“We all have our own light, our own perspective, to shine,” explains Tulane School of Liberal Arts alum Mwende “FreeQuency” Katwiwa (SLA ‘14). A Kenyan, immigrant, queer storyteller, FreeQuency (they/their) is the 2018 Women of the World Poetry Slam Champion, was a 2017 TEDWomen speaker, and their writing has been featured in publications such as the New York Times, OkayAfrica, Teen Vogue, and Huffington Post.

FreeQuency’s creative practice centers on their everyday actions and interactions, addressing topics of activism, #BlackLivesMatter, reproductive justice, and LGBTQ advocacy. Like most individuals and creative practitioners, the Covid-19 pandemic has been especially challenging for their work. “To be an artist before Covid-19 was pretty precarious work, unless you were coming from a privileged position,” said FreeQuency, explaining that many artists work multiple jobs or travel extensively to support their livelihood. “Our moment has heightened economic and societal fractures and highlights what it means to really dedicate your life to being an artist.”

While a student at Tulane, FreeQuency studied political economy and African and African Diaspora Studies (now Africana Studies). They were engaged with student groups such as the Black Student Union, where they resurrected the Black Arts Festival in 2014, and campus offices such as the Office of Multicultural Affairs and the Center for Public Service, where they received the Carolyn Barber-Pierre Trailblazer Award and served as the inaugural Bruce J. Heim Foundation Fellow, respectively. However, much of their involvement and creative voice emerged by witnessing and experiencing injustices alongside other Black students. As writers and activists visited Tulane, FreeQuency began taking advantage of direct time with them, and often gave opening remarks or an opening performance for these visitors. Years later, FreeQuency now extends this opportunity to university students when invited to speak or lead a workshop at universities.

“So much of my writing is in response to what I’m doing—the context I find myself in, the community I find myself in, the personhood I find myself in,” said FreeQuency. “But Covid-19 has challenged all of this.” Not only are their methods for creating shifting during this time due to quarantining and social distancing, but the reciprocal relationship between performers and audience members that occurs in real time is also transforming with a move online. In response, FreeQuency is writing as a more personal practice of processing experiences, feelings, and thoughts that this year continues to bring to the cusp, from political tensions, to fighting systemic racism, and mental and spiritual health during a pandemic.

“A story is a roadmap for understanding,” explains FreeQuency. “Writing is a powerful art, personal tool, and bridge between the sciences and arts—stories help us understand every aspect of the world around us.” Today, FreeQuency urges audience members to listen to the stories being told around themselves, and encourages everyone to consider what they want to say with their voice and time, continuously and consciously returning to the question: what is the story for me to tell?

Nearly six decades after its inception, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly known as the Food Stamp Program, has become the largest food and nutrition assistance program in the U.S. SNAP’s primary objective is to alleviate food insecurity by helping low-income families afford nutritious diets.

In 2019, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) reported that nearly 36 million individuals received SNAP benefits in an average month that year, with monthly household benefits around $260. SNAP has become an important “automatic stabilizer” in the U.S. safety net, expanding during bad economic times to help Americans. Today, due to the Covid-19 pandemic, SNAP caseloads have increased by an unprecedented 17 percent—between 6 to 7 million recipients—from just February to May 2020. It took almost 18 months to record similar increases in caseloads during the Great Recession.

Over the years, SNAP has come under political pressure to reform the program along many dimensions, including proposals to cut costs and restricting the types of eligible food items. While proposals to restructure the program must be based on credible research on SNAP’s effectiveness at reducing food insecurity and its effects on health or nutrition-related outcomes, my research has found that proposals framed as helping to make SNAP an anti-obesity program are often based on faulty data.

In studying SNAP's impacts, including on recipients’ health, we cannot merely compare recipients to income-eligible non-recipients because the former choose to participate in SNAP for reasons that we may not observe. Also, most studies on SNAP's effectiveness rely on self-reported participation in economic surveys, and there's evidence suggesting that between 20 to 50 percent of SNAP recipients do not report receiving benefits in survey data. These obstacles pose considerable challenges to researchers and can yield misleading results if not addressed. As a result, my collaborators and I have developed statistical methods to overcome these challenges by leveraging information on the determinants of participation and factors that help predict accurate reporting of SNAP receipt. For instance, survey respondents who have an adult present during the interview and those who are patient and friendly with interviewers provide more accurate benefit receipt responses. Using these methods, I find that SNAP participation is not associated with the probability of becoming obese or overweight. Research addressing participation quality also finds that SNAP meets its primary objective—it reduces food insecurity in households with children by about 6 to 11 percentage points.

