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Since its founding in 1924, the Middle American Research Institute (MARI) at Tulane University has led the way in its study of Mexico and Central America. Today, as MARI reaches its centennial, generous gifts from two previous donors insure the future of this landmark institution. Funding from the Effinger Family and the Hitz Foundation support a new chapter of innovation and archeological technology at MARI, and affirm the institute’s mission to preserve and promote greater understanding of the indigenous cultures of Mesoamerica.

As an undergraduate at Tulane, Lt. Col. Clinton Effinger III (A&S ’49) credited MARI for cultivating his lifelong passion for archeology. In 2019, his wife Yvonne Effinger made a gift to MARI to commemorate her dear late husband. High school sweethearts reunited in mid-life, Clint and Yvonne Effinger shared in a love of cultural learning. They were avid travelers during their nearly forty years of marriage, and collected antiques and artifacts as Clint’s military posts and further travel brought them to Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. Yvonne's $30,000 gift went to improving MARI’s storage facilities, protecting thousands of precious artifacts, including some donated by Clint decades ago.

Now, their children have established an endowment in both their parents' names, forging a lasting bond between the Effinger family and MARI, ensuring their legacy lives on within the institute.

“In a modern world where many cultures are instantly interacting electronically, we see Dr. Canuto’s efforts as a bridge to overcome barriers to cultural understanding and collaboration. In honor of Clint and Yvonne Effinger, we wish for the Clint and Yvonne Effinger Excellence Endowed Fund to support Professor Canuto and MARI: inspiring a legacy of cultural respect and understanding for students and citizens of the world,” says Yvonne’s son Chris Flynn, speaking on behalf of the family.

Yvonne was able to visit Tulane and MARI in 2019; next week, her family will return to meet with MARI Director and Professor of Anthropology Marcello Canuto and visit MARI’s facilities in Dinwiddie Hall. The third floor of the newly renovated hall is home to MARI’s gallery space, and its inaugural exhibit "Faces of the Maya: Profiles in Continuity and Resilience,” on the Maya civilization from 1000 BC to present, which is currently open to the public.

From its early days, mapmaking has been central to MARI’s endeavors, though what this looks like has changed greatly over the years. Early mapmaking relied on exploring and trekking for miles through the jungle on foot — one of MARI’s early directors, Francis Blom, conducted expeditions that led to the first archeological map of the Mayan region.

Today, MARI is a leader in archeological innovation, with their utilization of Lidar, a mapmaking technology which has revolutionized the field. Lidar, which stands for light detection and ranging, is a remote sensing method that makes it possible for archeologists to identify buildings, walls, and other human-made structures under the thick canopy of the jungle and dense obstacles. An early leader in this technology, Canuto and Tulane Research Professor Francisco Estrada-Belli were part of a 2018 team that discovered dozens of ancient cities in Guatemala, including some 60,000 structures.

“Until basically 2016 when we got the first Lidar data set, Mayan archaeology had combined, in ground surveys and maps, to roughly 700 square kilometers,” explained Canuto in an earlier interview. “This means walking through the jungle, finding each archaeological site, and putting it on a map. Since 2016, we, as part of a consortium, have conducted a Lidar survey of over 7,000 square kilometers — 10 times more than what had been surveyed using traditional methods.”

MARI analyzes and computes archeological data in its Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Lab, created with help from a 2019 Hitz Foundation grant. Building on this initial gift, the Hitz Foundation renewed its support of MARI’s mapmaking with this latest grant of $1.5 million.

This continuous support enables the GIS Lab to grow, and to remain at the forefront of the archeological field. Most crucially, instead of analyzing Lidar data obtained from outside networks, the funding allows that the GIS Lab to now do this work internally.

“With MARI celebrating its centennial this year, this transformative gift from the Hitz Foundation ensures that the important work being done by our researchers will remain at the leading edge of archeological inquiry,” said Tulane School of Liberal Arts Dean Brian T. Edwards in a press release.

MARI plans to celebrate the centennial with an event in the fall. While commemorating a century of groundbreaking research, the institute looks forward to an exciting future ahead.

