Brian Harrison Nelson, the youngest known big chief in New Orleans Black Mardi Gras Indian history. Expressing gratitude to Tulane, his ancestors, and his family, Big Chief Nelson highlighted the significance of using the $3,000 grant to restart his anti-violence youth literacy program.

The Big Chief wore a traditional West African Grand Boubou, and was decked head-to-toe in his favorite color purple. He also teased his forthcoming single: a blend of Mardi Gras music, jazz, and bounce.

The third and final award was given to Zohar Israel and the Free Spirit Network, an organization that student Lucy Vanderbrook described as “a remarkable initiative passionately committed to the preservation and celebration of African heritage through the vibrant rhythm of drum and dance.”

On stage Israel played the ngoni, a string instrument from Mali, traditionally used in West African storytelling. He plans to use the funds to buy new drums for the at-risk and under-resourced young students in his music education classes. “Everyone is putting them in the corner, I’m putting them up front,” Israel says.

The Philanthropy course, taught by Leslie Scott, an assistant professor in Theater and Dance, is part of the Strategy, Leadership and Analytics Minor (SLAM). Award winners were chosen from more than 50 applicants, and students spent the semester getting to know the individuals and institutions. Last year's class recognized the efforts of N'Fungola Sibo and the African Dance Drum Company, Inc., and Angela Herbert White for her music education program Make Music Nola. In their selections, students highlighted the importance of supporting New Orleans artists and culture bearers, ensuring that the city's artistic traditions thrive and endure for generations to come.

Sony Pictures President Sanford Panitch (SLA ‘89) may be a Los Angeles native, but he credits “the other LA” as where his entertainment career truly started.

Panitch, who majored in Political Science, has been president of the Motion Picture Group at Sony Pictures since 2019, following years as president of sibling studio Columbia Pictures. In this position, Panitch oversees all international film and television distribution—a savvy he initially cultivated as an undergraduate at Tulane University.

Last week, for a special Dean’s Speaker Series event, he visited his alma mater and its students to engage in a career-oriented conversation with School of Liberal Arts Dean Brian T. Edwards, about how a strong liberal arts foundation can set students pursuing the film industry apart.

As he shared with current undergraduates—majoring in everything from Communication and Cinema Studies to Business, Theatre & Dance, Marketing, or Digital Media Practices— last Wednesday, it was in New Orleans that Panitch started his first company. On breaks from school back in his hometown of Los Angeles, Panitch had an internship with New Line Cinema, and often brought film reels back to campus to continue viewing and annotating. In doing so, Panitch realized the limited distribution options in New Orleans and sought a workaround for getting these movies in front of audiences, finding the perfect opportunity for him to create Revive Screening.

Once Panitch created Revive he began circulating films from his internship at various New Orleans venues, from on-campus spaces to local theaters, including the beloved Prytania. He made connections, spread the word across neighborhoods and peer groups alike, and incentivized his classmates to redeem used ticket stubs for food and beverage deals at local watering holes. He essentially charted his own crash course in content creation, marketing, and promotions by determining what worked and what didn’t, sourcing organic demand and feedback, and learning from the fans he was, in fact, producing. And he did it all before Fandango, TikTok, or Instagram influencer marketing was even a blip on anyone’s radar.

After graduating from Tulane, Panitch sold Revive and returned to his original LA. In 1995, he was appointed executive vice president of production at 20th Century Studios. In 2008, after watching the growth of the international box office for over a decade and realizing the considerable percentage of market share for locally produced films, Panitch founded Fox International Productions. He served as its president until 2015, when he moved to Columbia Pictures, and then onto his current role.

The combination of critical thinking and unconventional ‘can-do’-ism comes from having a liberal arts education. Most of the time when we have interns who get good jobs, almost every one of them has had some version of a liberal arts education.

– Sanford Panitch, Sony Pictures President

The focus of his visit to the university was to discuss the state of the entertainment business in the new media landscape, and how major motion pictures are produced, marketed, and distributed in today’s world. He addressed the kinds of longform content that have broken through theatrically, from Megan to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and he and Dean Edwards investigated the challenges in engaging audiences indoctrinated by TikTok.