As we look ahead to recovering from the economic fallouts of the coronavirus pandemic, the SNAP program stands out in our country’s safety net due to its ability to respond quickly and expand to meet the needs of millions of Americans. As such, efforts to strengthen the SNAP program, including the recent increases to the maximum benefit amounts that took effect on October 1, 2020, are welcome news.

Clinicians are predicting that a ‘tsunami’ of mental distress will emerge from the ongoing social and human devastation wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic. This would add to the already heavy burden weighing on the American mental health system. To take just one diagnosis, according to a 2019 report by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, an estimated 20% of adults have suffered from major depression at some point in their lives. The current crisis has resulted in renewed calls for increasing the availability of mental health services. And while most patients who suffer from mental illnesses turn to psychiatric medications, people are increasingly seeking help from psychotherapists regardless of whether they suffer from a diagnosable mental illness or not.

Yet psychotherapy remains poorly understood despite its increased popularity and long history. The familiar image of two people, sitting in a room, one sharing thoughts and feelings as the other listens attentively and empathetically leaves many questions unanswered. It also papers over important differences among therapeutic approaches. For its part, much academic writing has focused on psychiatry’s struggles with the persistent ambiguities that surround mental disorder, largely overlooking the work of clinicians who must make sense of what their patients suffer from and how they can be best helped. In two ongoing research projects, I examine how psychotherapy clinicians and researchers manage the radical uncertainty that surrounds mental illness.

My first book-in-progress, provisionally titled Managing the Self, is an in-depth study of a psychotherapy training program. Drawing on ethnographic observations and dozens of interviews, I show that while cure remains an elusive goal in the field, therapists develop their own notions of healing and responsibility. Trainees learn that doing good therapy and being an expert in this field depends largely on mastering the skill of using their own emotions to motivate patients to work on their own. In a second book-in-progress, titled The Science of Talk, I examine the politics of evidence in psychotherapy effectiveness research. I draw on historical and documentary evidence to trace debates about what therapy is and which interventions work and why. Together, my projects seek to answer the question of what it means to be an expert in a field that cannot promise answers nor cures for the problems under its purview.

I bring my focus on uncertainty, expertise, and science to my teaching in Sociology. In my “Mental Health and Illness” and “Introduction to Medicine” courses, I invite students to think critically about the fields of mental health and medicine more broadly. The key lesson they learn is that these fields are not simply about science and care. They are also powerful social, cultural, and economic systems that mirror and sometimes drive the inequities of their time. Importantly, these fields and the work of the professionals in them are moral engines that shape our very notions of what is normal and good. Together, my research and teaching highlight not only the tribulations that experts face when working in conditions of uncertainty, but also the social systems that sustain and legitimize their efforts.

For Broadway performer Joshua Castille, the symbol of a closed door, while once frightening, has become a welcome challenge. In late October 2020, Castille visited Visiting Assistant Professor Denise Crochet’s level three American Sign Language (ASL) class to share how this transformation occurred.

Castille, a Deaf performing artist, grew up in a small town near Lafayette, Louisiana. From a young age Castille knew he wanted to perform, and since the time he joined the theatre department at his high school, he has fought to make his passion for acting his reality. While Castille faced many obstacles along the way, including financial setbacks and discouragement from friends and family, he continued to work to open the doors ahead of him. Today, Castille lives in Los Angeles and has worked with Deaf West Theatre company and starred in the Broadway production of “Spring Awakening,” among many other productions.

This is the journey that Castille shared in Crochet’s ASL class recently, and the story he is dedicated to sharing as inspiration for others to let go of fear and pursue their dreams. Crochet’s level three ASL class is comprised of students across the university and mostly focuses on storytelling in ASL. For Castille’s visit, Crochet also opened the class to a group of theatre students to hear directly from an artist that has worked in small regional theatres to Tony stages. “It’s a great story,” said Crochet in regard to Castille’s experience. “It’s also important to acknowledge that Deaf people are everywhere, and Deaf culture is powerful.”

