“I don’t think it is trite to say that learning languages broadens your horizons,” said Adrienne Gonzales, who began her role as the director of the School of Liberal Arts Language Learning Center in September 2020. As Gonzales explains, “academically and professionally, it’s really important to understand that there will always be something lost in translation. Giving yourself the ability to read a text in its original language, or to consume media or have conversations in other languages, allows you to use your own critical thinking skills to interpret meaning. That is powerful.”

Gonzales has more than a decade of experience aiding students in linguistic and cultural education, as well as supporting faculty members working with those students. And while she loves teaching, Gonzales has focused her research and work on programming and innovation in classroom technology. Prior to coming to Tulane, she spent ten years at the University of Denver (DU) where she was director of the Center for World Languages and Cultures and a teaching associate professor. At DU, Gonzales worked on interdisciplinary integration of linguistic and (inter)cultural competencies, increasing access to Less Commonly Taught Languages, language and academic assessment, and faculty support and professional development. 

School of Liberal Arts Dean Brian Edwards is thrilled to have Gonzales join the school. “Given our commitments to a global liberal arts, we sought a leader with a vision for 21st-century language teaching that is conversant with new technologies and creative in meeting the demands of a new generation of students,” said Edwards. “Adrienne exemplifies this leadership goal, and we cannot wait to see her elevate the Language Learning Center.”

Gonzales is excited to bring her previous experience to the Language Learning Center and is also eager to help the Center become a resource that will benefit Tulane and the broader community, beyond its role as a language lab. “I’m looking forward to working with departments across the school to streamline our efforts and centralize offerings in a clear and concise manner. When we can see the bigger picture, we’re able to think more strategically about program assessment, placement assessment, and policies we can standardize, which will benefit language students at every stage of their career, on campus and off.”

Gonzales points to another important aspect of learning languages that fuels her work—building community and affinities to other cultures. As she settles into her new role, she will explore how the Center can draw on the city’s history and diverse communities to offer languages vital to the region, such as Louisiana French and Vietnamese. “We’re living at a time when universities are shutting language centers down,” said Gonzales. “But we see Tulane prioritizing a renewed vision for this language center right now, which is exciting and exemplifies a commitment to the region in which it exists, to educating global thinkers, and to supporting faculty.”

In the spring of 2020, the School of Liberal Arts announced two new additions to the school’s summer programs roster: Creative Industries Through the Crisis and Contagions, Virality and Disease. Welcoming intellectual and social growth from our current moment, professors across the school updated coursework in these programs to remain interdisciplinary in their approach and grounded in research, yet focused on the future.

Each course in the Contagions, Virality and Disease summer program equipped students with a broader historical context for discussing Covid-19, but students were presented opportunities to draw parallels between current and historical experiences in history professor Karissa Haugeberg’s course, the “History of Medicine.” A popular course for both liberal arts and pre-med students, Haugeberg offers this course regularly but explained that this summer it took on a new life. “While in the past I taught this course more straightforwardly as an intellectual history, I reframed it to focus on how medicine is experienced from the patient’s point of view, focusing more on the social history of medicine.” Doing so allowed students to engage in discussions ranging from Italy’s response to the bubonic plague to the beginning of the AIDS crisis, exploring similar questions individuals faced then, and now: How do we respond to physicians offering differing advice as they learn more about a new virus? Whose body is put at risk to care for others? To what degree do we really value those whom we call heroes, when we don’t pay them well?

“Taking a look at the social and political history of medicine led the students to discuss racism, economic inequality, gender, and politics,” explained Haugeberg. “And while the politics of the Covid pandemic framed almost everything we talked about, the students were also very disciplined in their study of particular historical contexts that framed different pandemics.”

Theatre and dance professor Leslie Scott also adapted a course she has taught in the School of Liberal Arts for the past two years for the new Creative Industries Through the Crisis summer program. In her course “Non-profit Development,” students focused on the main elements of a tax-exempt organization, fundraising, design thinking, advocacy, and strategic planning. For each of the course’s five modules, Scott led discussions on what the organizational element encompassed before the pandemic and how these elements have shifted due to Covid. “I really don’t see a world where we’re moving backward,” explained Scott. “Regardless of where we are with Covid, there are some new best practices that are going to be here to stay. This is a moment of change, of philanthropic giving, of social justice work, and reformation.”