This semester, students in Assistant Professor of Communication Muira McCammon’s Emerging Tech and Internet Law class had the opportunity to put learned concepts to the test, playing out the roles of tech CEOs, PR strategists, concerned citizens, journalists, and protestors in a mock Congressional hearing. With the help of a grant from Tulane’s Center for Engaged Learning and Teaching, Professor McCammon was able to invite special guest Matthew Conaty, former Assistant U.S. Attorney and Chief of the Federal Communications Commission's Spectrum Enforcement Division, to campus for the proceeding. In their roles as U.S. Senators from both sides of the aisle, McCammon and Conaty led the line of questioning against tech companies like Facebook, PayPal, X, Microsoft, Match Group (Tinder and Hinge), and Lyft, allowing students to reckon with the realities of regulatory oversight facing Silicon Valley.

Students serving as tech CEOs of these companies were given a brief 15-minute window to prepare themselves before testifying. Their task was clear: to craft a concise 1 - 1.5-minute opening statement that addressed the controversies of their respective companies. Each CEO had to outline what had transpired and lay out their company’s planned course of action to rectify the situation. A group of six students named as dedicated public relations professionals helped CEOs refine their statements, ensure accuracy, and provide real-time fact-checking support by passing notes and information — allowing CEOs to think “on the fly”, and craft well-informed responses that would resonate with the Senators and shareholders alike.

“From a personal perspective, I would say ‘Yeah, I can see how those claims would be warranted,’” said student Caitlin Caulfield, who played a Match Group CEO facing accusations regarding gamification, and use of addiction-inducing tactics, on platforms Hinge and Tinder. “However, as Ally [PR team member] and I dove more into the case law it was interesting to see Match’s defense essentially being ‘these claims are illegitimate.’”

Other students acted as angry members of the public, representing users of each company’s product. They were given the chance to voice concerns and pose questions to each CEO, directly engaging with issues that had affected them personally.

“This was very fun to act out as tech CEO as I love toying with extremes,” said Caulfield. “I will be interested to see how this case develops and whether or not it will turn class action.” Aside from Match, other cases involved Lyft and disabled passenger discrimination, Microsoft and AI regulation, PayPal’s hidden fines, and several claims against X and Facebook.

In the midst of the hearings, four “journalists” diligently observed and documented the proceedings. They were granted the opportunity to interview affected citizens, the Senators and their aides, and the tech CEOs themselves. The assigned student op-ed writer, although not directly involved in the hearings, had a critical role in shaping the narrative, as their analysis and argument for regulatory or legal solutions would contribute to the ongoing court of public opinion — and the larger conversation on responsible tech practices. Rounding out the student roles was a photographer documenting the entire affair and even a secret protester.

“Pedagogically, legal roleplay gives students a window into the real-time stresses that tech companies face,” Professor McCammon shared. “It also allows them to develop a vocabulary to discuss contemporary issues in Internet policy.”

Enabling students to experience legal proceedings from a variety of perspectives, especially in an area as controversial and ever-changing as emerging tech and internet law, allowed them to take in the nuances and complications of materials covered in their course. The exercise highlighted the importance of transparency, responsibility, and the need for effective communication in the tech world, and undoubtedly helped shape the students' future outlook on critical issues of media rhetoric and internet law.

Assistant Professor of History Xiaoyue Yasin Li, alumni Mary Kate Kelly (SLA ’22) and Daniella Santoro (SLA ’21), alongside PhD Candidates Ruben Morales Forte and Luisa G. Melo, have been awarded highly prestigious fellowships by the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). These distinguished accolades symbolize the recognition and support granted to exceptional scholars and scholarly teams worldwide, fostering groundbreaking research in the humanities and interpretive social sciences.

Learn more about each of the award winners and the focus of their research below.

Xiaoyue Yasin Li — Assistant Professor, Tulane University (Department of History)

Xiaoyue Yasin Li is an Assistant Professor of History and MENA Studies at Tulane University. He received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 2021. As a historian of the modern Middle East, Xiaoyue Li’s scholarship centers on techno-infrastructure within its broader social milieu in Egypt, and explores the interplay of materiality, technology, capitalism, and everyday politics. His upcoming book, Taming an Iron Horse: Capital, Politics, and Rail Infrastructure in Egypt, revisits the modern Middle East as a frontier of empires and its entrenched entanglement with global histories of capitalism, empire, and resistance. Taking an infrastructural approach, this study accentuates the multilayered politics in motion at an empire’s frontier that oscillated between modernity and indigeneity, capitalization and decolonization, autocratic reality and democratic ethos. 