During Castille’s class visit, Crochet encouraged her students to tune in to his signing, but she and another professional interpreter offered accommodations for those attending that weren’t knowledgeable of ASL. In light of Covid-19, Castille’s visit took place over Zoom, and while students, faculty, and others are adjusting to digital life as a new normal, Crochet expressed that digital learning poses unique challenges for learning sign language. As Crochet explained, “it’s hard to learn a three-dimensional, visual spatial language in a two-dimensional format of online teaching.” In addition, Crochet shared that “one-fifth of the language is seen in non-manual markers, such as markers of the face, so mask-wearing makes this challenging. But, like everyone, we’re doing the best we can.” And in the spirit of Castille’s metaphor for opening doors, the online structure of Crochet’s course in October allowed more students to be present for Castille’s lecture. “The more people know about the Deaf community, the more accessible the world becomes,” said Crochet.

From start to finish, an excavation season on Tulane University’s Pompeii I.14 Project takes precisely five weeks: 24 days for digging and recording below the floors of the Roman city, followed by one day to refill all the trenches, re-establishing the original floor level and making the site once again safe for the millions of tourists who visit each year. The success of that short period, however, is made possible by work across the entire year. As project director, I spend the fall writing reports and coordinating publication of the preceding season, as well as applying for the necessary funding to secure our work for another year. In the spring, I finalize the staff — approximately 40 professional archaeologists, graduate students, and undergraduates from Tulane and other institutions — and coordinate logistics that range from where we will open new trenches, to how we can most effectively incorporate emerging technologies, to which local deli will deliver the most nutritious lunches to the work site. As the spring semester winds down, the project launches into high gear, with everyone convening in the small modern town alongside the ruins that becomes our home for almost two months.

The Pompeii I.14 Project is a collaboration between Tulane and the Archaeological Park of Pompeii, conducted under the purview of the Italian Ministry of Culture. We focus on reconstructing the lives of the city’s lower classes, which included a significant enslaved workforce. We are excavating a building complex located near the ancient amphitheater, with hopes to expand to the larger neighborhood in coming years. When Pompeii was destroyed by the volcano Mt. Vesuvius in 79 CE, our site — in the city block labeled by the modern address system as Region 1, Insula 14 — was used for various commercial and industrial functions with, by Roman standards, a decidedly low-status bent. In the first two years of the project, we’ve identified businesses such as sit-down and carry-away dining establishments, a variety of shops, and a workshop manufacturing reed mats and baskets. By digging below the floors of the eruption phase we are able to piece together life in the centuries preceding the disaster. Pompeii, after all, existed as a city for nearly 700 years before the eruption, and the plateau on which it is located was inhabited centuries before that.

The lower classes are always more difficult to access archaeologically than the elite. Not only did non-elites own fewer objects, but also their belongings were more likely to be made of materials that do not survive over time, such as wood, leather, fabric, and wicker. Our approach, therefore, brings together interdisciplinary, humanistic research with the sciences and cutting-edge technologies to recover as much information as possible from the excavation site. The data we collect varies widely, from the large-scale construction history encoded in the building’s walls and floors to stories told by small-scale artifacts — from the broken bits of ceramics, metal, and glass that we recover and study by the thousands each year, to the remains of food scraps less than a millimeter in size. Undertaking such a detailed analysis can reveal incredible insights; the recent find of a black peppercorn within a cesspit associated with the restaurant, for example, reveals that the food served there included expensive flavorings, suggesting a menu far from the simple breads and gruels long imagined to sustain the Roman masses. Grown on the western coast of India, the peppercorn likewise attests to the massive and cosmopolitan trade network in which Pompeii’s residents participated.

In addition to our research goals, we aim for the project to contribute to a more just future for Mediterranean archaeology, which remains among the least inclusive of liberal arts disciplines due especially to the high costs of travel for fieldwork. Our team includes undergraduate excavators from Tulane and other universities, whom we select via a competitive application and interview process. A recent study has shown that archaeological fieldwork in the Mediterranean costs an average of $5,000–6,000 a summer for an undergraduate, a price that immediately limits participation. Much of my effort throughout the year, therefore, is spent securing funding for the team’s living expenses, allowing a diverse group of students to participate at no or very little cost. Thus far, the work has been supported by a range of grants from Tulane—the Lavin Bernick Faculty Research Grant, COR Research Fellowship, School of Liberal Arts Faculty Fellowship, Mellon Assistant Professor Grant, and the Ernest Henry Riedel Fund in Classical Studies, as well as external grants from the Loeb Classical Library Foundation and the Rust Family Foundation. I am currently applying for larger governmental grants and am interested in collaborating also with private patrons.