About half of the students in this course were also enrolled in the service-learning component of the class focusing on community engagement. Working with Scott’s colleagues at the non-profit collaborative dance company BODYART, students concentrated on one of two projects: either conducting research with the Center for Sustainable Economic Development in New Orleans’ Lower Ninth Ward looking at how the term “blight” can raise or lower the economic standards of community, or creating virtual empowerment classes for women in domestic violence shelters. Throughout the summer, each student worked on these projects in a way that was tailored to their own interests, so while a student in communication helped develop language for the classes, a statistics student helped crunch numbers on blight research.

“Traditionally,” Scott expressed, “service learning would be in person, so we’ve had to shift our expectations.” Rather than working on the ground in communities this summer, Scott’s students conducted research for their projects digitally. Although the experience differed from before, Scott believes this continued to reinforce what social change looks like at a practical level. Similarly, Haugeberg found methods to emphasize group learning that students would normally experience in a classroom. Posting primary documents, such as an 18th century document on smallpox, to the Hypothesis software, Haugeberg assigned students with the task of highlighting and defining one term in the shared document so each classmate could read it more easily. “We’re all adapting to new ways of learning and life, but it’s important to continue thinking creatively about how to interact with each other in ways that are intellectually stimulating,” said Haugeberg.

Based in New Orleans and Los Angeles, professor Leslie Scott established BODYART in 2006 with the goal to create collaborative space for projects that incite conversation and community discourse. Scott's "Non-Profit Development" course included a service learning component where students worked with the the collaborative dance company BODYART.

Writing this note for the first newsletter of the 2020-21 academic year has special meaning to me. This past week, the much-anticipated fall semester got underway.

It has been a summer like none other. Gone were so many of the summer activities and events that we look forward to each year, from cookouts and festivals to concerts and ball games. With travel severely restricted, vacations were put off; research trips to archives or field sites postponed for another time. Summer internships and jobs moved online, when they weren’t cancelled altogether.

In their place, we worked from home, whether in overcrowded households (without summer camps for the children) for some of us, or in social isolation for others. From our homes, we followed news as Covid-19 contracted in some areas, and then surged in others. A new term was coined—“doomscrolling”— to describe the experience of following multiple global crises from our phones or computers. We searched for means by which to cope.

All the while, many across Tulane worked tirelessly to bring our students and faculty back to campus in an environment built to maintain public health during an historic time. The slower, more contemplative rhythm of the typical summer on a college campus gave way to an intense schedule of meetings and planning, much of it on Zoom.

Virtual planning sessions led to a massive on-the-ground operation, as partners in facilities, campus services, and IT transformed the campus with 18 impressive temporary classroom buildings, a temporary dining facility, our own “tents for the arts,” and the retrofitting of classrooms with technology that allows students to be present even when they are not able to be in class. Our Campus Health division, working with the School of Medicine and our School of Public Health, developed a testing and public health protocol second to none. With research on the novel coronavirus constantly yielding new discoveries, we made adjustments, scrapped some plans and developed new ones.

In the School of Liberal Arts, we recrafted our curriculum so as to be able to protect the most vulnerable, while providing a world-class education to our students in this complex new environment. With more than 370 faculty teaching for the School of Liberal Arts this fall, and more than 1,300 classes on our schedule for the fall, we developed a range of online, in-person, and “hybrid” classes across our curriculum, at the high quality we expect of ourselves. Liberal Arts faculty engaged in training and took courses to learn techniques and methods for teaching in the new formats.

And while all of this work was going on, millions across New Orleans and the world came together in protest of the latest expression of the deep and persistent racism in our society. The killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer on Memorial Day, a vicious act that resonated with countless other killings of African Americans, spurred urgent manifestations and vital discussions, in public gatherings and marches and in public fora on social media.

The two trajectories that marked this summer not only intersected in time, but in more profound ways too. Last spring, when the Covid-19 shutdowns were new, people frequently asked when we might get back “to normal.” But as the discussion around systemic racism reminded us and taught us, we decidedly do not want to get back to a “normal” that excludes and represses so many of our brothers and sisters, our colleagues and students.