Despite these challenges, “the business is more vibrant than ever,” Panitch remarked. “It’s a particularly good time to enter the entertainment business, because of how dynamic it is right now.”

In response to student questions, he addressed how film circulation promotes globalization and the ways a global liberal arts education is the best professional preparation for the next generation as they head out into our ever-changing world.

“Why is Hollywood the only industry where we have this global content? The reason is because we were a country of immigrants,” he explained. “The original movie studios needed to make movies for everybody that was in America, but America was already a melting pot, so it became global culture.”

Following his talk with the dean, Sanford remained in Diboll Gallery to meet countless aspirant students and field questions (pictured below) on everything from script pitches to his favorite movie of all time.

Learn more about creative industries and SLAM offerings at Tulane School of Liberal Arts.

The School of Liberal Arts welcomed Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jennifer Egan for an engaging evening on literary inspiration and craft in fiction, as part of the Carole Barnette Boudreaux ‘65 Great Writers Series. The day after her public lecture and book signing, Egan joined in a discussion on creativity and artificial intelligence with faculty members from both the School of Liberal Arts and School of Science and Engineering.

Attendees packed the newly inaugurated Lake Hall Theatre for the event, a testament to the popularity and staying power of Egan’s work. Egan’s oeuvre includes short stories, novels, and longform journalism; her latest book The Candy House (2022), a companion novel to the 2011 Pulitzer Prize-Winner A Visit From The Good Squad, earned a spot on the New York Times 10 Best Books of 2022 list.

Egan, an Artist-in-Residence in the English Department at the University of Pennsylvania, shared insights into her creative process during the mainstage lecture. An accompanying visual presentation guided the audience through Egan’s approach crafting a chapter of The Candy House titled “Lulu the Spy.” Originally published as a short story in the New Yorker and serialized on X (formerly known as Twitter), the inspiration for the work’s innovative form came from Egan’s domestic world—mainly the lists stored on her phone, which she found took on a surprising narrative quality.

Egan, who writes about authenticity and identity in the ever-changing digital landscape, spoke on the constant external influences on her fiction, and the role of writers as conduits for the world around them. She ended the lecture by emphasizing the importance of reading fiction—as a critical way to “feel connected to the sweep of the human experience”—especially in the attention economy, where deep reading feels like an act of resistance.

At the start of the event, School of Liberal Arts Dean Brian Edwards thanked Carole and Ken Boudreaux, who proudly sat in the front row of the auditorium. The ‘65 Great Writers Series, he explained, seeks to bring in prominent authors not only of great literature, but whose work “animates, contributes to, and helps reframe some of the key issues and questions of our time.” The work of past series authors—Pulitzer Prize-Winner Viet Thanh Nguyen, and novelist Amitav Ghosh—addressed the refugee experience and climate change, respectively.

These successful events illustrate the purpose of the Carole Barnette Boudreaux Creative Writing Endowed Fund, initiated in 2018, which aims to bring creative writers to Tulane to engage and inspire members of the University community. For her part, Egan thanked the School of Liberal Arts community for their “warm embrace.”

The School of Liberal Arts has been awarded a $225,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation to host a year-long seminar beginning next fall on the Tulane campus.  

The highly regarded Sawyer Seminars were established by the Mellon Foundation in 1994 to provide support for comparative research on the historical and cultural sources of contemporary developments. The grant will fund a new postdoctoral fellowship and two fellowships for advanced PhD students, as well as costs associated with the year-long seminar. Tulane was also awarded a Sawyer Seminar in 2020.

The seminar series, which will launch in fall 2024, will pair established and emerging scholars alongside local New Orleans community partners to explore one of the most polarizing issues of our time: reproductive rights. The laws and policies in the U.S., both at the national and state level, continue to be the subject of heated debates and revisions, as is true of many nations around the globe.  This seminar will use the lens of the humanities to help make sense of the current historical moment.

The seminar series is being co-organized by Professor of English and Gender and Sexuality Studies Kate Baldwin, Associate Professor of History Karissa Haugeberg, and Newcomb Institute Administrative Associate Professor Clare Daniel. It will bring local community leaders in New Orleans into conversation with international scholars researching reproductive health across a variety of fields in the humanities and the arts.