My work in Pompeii is often met with surprise; research at the site has been ongoing for nearly 250 years, and many think the city must have given up its secrets long ago. That idea could not be further from the truth. Pompeii represents a unique archaeological laboratory, offering a range of data simply unmatched by any other Roman city. As long as we continue approaching it with new questions, new methods, and new perspectives, there will be no limit to what it can teach us about our shared human past.  

Discover more about the Pompeii I.14 Project

Explore a virtual rendering of the Pompeii site using this multimedia tool:



Listen to Professor Allison Emmerson discuss the last regular day in Pompeii on the HISTORY This Week podcast:

 
Watch archeologists prepare for a day of excavating at the Pompeii site:

DEJA WELLS: How would each of you define social responsibility, both as a concept and in relation to your work at Tulane?

BRIAN T. EDWARDS: Responsibility imagines that you have some agency to make a change, or that you may respond. The word “social” is a complex word, particularly in a university community. Who belongs to it? What is the relation of the institution’s past to the present and future? For me, the phrase “social responsibility” suggests that we have the imperative to respond in relation to the social worlds around us. I think of universities as families with long and varied histories. As each person enters the family of Tulane, we are given the task to understand our responsibility in helping it reflect the kind of present and future that we would like to see.

ANNELIESE SINGH: When I think about the word “responsibility,” I also think of the ability to respond. I think about Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Beloved Community,” where we are building a community in which we are socially responsible to one another where everyone’s needs are met. People who have come before us have already built the Tulane culture we’re living in now in 2020, and now we can think about the Tulane of 2030. Our social responsibility includes asking, “Is this a Tulane that affirms all community members, or do we want to grow into something different?”

DW: Your answers made me think of my involvement in the Ripple Effect with the first-year students during the 2020 move in, which is a program that explores racial inclusivity on campus. One of the examples I would give to new students was centered around being accountable for your classmates’ access in our classrooms and on campus. If it were just you, that engagement alone isn’t enough for you to learn. You learn from your peers and the questions they may ask that you weren’t even thinking about. You also learn from the answers they have, and the experiences they have. So, my next question bridges your responses and just that—the importance of individuality and learning from others. In what ways do you challenge yourselves not to uphold normative ideals in your everyday life?

AS: When I think about normative, I think about something I want to resist and question. I want Tulane to be a place where we can question the things that we have been socialized to accept. For instance, I was socialized to perform my gender and sexuality in binary ways, but I also got to question these things as a queer, non-binary person when I was a student at Tulane. As a mixed-race person, I grew up learning normative ideas about race that were not helpful in ending racism. These normative cultures didn’t really help me come to understand the world or myself. Asking critical questions is an important equity and justice practice. I even ask exactly what does my role as Chief Diversity Officer mean? It implies that there’s one person, and I want to question that idea. There’s not one person. It takes all of us.

BTE: I have trouble accepting an unproblematized sense of what is “normal.” So much of what is said to be “normal” has been constructed, and there’s often a lot of power at stake in maintaining it as “normal.” I remember the first time I had the opportunity to live in another language and being fascinated by the many different ways you express the “same” idea in different contexts. There is no “normal” in language, and this is part of why I’m so committed to students learning a second language. My perspective has been influenced as much by travel as by critical theory written about the everyday performance of self, of gendered and other identities. What does it mean to have multiple selves that we perform? How can we even use the word “normal” anymore?

DW: Both of your responses resonate strongly with me. I remember being a very young child and thinking about what it meant to question society’s “norms.” And now that’s kind of radicalized my approach to universities. I haven’t had a choice to think of institutions as experiences, only to question them. In some ways I think I’m upholding a normative of what a university experience looks like, but I’m also actively working against it by existing in spaces that society tells me I’m not supposed to be in. Moving into the context of campus life, how do you describe what social responsibility looks like at Tulane?

…we are building a community in which we are socially responsible to one another where everyone’s needs are met.Anneliese Singh

BTE: One of the exciting things about universities is that there’s a constant flow of new people, and therefore new ideas and energy, like a river. The course of a river seems hard to change; although, here in New Orleans we know that the Mississippi actually has shifted over time. For me, Tulane’s profound relationship to New Orleans is key to our future. In the School of Liberal Arts, we are constantly thinking about that relationship and our sense of responsibility to the environment that we live in, both in terms of the climate and to the people and arts that sustain this city, and developing sustainable ways to bring both city and university into greater dialogue.