Project: Taming an Iron Horse: Capital, Politics, and Rail Infrastructure in Egypt 
Program:ACLS Fellowship Program 
Department: History

Abstract: In modern Egypt, the sprawling railway network not only magnetized global capital, but also kindled a divergent and sometimes clashing set of aspirations and practices. This book project examines the multiple, contingent, and fluid shades of meaning cast by a singular railway infrastructure from 1854 to 1933. It focuses on a diverse array of figures amidst Egypt’s mounting debt crisis — from colonial dignitaries, social critics, and environmental savants to intrepid female travelers, nomadic bandits, and displaced refugees. While powerful agents sought to tame the railways with vexing narratives of modernization, stringent governance, or nationalistic fervor, marginalized individuals danced on the fringes of legal boundaries, destabilizing the dictates set by the former. In every subversive act, they echoed heterogenous desires for redistributing social wealth and popular engagement with Egypt’s top-down modernization. Taking an infrastructural approach to revisit the modern Middle East, this project accentuates the multilayered politics in motion at an empire’s frontier that oscillated between modernity and indigeneity, capitalization and decolonization, autocratic reality and democratic ethos.

Mary Kate Kelly

Mary Kate Kelly (Andrew W. Mellon Foundation NASI Predoctoral Fellow) received her PhD from Tulane University in 2022, studying the linguistics of Maya hieroglyphic writing. Her research looks at linguistic variation in the inscriptions, in order to gain better insight as to the distribution of different, but related, linguistic groups among the ancient Maya. This study assesses the geographic distribution of language varieties, the relationship between language and power, and the ways in which sociopolitical forces affected historical language change.  

Project: Maya History in 3D   
Program: ACLS Fellowship Program   
Department: Anthropology

Abstract: The ancient Maya recorded their history on carved and painted hieroglyphic inscriptions, many of which are preserved in the archaeological record. While recent decipherments have made much of this history known to the scholarly community, modern Maya peoples are often excluded from rewriting this history from their invaluable perspective. This project initiates collaborative efforts with a Maya heritage community to cocreate a history of Waka’, an archaeological site in northern Guatemala. The ancient history, translated from the hieroglyphic monuments, will be narrated across three interrelated, public-facing media: an illustrated monograph; an interactive online database of 3D models of the monuments; and physicalizations (3D prints) of inscriptions interactively connected to the online database, which allows the viewer a tactile and visual experience of the monuments. Each element will bridge academic and Indigenous knowledge systems, focused on decolonizing our relationship to Maya history and opening a dialogue with the living Maya to enrich our understanding of the past.

Daniella Santoro

Daniella Santoro graduated from Tulane University in 2021 with a PhD in Medical Anthropology. Her dissertation explored the experiences of rehabilitation in the afterlife of gun violence and violently acquired injury in New Orleans, Louisiana. The ethnography focused on how residents with gun shot induced spinal cord injuries organize around wheelchair specific mobility and vie for social visibility and justice.  

Project: Wheelchair Life: Disability and Black Survival after Gun Violence in New Orleans   
Program: ACLS Fellowship Program   
Department: Anthropology

Abstract: This research examines the spaces of social and political erasure of those injured by gun violence in New Orleans. At the intersection of racist and ableist narratives that blame black men for their injuries and view disability only as suffering, gunshot survivors are underserved, their subjectivities and lifeworlds under-represented. ACLS funding supports research and writing about Black disability living history and gunshot survival in order to prepare a book manuscript centered around a social network of disabled survivors. “The Wheelchair Life” focuses on how gunshot survivors contest their social invisibility, build care networks and how disability identities are forged within the existing stakes of Black survival in New Orleans and the United States.