As we do the incredibly challenging work of setting up a safe learning environment for the Tulane community, we are innovating in many ways. We are also asking what aspects of the pre-Covid world we want to recuperate, and which we might leave behind.

I have never felt more certain of the centrality of the kinds of discussions we have in the liberal arts to the world we are in the process of remaking. I have never felt more energized by the students and faculty and staff of this great School. This will surely be a year like none other—I look forward to our work together.

Brian Edwards
Dean and Professor

According to The World Bank, approximately 736 million people around the world live in extreme poverty. The Borgen Project, an innovative non-profit organization headquartered in Seattle, is dedicated to lowering this number and addressing instability faced by those individuals living on less than $1.90 a day. Working with volunteers in more than 900 U.S. cities, the organization focuses on creating change through U.S. foreign policy and program implementation in the areas of international food security, child and maternal survival, and water accessibility.

This summer I served as a Political Affairs Intern with The Borgen Project. The role was an ideal opportunity to exercise my knowledge gained from political science courses at Tulane, while also discovering additional ways to work with policymakers and community members on eradicating hunger and increasing health. In our constantly shifting world, it is critical to support one another in any way we are able, and The Borgen Project served as a platform for me to contribute to a global fight against poverty through politics.

While working with the team, I forged connections with students across the nation who, like myself, were looking to promote activism through legislation. We met with Congressional leaders monthly to share facts on their ability to reduce global poverty by advocating for bills related to topics such as Covid-19 responses, ending Tuberculosis, and keeping girls in school. In addition, we educated citizens throughout the U.S. on how to contact their leaders by hosting networking events and through our presence on social media.

Throughout the past few years, Tulane and my community have strengthened my knowledge and broadened my skills on my journey to a career in international politics and social justice. But it is critical to recognize that my education is just one piece of the puzzle. In fact, opportunities, experiences, and internships, such as working with The Borgen Project, are some of the most powerful tools I have gained as a young adult. These experiences continue to build on my education, and equally important, allow me to gain confidence in fighting for what I believe.

March 11, 2020: the day every Tulane student’s life changed. Characterized by the dedensification of campus and the shift to online-only instruction, the sudden campus shutdown seemed to unleash nothing short of panic and chaos. While many of my friends scrambled to book flights home, international students like myself watched as countries began to close their borders and impose strict lockdowns. Lucky enough to have arrived home in Mumbai, India, just a week before the nationwide lockdown went into effect, I entered self-quarantine and began preparing for online instruction. Following a turbulent remainder of the semester with time differences, lagging internet, disconnectedness, and the occasional lack of motivation to study, I was able to successfully complete my Spring 2020 coursework. However, the day my final exams ended, I realized that Covid-19 had quashed all my hopes and efforts of a summer internship.

Months of applying and interviewing seemed to go nowhere, all exacerbated by the Covid-19 recession. I was worried that I was not going to have an internship in the most crucial summer of college, just before my senior year. But within weeks of classes ending, things moved quickly, and I found myself with two offers! I landed an internship with Global Resources International (GRI), a medical device contract manufacturer, as an Operations & Supply Chain Intern. During the course of this two-month internship, I worked at the Mumbai office to transition the company's Enterprise Resource System (ERP) from Tally to QuickBooks. I also worked with teams across the globe gaining hands-on exposure to the Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, a software that allows small and medium-sized firms to track and manage their accounts and inventory. Being able to take ownership of my work and report to the Global Head of Operations & Supply Chain in the Georgia office was truly an experience that I had not anticipated. Toward the conclusion of my internship, I created Work Instruction documents for future employees to make entries to the ERP system in an efficient and consistent manner, leaving my mark on the firm during my time as an intern.