AS: I keep returning to the idea of the “Beloved Community”—I know this is something that we can build here at Tulane. I think this is a gift we were given by the Civil Rights movement, and now the Black Lives Matter movement, among many others. What would it look like to build a culture at Tulane where everyone’s needs are met? Of course, it’s complicated. We have to keep asking ourselves, “How does internalized patriarchy live in all of us?” “How does internalized whiteness live in each of us?” Not just in folks who are subjugated, but in everyone. We can build a Tulane culture where we lean into these critical questions every day.

DW: Considering the positions that you are in as campus leaders, how do you give access to others?

AS: Building bridges may sound a little cliché, but this is so critically important. Even when we have deep divides. I don’t want to cancel anyone in this work of equity and justice. It’s 2020—if I cancel people, then I don’t get to grow and learn something about myself. I’m not talking about exposing myself to all types of harm. Boundaries are important. But that’s why I’m loving higher education right now. We can lean into courageous conversations and discomfort in healthy ways so that being at Tulane means we are changing.

BTE: I believe that the people you bring into an institution is one of the more influential changes you can make as a leader. Sometimes this is about people we hire, and sometimes it is about the practices we put into place. In the last year, we’ve made a substantial change in how we conduct hiring by having an “equity representative” on every faculty search committee. Their job is not to argue for any individual person, but to make sure that our hiring process has considered implicit and other biases at every step of the process.

DW: How do we foster a community-based culture—a community in which all students are in self-affirming company? And how have you been able to implement these efforts in your respective roles?

AS: I think historically Tulane has been a mostly white male institution and the vestiges of that carry over into 2020. A community-based culture means that we are not just “diversifying” from white men and women, then including other people; we are actually starting over. A lot of people assume that my role is only to support black, indigenous, and people of color students, faculty, staff, and that’s not what it’s about at all. It’s about questioning the cultures that we have here, looking at the practices, and pinpointing those that are exclusionary. For example, racism seems insurmountable, but I think we can reduce racism in our everyday practices and policies right now as we build the “Beloved Community.”

BTE: Universities tend to be places that encourage thinking forward to new social conditions, but there’s also sometimes an event that pushes discussions forward in more dramatic fashion. The killing of George Floyd and the subsequent protests about systemic racism this summer are such a moment. The possibility for change can seem impossible even through it is sometimes right in front of us. Universities are places where we are able to deconstruct and then reconstruct aspects of the social—of the community—that we’ve been exploring and debating for years. As educators, we have to be optimists. I frequently say that if you are not an optimist as an educator, you are in the wrong business, because our students will outlive us. So, as educators our job is to work with you, our students, toward that future.

As a chemistry major and Arabic minor, Lily Sahihi never imagined that her two passions would intersect. “Arabic and STEM have both played huge parts in my life, but I usually think about them in very separate contexts,” she shared. “Having the opportunity to combine these two studies into interdisciplinary research is something I never expected but I’m incredibly grateful to explore.”

During a class on Arabic root forms, Middle East & North African Senior Professor of Practice Bouchaib Gadir mentioned the similarities between Arabic and DNA in stem cells. “That seed was planted in my head, and I just couldn’t stop thinking about it,” Lily continued. She pulled out her notes from Arabic and biology classes and started forming connections. That day she reached out to Professor Gadir, explaining how she thought the concept had potential and the two applied for a research grant through Tulane’s Center for Engaged Learning & Teaching, which covered the cost of research materials and provided a student stipend.

After being notified that they received the grant, Dr. Gadir began to create short lessons and explanations on the semantics of the Arabic language as it relates to the stemming of roots, while Lily took that information and amalgamated it with research on stem cells and amino acids.

The research looks to draw parallels between the way that Arabic words are formed and the formation and functions of amino acids present in stem cell DNA. In Arabic lexicology, the “root” of a word is made up of three letters that create a core meaning. Prefixes, suffixes, and clitics (short forms of words that cannot stand alone and must be added to other words) are then added to form more specific nouns and verbs. For example, by taking the root k-t-b and adding vowels and suffixes, the words kitab (كتاب), which means book, katib (كاتِب), which means writer, maktaba (مَكتَبة), which means library, and many others can be formed. All of these words ultimately share the same root, and their meanings can be attributed to having to do with writing.