Ruben Morales Forte

Rubén Morales Forte is a Ph.D. student in Linguistic Anthropology. His dissertation research focuses on linguistic variation in the Ch'orti' Mayan language of Eastern Guatemala, Central America. His interests include Mayan languages, Maya archaeology, Maya Epigraphy, and Community Engagement as an approach to transforming scientific research. He has conducted archaeological fieldwork in the Maya Lowlands, the Maya Highlands, and the Pacific Coast of Guatemala. He has also worked with Kaqchikel, another member of the Mayan language family, and developed a joint community project with the Regional Museum of Southeastern Petén at Dolores, Guatemala. He was a Mellon Fellow for Community Engagement from 2018-2020. Before enrolling in the Ph.D. in Anthropology, he earned an MA in Latin American Studies at Tulane and a Licenciatura in Archaeology from Universidad del Valle de Guatemala. When not working, Ruben feels at his best watching sports, riding his bike, and exploring the outdoors.  

Project: Who Speaks How: Sociolinguistic Patterns Among Ch’orti’ Communities in Guatemala   
Program: Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship   
Department: Anthropology

Abstract: The research project, “Who Speaks How: Sociolinguistic Patterns Among Ch’orti’ Communities in Guatemala,” explores the elements configuring group identities within the speakers of a small Maya language in Guatemala. The research team traversed the mountainous areas of Chiquimula, to interview people about the different iterations of the language and which of those linguistic forms hold a special place for the local speakers. In this way, we learn about words falling out of use and those innovating the language, alternative counting systems, patterns for color derivation, and fascinating grammatical characteristics.

Luisa Helena Goncalves de Melo

Luisa G. Melo is a woman of color, interdisciplinary scholar, and visual artist from the marginalized periphery of Brasilia. She was trained as a graphic designer in Brazil, an urbanist in Mexico, and is currently a PhD student in City, Culture & Community at Tulane University. Her scholarship is the result of a long academic journey where she has crafted a unique path that integrates the arts with the social-spatial analysis of the city and counter-hegemonic movements taking place in Brazilian social peripheries. Each part of Melo’s personal-academic journey adds different colors to the lenses she use to analyze practices of freedom emerging in the anti-Black city, including her origin, identity, artistic training, broad geographical experiences, and community activism. She seeks to build spaces of freedom within her academic practice and community-engaged scholarship: thinking, theorizing, and organizing in the midst of “remembering we were never meant to survive” (Lorde 1997).  

Project: Refusing Spatial Exclusion: Black Placemaking in the Margins of Brazil’s Capital City   
Program: Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Innovation Fellowship   
Department: City, Culture & Community

Abstract: This dissertation is a multimodal ethnography of Black freedom practices in the racially segregated peripheries of Brasilia that demonstrates these practices can reshape oppressive cityscapes. In partnership with two local collectives (Casa Akotirene and Casa da Memória Viva de Ceilandia), the project co-produces a digital exhibition of a historically marginalized neighborhood, Ceilandia, through family archives and oral history. This digital humanities project combines collective learning, preserving community archives, and intergenerational organizing with youth in broadening the reach of the untold story of Ceilandia. It builds on Black feminism and Black geographies to document and analyze practices of Black placemaking in Brasilia under the theoretical framework of insurgent planning. By gathering and analyzing multiple media data, this dissertation shows sensory dimensions and emotional hues of storytelling and family archives, while the exhibition will serve as a digital meeting ground for the residents of Ceilandia to experience and analyze shared histories of struggle and resistance across Brasilia.

In a powerful showcase at SXSW 2024 in March, a group of recent alumni of the performing arts and digital media practices at Tulane University’s School of Liberal Arts stepped into the spotlight for the world premiere of a documentary based on their own original collegiate play. Roleplay is a 90-minute feature film that captures the development of the theater project and how the process helped the play’s participants navigate their own experiences with on-campus sexual violence.

One of the best docs I’ve seen so far this year is Katie Mathews’ Roleplay, a film that truly surprised me because it does what so few films like this are willing to do: It lets its subjects be messy, unpredictable, and human. Mathews has a deceptively subtle voice as a director, providing a supportive platform more than insisting on cinematic results. It leads to a film that’s all the more powerful by virtue of feeling so very real.