Participants will consider how we prepare the next generation of humanities scholars, policymakers, and activists for a world in which issues around reproductive rights will require new, collaborative ways of thinking.

“In centering Louisiana and the perspectives of those who have been historically marginalized, we look forward to conversations that fuse the dynamism of the arts with the intellectual rigor of the humanities,” Baldwin said. “We appreciate the Mellon Foundation’s support for this vital work.”

According to Daniel, who also serves as the assistant director of community engagement at the Newcomb Institute, the seminar presents an exciting and much-needed opportunity to bring together people working on reproductive self-determination in drastically differing contexts. “New Orleans is already a nucleus of incredible thinking and advocacy around reproductive rights, health, and justice,” she said, “and this series will bolster that work through a transnational dialogue.”

Haugeberg added, “By engaging in thoughtful, respectful, and evidence-based discussions about one of the most hot-button issues of our time, Tulane will do what it does best: showcase why the humanities matter now more than ever.”

"The brilliance of the proposal by professors Baldwin, Haugeberg, and Daniel is the way in which it puts the challenges we are facing in Louisiana and the Gulf South region in dialogue with global analogs,” said Brian Edwards, dean of the School of Liberal Arts. “By examining other national contexts where women’s reproductive rights had previously been criminalized but are now expanding, this project breathes new life and insight into one of the most vexing questions of our time.”

New Orleans native Sarah Reynolds grew up with an interest in Voodoo and how the religion was portrayed in Louisiana and beyond. A PhD candidate in anthropology in the School of Liberal Arts, Reynolds has parlayed this interest into the subject of her dissertation, which explores the intersection of religion and race in Benin, West Africa, with a specific focus on the Vodun religion. Reynolds aims to shed light on how Vodun practitioners, known as Vodunsi, and the Beninese state collaborate to redefine, reshape, rename, and recontextualize the Vodun religion.

Reynolds was recently awarded an American Dissertation Fellowship from the American Association of University Women (AAUW) and $25,000 in funding to support her research. The fellowship, initiated in 1888, stands as the oldest non-institutional source of graduate funding for women in the United States. It is awarded based on rigorous evaluation criteria, including scholarly excellence, the quality and originality of the project design, and the candidate's active commitment to advancing the status of women and girls through service in their communities, professions, or fields of research.

Reynolds expressed her excitement upon receiving the fellowship, stating, "I was thrilled to get the call from AAUW. This award allows me to wrap up my research and focus solely on writing full-time this academic year with the goal of graduating in spring 2024."

As she approaches the final year of her doctoral research, Reynolds has ambitious plans for her future career. She aspires to enter academia and teach courses in the anthropology of religion, anthropology of race, and medical anthropology. This fellowship serves as a pivotal stepping stone in realizing her goals.

Professor of Anthropology Adeline Masquelier, Reynolds' advisor, applauded her dedication and hard work. Masquelier noted, "Sarah is probably the hardest working student I have ever mentored in my thirty years at Tulane. I don't think she's missed a single class; this is how committed she is to her work. I’m incredibly proud that she was selected for this fellowship — it is well deserved."

Despite facing challenges, including delays due to the pandemic, Reynolds remained focused. She conducted archival research and taught while waiting for the opportunity to travel to Benin for her fieldwork. Masquelier commended her resilience, saying, "I have never heard her complain once about things that didn't go her way. She is a real trooper."

On the impact she hopes her research will have, Reynolds shared, “While other scholars have looked at the global nature of Vodun or the experiences of white foreigners in Benin, my research is new in that I examine intra-racial dynamics between Beninese and Afro-diasporic individuals like myself. I want to expand the literature on African and Afro-diasporic religions and make information on them more accessible to those outside academia.”

Reynolds' research promises to meaningfully contribute to our understanding of the intricate relationship between religion and race, particularly in the context of Vodun. With the support of the American Dissertation Fellowship, her work will undoubtedly make a lasting impact in the field of anthropology and beyond.