The ultimate base of the biological side of the research surrounds the fact that RNA is made up of a series of codons, which are created by a sequence of three nucleotides. This research also mainly focuses on stem cells, which, in their embryonic form, can divide into most or all cell types in an organism. The genetic makeup of these cells dictates what they will become, using a series of transcription factors that signify if certain genes (segments of DNA) will be active or inactive.

These genes are transcribed into RNA, which is made up of series — or three-letter nucleotide groupings known as codons. Each nucleotide is made of a ribose molecule, a phosphate group, and either adenine, guanine, cytosine, or uracil. The codon that three nucleotides form specifies the production of an amino acid. Each of the 20 amino acids that could be produced has a sequence of three nucleotides, along with specific traits and characteristics. Similar to the way Arabic roots dictate a core meaning, three nucleotides dictate an amino acid, and similar letter pairings and patterns also show noticeable similarities in the functions of their respective amino acids.

“Lily’s innovative research is grounded in critical thinking,” Professor Gadir said. “The skills she has developed, such as enhanced analytical abilities and the capacity to identify connections between different domains, are vital for engaging with diverse frameworks.”

The goal of this research is to provide an interdisciplinary understanding of both topics in such a way that research on each may contribute to the theorization of both. It also may contribute to the creation of new and novel models of genetic coding.

There are many nuances to this research including new studies of Arabic lexicology that suggest that some words that share two letters of the root share striking similarities in meaning, regardless of the third letter. This is furthered by looking at the amino acids that only share the same sequence of two letters and their functions.

“Lily's project embodies the goals of interdisciplinary research initiatives that seek to merge STEM disciplines with a liberal arts education,” Professor Gadir shared. “Her work highlights the importance of integrating various fields to gain a deeper understanding of complex issues.”

On a clear, hot morning in late September, freshmen from Adjunct Professor Laura Kelley’s class "Indian Tribes On the Bayou” (Honors Colloquium COLQ 1020-07) boarded a bus headed to the Southeastern tip of Louisiana, where an endless network of bayous and tributaries weave their way into the Gulf of Mexico.

Upon arriving in Port Sulphur, Louisiana, Tulane students and faculty joined volunteers from the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana (CRCL). Together, they moved hundreds of bags of oyster shells into small fishing boats to make the short trip to Grand Bayou Indian Village, home of the Atakapa-Ishak/Chawasha Tribe.

Freshman Kali Lasseigne, who grew up exploring the swamps and bayous of Berwick, Louisiana, immediately noticed something off about this landscape. Exposed roots from erosion and dead trees made the land look almost desert-like. Most notably, “the marsh had big dents in it, as if someone took a bite out of the land,” she explains.

Once stacked together, the bags of oyster shells — products of CRCL’s decade-long recycling program — mimic natural oyster reefs, fighting back against coastal erosion and helping to prevent the “bites” that Kali observed. In Grand Bayou Indian Village, the assembly line started up again, with help from Atakapa-Ishak/Chawasha tribal members, unloading the oyster bags to stack along the shoreline. Several students even jumped in the water, getting thigh-high in the marsh, to lay down the first layer of bags. Professor Kelley noted how, in nearby Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe’s land, she has seen CRCL bags in action, where even after sustaining damage from Hurricane Ida, the reefs were doing what they were meant to do, protect the land. Over time, she explains, “they become almost cement-like. And then baby oysters grow on top of them, so it becomes like a living reef.”

Oyster reefs not only offer storm protection but create habitats for marine life like fish, crabs, and shorebirds. Plus, a single oyster filters up to fifty gallons of water a day, contributing to a healthier gulf while growing nutritious, regenerative food. “Oysters are really the perfect biomaterial,” says Saanvi Nair, a freshman who plans to major in cell molecular biology.

Students like Saanvi and Kali, both on a pre-med track, recognized the benefit of the anthropological (and interdisciplinary) approach of the course. Tribes like the Atakapa-Ishak/Chawasha and the Pointe-au-Chien face interconnected challenges — coastal erosion, overfishing, the after-effects of exploitative mining and oil drilling, man-made and natural disasters — that cannot be siloed into single disciplines. By engaging directly with the people affected, the course creates a holistic framework for understanding complex issues at play. For someone interested in medicine and molecular biology, Saanvi gained perspective on issues of health equity while exploring the connection between history and health.

And the journey out to Grand Bayou Indian Village gave her a much-needed context. “Seeing coastal erosion first-hand and seeing how it affects actual people makes it a lot more tangible,” she shared. “And you just feel more connected to the cause.”