My second summer experience was no typical internship. Shortly after interning with GRI, I began the HP Summer Scholars program online. A 6-week program geared toward college students during Covid-19, this program offered a deep dive into the world of HP, one of the world’s most sustainable technology companies. The program focused on specific areas such as gaming, 3D software, data analytics, supply chain/sustainability, and sales. Every week included sessions with the global heads of their respective divisions followed by fireside chats with recent graduates who explained their career paths and the decisions they made in college that prepared them to succeed. In addition to having HP employees explain the recruitment process for the various graduate level roles at the firm, we were assigned mentors who guided us throughout the program and provided professional advice through personal, weekly Zoom meetings. By the end of the program, I had significantly expanded my LinkedIn network to those not only at HP, but also with other Summer Scholars like myself!

In the end, my summer was not as disastrous as it initially appeared to be. With Tulane set on its reopening plans, I was fortunate enough to get onto a repatriation flight to take me back home, back to Tulane. I am extremely grateful to Tulane for the opportunities it has exposed me to, including HP Summer Scholars, and I look forward to the plethora of opportunities that my senior year has to offer me. Through rigorous coursework, insightful class discussions, and accessible professors, Tulane continues to sharpen my critical thinking, analytical, and communication skills. These skills served me in good stead over the summer and allowed me to be successful in my endeavors outside the classroom.

Student Parsha Vakharia gives directions to a new student and a parent after they get off a shuttle from the TU Arrival Center during student move-in this August. (Photo by Sally Asher)

In April 2020, School of Liberal Arts junior Isaac Hoeschen (SLA '22) was recognized as a Tulane Hero and Helper for supporting his community at a time when personal protective equipment (PPE) was in incredibly short supply for healthcare workers. We spoke with Hoeschen this summer about returning home to Milwaukee at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, what inspired his community work, and advice he has for fellow classmates and friends looking to make a difference.

Emily: What do you study at Tulane?

Isaac: I’m majoring in economics and urban studies. I primarily focus on how economics applies to housing policy and issues of segregation, institutionalized poverty, and gentrification in New Orleans. This summer I’ve had an incredible research job with an interdisciplinary lab at Tulane called the Critical Visualization and Media Lab. We’re researching how Covid-19 has affected the Cancer Alley region of Louisiana, particularly in regard to the disease’s high impact on African American communities.

Emily: In March of this year, students were directed to leave campus and return home due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Can you tell me a little about what that looked like for you?

Isaac: I was still living in the dorms at the time of the announcement in March, but I was able to secure a plane ticket home and stay with my family in Milwaukee within the week or so we were given—but that wasn’t the case for a lot of friends at the time. Adjusting when I got home was challenging to the point that I’m not great at having fewer things to do, or just taking a day to relax.

Emily: What was the moment you realized you needed to support your community during this crisis?

Isaac: This abstract feeling of needing to do something important has always been present for me—to the point where it causes a lot of anxiety for me sometimes! A couple days after being home it became apparent that there was an extreme shortage of PPE for healthcare workers across the nation. I started seeing posts on social media of people sewing masks at home and thought there had to be a way we could easily put together even more protective equipment.

I didn’t have class yet, so I started searching online for ideas to 3D print equipment. That was a very sexy idea, but a simpler idea ended up being the best idea. My friend and I eventually discovered that a local university’s engineering department had already put together a guide for making face shields, which was available for free. So, we asked a few community members for donations to buy materials—polyurethane film, thin foam, and elastic. A local fabric shop also donated several hundred yards of elastic. And then we got to it—a local shop agreed to cut all of the polyurethane film, which allowed my friend and I to create kits containing materials for 25 shields that we distributed to other friends and neighbors to assemble. In three days, we were able to build 1,000 masks together. We then sold these at cost to a local hospital so we could buy more materials and reimburse people for their original donations.

Emily: And this work reached beyond helping front line workers! Can you share how your efforts also led to individuals out of work returning to their jobs?

Isaac: Yes! We did two rounds of creating masks with our neighbors to sell to hospitals, and then it became clear that people might not have the time to keep making these at home, but also that local machine shops wanted to rehire their employees. These shops also had the capability of making the face shields at a larger scale. So, we worked with a local machine shop to buy the remainder of our supplies and soon after the shop was able to bring back their entire staff to create the shields and distribute them. I had big aspirations for this when we started, but I hadn’t even thought we would help get people rehired in addition to supplying healthcare workers with necessary gear.