— Brian Tallerico, rogerebert.com

Assistant Professor of Theatre   
and Roleplay producer Jenny Mercein.

The play’s initial iteration came in response to Tulane University’s 2017 Climate Survey on Sexual Misconduct, whose findings charged administration and community members alike to reckon with the prevalence of on-campus sexual misconduct. In distressed response, the project began as a transformative act — not merely a piece of theatre, but a collective assessment and bold step toward healing and understanding. The development of the play’s script was a collaboration between then Adjunct Professor Darci Fulcher (now producer), filmmaker Katie Mathews (director, producer), and Assistant Professor of Theatre Jenny Mercein (producer), alongside fifteen undergraduate students and in partnership with Goat in the Road Productions.

Roleplay’s documentary debut and after party at the annual Austin festival marked a pivotal moment, where unaffiliated audience members were captivated by the doc's unique approach of mixing verité campus life footage with the raw, confessional space of the rehearsal room. The narrative film explores the creation of a performance script, born from the real-life experiences of its students during their sophomore year, and spurred by the university’s climate survey. From project start, the creators intentionally blurred the lines between reality and performance to bring viewers on a deeply personal, collective journey of understanding and action.

“What makes Roleplay so powerful and unique is the nuanced, intersectional lens of the film, which is a direct result of the students who created the project. These students understood that you cannot fully understand the problem of sexual violence and harassment without examining issues such as racism, homophobia, mental health struggles, and substance abuse,” said executive producer Jenny Mercein, also Assistant Professor of Theatre at Tulane. “I am deeply inspired by this generation of artists who helped us see that to understand and shift a culture that supports toxic behavior, we needed to explore the grey areas of complicity and consent where answers are not easy. These brave students led with vulnerability and authenticity, resulting in a film of undeniable power.”

“I first approached the process of creating the stageplay thinking I knew what I needed already —I understood the ‘black and white’ of so many things,” shared Aaron Avidon (SLA ’21), who played Lachlan. “But as I grew through the process of creating, I discovered how deeply nuanced the concepts we were approaching were. I grew to better understand myself, my role in a community, and how I can be the best ally for the people around me.”

Most of the original Roleplay cast — Avidon, Carl “CJ” Briggs Jr., Ross Brill, Alexandra Elam, Hannah Gordon, Grace Harmon Graugnard, Robert Holmes-A’court, Miranda Jo Kramer, Nagelle LeBoyd, Hailey Mozzachio, and Lucy Sartor — sat in the theater’s back row, reunited for the first time since their time together as students. The group collectively laughed, cheered, and gasped along with the crowd, emotional to finally see their work on a big, festival screen.

Noted Kramer (SLA ‘21), who played the role of Elle, “Roleplay allowed me to access things I had shoved down, offer myself compassion, and learn how to show up for others. It altered the way I saw myself on campus and inspired me to continue to pursue performance-based work as a force for change.”

The stage play explored student experiences with love, sex, power, and consent, and its first mounting enjoyed a sold-out run in 2019 — with the original cast winning the Big Easy Theatre Award for ‘Best Ensemble’. It was remounted in 2023 as part of the university’s sophomore strategic plan — All In 2.0 — following the 2022 survey. And the Roleplay reach has since expanded, in both formats. In mid-April, it was one of three films featured at the Yale Student Film festival, followed by a post-screening conversation moderated by Yale Communication and Consent Educators at the Ivy League university. And Louisiana State University is full steam ahead on its own production, with an LSU Theatre mainstage undergraduate production opening on their Baton Rouge campus in March 2025.

The film needs to be standard viewing at every university. The issues are discussed and confronted by the students themselves and in their own words and voices, which brings unmistakable sincerity to the message.

— Chris Hernandez, Film Speak

Alongside their commitment to supporting future productions of Roleplay at Tulane, the university’s administration has gone “All In” to combat sexual violence with a 2.0 action plan. Developing training for faculty, staff, students, employees, and leaders, offering grants to student-led projects that address sexual misconduct, funding three graduate assistant positions focused on prevention and outreach for graduate and professional student populations, and piloting a new intervention for students who have engaged in sexual misconduct, the refreshed initiative is thorough and tactical. Additional information on “All In” resources can be found on Tulane's “All In” website.