Throughout the rest of the semester, Kelley’s class partners with the Pointe-au-Chien Indian Tribe, designing projects around their needs. This semester, Kelley’s class wrote a French-English children’s book, focusing on the history and culture of fishing and food, that will get published and used at Pointe-au-Chien’s new French-Indigenous immersion school, Ecole Pointe-au-Chien.

“One of my favorite aspects of Native culture (so far) is the idea of stewardship of the land,” shared Kali. “Every Native culture we have learned about — and there have been many — has respected, loved, and tended to the land in a way we simply do not see today.”

Grand Bayou Indian Village sits at the edge of the gulf, one of the only tribal communities accessible exclusively by water. The Tribe first raised their houses when Hurricane Katrina floodwater reached an unprecedented 10 feet; it is now an entire floating village, stilted above the water.

Like the mighty oyster itself, the reciprocal benefits of this small project were manyfold. Oyster bags help preserve an important cultural and historic site.

And, as Kelley points out, with recent storms Helene and Milton fresh on everyone’s mind, “The problems on these frontline communities are not just a problem of Pointe-au-Chien, and not just a problem of Grand Bayou Indian Village and others — it’s an everybody problem, right?”

“If we don't work together as a community and deal with these things then we're going to get nowhere fast,” Kelley goes on.

“We get a lot of negative news, and it feels very depressing, like we can't do anything about climate change and all the associated problems with it,” Kelley adds. “And then you do something like this, and you think, if we all just did something in our backyard, that little something in all of our backyards amounts to a whole lot of something.”

Service learning is a requirement for all Tulane students, and the Center for Public Service (CPS) works to cultivate lasting, mutually beneficial relationships with CRCL and other community organizations, allowing professors like Kelley to build community engagement into their courses in such innovative ways.

“Of course, this class has made me want to volunteer more,” Kali shared. “Not only do I get to connect with my roots, I get to be a part of something larger than myself, and who wouldn’t want more of that?”

Anyone is welcome to volunteer with CRCL, but as Kelley points out, there’s an even simpler way to help: eat oysters. About 35 restaurants in New Orleans participate in CRCL’s oyster shell recycling project, and by dining there, patrons help return shells to the Gulf to build reefs and breathe life back into the coastline — a win-win for everyone.

Young Public Scholars Program - Summer 2021

Geared toward high school students, the School of Liberal Arts Young Public Scholars Summer Program offers an exceptional opportunity for students to immerse themselves in today's most pressing issues.

What does it mean to be living in “historic times”? Aren’t all times historic? I’ve been thinking about that well-worn phrase a lot over the past several months as our lives have been upended by multiple crises: medical, economic, environmental, social, and political.

When one hears seasoned news commentators say that they don’t remember something happening in their lifetimes, or that the last historic parallel for it is the 1910s or 1920s, or when there has never been an occasion of it, it gives one pause. And then to step back and recognize that these otherwise exceedingly rare and disparate events are overlapping in time—it forces a reckoning.

Time itself is affected by pandemics, as it is by environmental crises and a presidential election. We are living now in “phases” and have learned to count isolation days. We have learned that the word “quarantine,” which for this particular virus refers to two weeks, comes from the Italian word quarantina, meaning “forty days,” the amount of time ships from plague-stricken countries were kept offshore in 14^th-century Venice.

In other contexts, I have compared the challenge of life during this pandemic with its closures and the rupture of plans as like a marathon. For long distance runners, the idea of pacing is familiar. Knowing how long the race is helps you to pace accordingly. One of the aspects of our current situation is not knowing how long its duration will be. We keep running and running and running…

Running multiple races all at once is, frankly, unbearable. Now is the time to step back and reflect on the collective exhaustion that so many of us are feeling. And that we are mere days away from a presidential election that people of both parties agree is deeply consequential requires us to pause.

This issue of our newsletter brings together scholars and students alike from the School of Liberal Arts with pieces on civic engagement, the Court, voting, and the campaign itself to bring a wide range of context to the upcoming election.

And on October 29 at 7 p.m., I will moderate a panel on Zoom called “Election 2020: Tulane Experts Bring Context to an Historic Election.” Professors Karissa Haugeberg (history), Jana Lipman (history), Scott Nolan (political science), Robert Westley (law), and I will bring context—historical, legal, global and social—on an election whose impact will be felt for generations.

Be well – and be sure to vote!

Brian Edwards
Dean and Professor