Emily: Do you have any advice for fellow Tulanians on supporting the community during Covid-19?

Isaac: I did this because I could tell this is what people needed at the time. I would share that doing something like this is a big time commitment, but the resources are surprisingly available! Second, I would encourage classmates and colleagues to research people and organizations already working within communities dedicating time and resources. Many people have started projects or enhanced their current work in response to Covid-19 and its effects, and you can make just as much of a difference getting involved with what they are doing than building something from scratch.

Isaac Hoeschen (SLA '22) loads face shield kits into his car to distribute to friends and neighbors this summer.

Tulane School of Liberal Arts and A Studio in the Woods are pleased to announce a new collaborative program. Funded by the School of Liberal Arts, A Studio in the Woods will host 4 one-week residencies for Liberal Arts faculty in the 2020-21 academic year.

These residencies will provide a retreat for faculty in a beautiful, secluded setting, a 25-minute drive from New Orleans, to write scholarly publications, work on creative projects, or begin work on a new project. The award covers all residency costs and includes a $500 stipend, meant to defray costs of food, transportation, and/or child care during the time of the residency. Proposals were selected from a competitive pool by the School of Liberal Arts Dean’s Office.

“During a period of time when it is harder than ever to find spaces outside the home to do concentrated work, we are pleased to offer a means by which to support Liberal Arts faculty at one of the lesser-known treasures of Tulane,” said Brian Edwards, dean of the School of Liberal Arts.

“Only a half-hour away, the studios and quiet surroundings are a world apart, and have offered a generative retreat for writers and artists over the past couple of decades. With this partnership, we are pleased to be able to expand the range of scholars visiting this storied location, as well as the disciplines represented there.”

A Studio in the Woods, a program of Tulane ByWater Institute, is located on 7.66 acres of bottomland hardwood forest in Lower Coast Algiers. Its lush forest, location on the Mississippi River, and peaceful natural setting provide the perfect environment for faculty to refocus on their creative and academic pursuits after months of working from home. Since its founding in 2001, the Studio has hosted more than 150 artists and scholars from Tulane, the region, and the world.

2020-21 residencies have been awarded to Laura Rosanne Adderley, Department of History and the Africana Studies Program; Mia Bagneris, Newcomb Art Department and the Africana Studies Program; Michelle Kohler, Department of English; and Andrew McDowell, Department of Anthropology.

Laura Rosanne Adderley
Associate Professor,
Department of History and the Africana Studies Program

Laura Rosanne Adderley will use the one-week residency to complete a proposal for her second book, currently entitled Black Freedom and the “Last Africans”: Slave Ship Survivors in the Age of Emancipation. The book focuses on Africans who were seized from ships deemed to be operating illegally under treaties banning international slave trading and explores the lives of the first 3,000 Africans rescued by the British navy after the passage of Great Britain’s abolition law in 1807.

Mia Bagneris
Associate Professor,
Newcomb Art Department and the Africana Studies Program

Mia Bagneris will work on her second book, tentatively entitled Imagining the Oriental South: The Enslaved Mixed-Race Beauty in British Art and Visual Culture, c. 1865-1900, which examines a faddish fascination in mid-to-late nineteenth-century Britain with the figure of the beautiful biracial slave girl of the American South. Her work during the residency will focus on the second section of the book, centered around Scottish painter Robert Gavin’s painting the Octoroon Girl (1872).

Michelle Kohler
Associate Professor,
Department of English

Michelle Kohler will devote her residency to drafting the conclusion of her book project on Emily Dickinson and time, a historicized rethinking of Dickinson’s temporalities that upends some of the most influential claims about her poetry. The book, A Treason of Progress: Dickinson’s Trying Times, includes chapters on the unsettling blend of precision and chaos in mid-nineteenth-century timekeeping, the temporality of Dickinson’s racial thinking, and the temporal tensions of lyric poetry.

Andrew McDowell
Assistant Professor,
Department of Anthropology

Andrew McDowell’s research examines the intersection of culture, bacteria, and environment by studying the experience of tuberculosis (TB) in an Indian village. He will continue preparing a book manuscript based on this research that explores contagion and its effects on social relations, aspiration, and care during his residency.