Added Title IX Associate Director, Julia Broussard, “We know that sexual violence prevention and education is most effective when a variety of different methods are used to inform and engage students, and Roleplay is such an innovative way to educate our students about sexual violence on campus — and to hopefully spark important, meaningful conversations. We’re so happy to be able to support it and heartened by all the positive feedback we’ve heard from students, employees, and community members about its impact.”

Roleplay is more than a play, or a film — it's a call to reflect, act, and change. As we celebrate the achievements of the students and faculty involved in bringing this project to life, we are reminded of the need for ongoing discussions and efforts to foster a safer, more inclusive campus environment at Tulane and across universities nationwide.

Cast, crew, and partners reunited in March at the SXSW premiere of Roleplay.

Meet the Cast

Carlyle Calhoun, host of the podcast Sea Change from WWNO, remarks that “there is no such thing as a simple environmental story.” This concept is one of my main takeaways from the Gulf Coast Connections Conference, hosted by the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South, Tulane School of Liberal Arts Environmental Studies Program, and the Tulane Center for Public Service, in collaboration with Rice University’s Center for Environmental Studies. Just as there is no such thing as a simple environmental story, there is no such thing as a simple anything when it comes to climate change.

I attended this conference with few expectations but assumed that it was going to cover environmental issues that the Gulf South faces, such as sea level rise, land loss, and oil exploration. However, it was rather an interdisciplinary look into environmental thinking in general, pulling work from journalists, activists, and scientists alike.

I heard voices from individuals like Daniel Freiss, an Environmental and Earth Sciences Professor in Tulane’s School of Science and Engineering, who discussed the concept of allocating carbon credits to protect mangrove ecosystems, and multimedia storyteller Luisa Dantas, who explores the role of narrative in social justice organizing. All of the presenters brought important questions regarding climate change in some shape or form to the surface: Freiss pondered the question, “can we use ecosystem services to incentivize conservation?” Rice University students Jadyn Bray-Boyce and Siena Yiin, creators of Gulf Streams Podcast, asked “how can I best present information on environmentalism and climate change in a way that is engaging and digestible?”

A common thread that ran through the conference was the need to include citizen stakeholders in all environmental projects, engaging the community at the ground level. Freiss discussed the effectiveness of socializing and creating community-based projects for mangrove restoration endeavors and Simone Domingue with the ByWater Institute at Tulane University underscored how real change starts with listening and elevating communities. Dantas similarly emphasized the need to “center co-creation and power sharing” in environmental narratives.

For centuries, we have created boxes to define and divide the world: humans vs. the natural world, hard sciences vs. soft sciences. But these boxes are limiting our ability to comprehend the breadth of the environmental problems that we face. Rather than simplifying our lives, they are constraining our knowledge and each other. When people think about climate they think about science: GIS mapping, carbon sequestration, and technical solutions to curb global warming. While these are all noteworthy and necessary areas of study, environmental thinking is about more than just science; it is about history, sociology, literature, unjust power dynamics, and most of all, it is about people. It is about how people interact with the natural world, how certain communities are unfairly exposed to harmful waste and toxins, and how people cooperate (or don’t) to find solutions and tackle environmental problems. 

Dr. Ochoa, Chair and Professor of the Department of Music at Tulane, presented her work on sound ecology, revealing the different types of relationships that Indigenous Peoples have with the natural environment that include senses often overlooked in Western environmental understandings. In her presentation, Dr. Ochoa emphasized the need to push historical interdisciplinary boundaries and recognize that knowledge should not be constrained to the traditional “academy.” 

Similarly, in my Climate Change & Indigenous Peoples class, we have discussed the analogy of the “hatchet” and “seed” in political ecology that seeks to dismantle harmful environmental narratives and begin to plant the seeds of a new, more inclusive ecology that encompasses more voices and perspectives. 

There is no simple solution to climate change — and many will continue to perpetuate the unfair power dynamics that got us to this point to begin with. If the conference revealed anything in its conclusion, it is that we must continue to find creative ways to reach the masses, uplift those voices that have been silenced for so long, and learn to work alongside one another.