NEWS AND EVENTS

MAY 2024 Excited to announce that El Camino del Pan a Baltimore short film will be featured at the Maryland Film Festival’s Baltishorts on May 4th at 1:15PM. We’re first up!

APRIL 2024 We received Honorable Mention for the Public Humanities Award for Leadership in Practice and Community for our Baltimore Field School and Building Ethical Community and University Partnership. The award is part of the Consortium of Humanity Centers and Institutions (CHCI) which will be held at UC Berkeley in May 2024. The Baltimore Field School (BFS) at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) is an innovative humanities-based training intensive connecting faculty, staff, and students to community partners in the Baltimore region. The program is designed to create an infrastructure of engagement for those at UMBC to collaborate with community partners in Baltimore in ways that share power and are mutually beneficial. BFS is built on ethical principles for collaborative public humanities work with community partners and presupposes that relationship-building emerges organically “in the field” through faculty, staff, and students working directly in city neighborhoods with Baltimore residents. Universities have long served as agents of gentrification and employed extractive research practices in cities across the United States. BFS addresses these concerns directly by collectively exploring them and rethinking “the field” of community engagement. We aim to move beyond a solely placed-based understanding of fieldwork towards an ethos focused on ongoing, human interactions and mutual trust. Since 2020, two iterations of BFS, funded by the Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and other funders, have unfolded. I served as a BFS fellow in 2021 and then organizer in 2023.

APRIL 2024 Undergraduate Creative Achievement Day (URCAD) takes place at UMBC on April 10, 2024. I’m excited to mentor some amazing projects including Juelle Lee’s “Checked Out: Public Libraries As Sites Of Assimilation” project podcast, Karla Press-Porter’s mapping project, “Maryland Perspectives On The Use Of The Phrase “Defund The Police;” Larissa Kuonen’s podcasting poster project, “Autistic People In The Workplace, Housing, And Transportation”; Taylor Phelps presentation, “Politics of Education: How a Political Movement Led to the Ouster of the Superintendent at Queen Anne’s County Public Schools;” Luke O’Neill’s poster project “Fueling Diversity: Understanding Student-athletes Dietary Habits;” and Spencer Hanks’s poster project entitled, “United Or Divided: Examining Desegregation In Anne Arundel County Schools.” So fun!

APRIL 2024 Our article, “Rethinking the Field in Crisis: The Baltimore Field School and Building Ethical Community and University Partnerships” was recently published in the Spring 2024 issue of the Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement (JHEOE) volume 28, number 1. It’s also great to work with Drs. Tahira Mahdi and Nicole King :) Here’s the link.

MARCH 2024 ALAS! The launch of, "DON'T STAND ALONE": Black Labor Organizing in New Orleans, took place on March 14 at the Small Center in New Orleans. The proejct began as The New Orleans Black Worker Organizing History Project in 2014 with the aim to raise up the long history of Black-led labor organizing and publish an online timeline. The project developed from a collaboration between lead organizers of Stand with Dignity -- Alfred Marshall, Colette Tippy and Toya-Ex Lewis -- an organized group of Black workers within the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice and my students at Tulane University students. From archival research done both by students and Stand members, the timeline launched on Juneteenth 2016. Thank you to members of our Community Advisory Committee this past year and to community partners who we've worked with across the years. Special thanks go to university collaborators Matt Olson (NOWCRJ), Prof. Jana Lipman and Jose Cotto at Tulane University, and Prof. Molly Mitchell, Prof. Max Krochmal at UNO, and artist, Langston Allston. This mobile exhibit centers on 12 panels that showcase the wide range of labor organizing in New Orleans -- from musicians and domestic workers to longshoreman and hospitality -- as well as important campaigns and moments of greater solidarity as seen in the 1892 General Strike or the Campaign for a Living Wage. 

FEBRUARY 2024 Joined Dr. Nicole King to do a keynote talk in Worcester, MA at Holy Cross University to discuss the Baltimore Field School, through our presentation, “The Field is Us: Building Ethical Community and University Partnerships with the Baltimore Field School.” We met with administrators, community partners, faculty, staff and students who make up the amazing crew led by Isabelle Jenkins and Mary Conley to celebrate five years of community-engaged scholarship programming through Scholarship in Action. We learned so much from the important engaged work at Holy Cross while also sharing some of the key successes of BFS in Baltimore. Here’s the abstract from our talk: How can we begin to engage with the city around us in mutually beneficial ways that invigorate both our university and our city? Dr. Nicole King (American Studies, UMBC) and Dr. Sarah Fouts (American Studies, UMBC) will discuss the benefits of learning by engaging locally and working with local residents in planning and building community-based projects in collaborative and ethical ways. This talk invites faculty from across the disciplines to consider ways to bring Worcester into the classroom and to work collaboratively with city residents in building a university invested in the public good. By sharing the lessons they’ve learned while developing collaborative projects between her home campus UMBC and the city of Baltimore, the scholars will introduce key aspects of community-engaged learning and its benefits, as well as methods that may provide pathways for Holy Cross to connect more fully with the city of Worcester.

JANUARY 2024 Submitted my final manuscript draft with all the images to UNC Press! The final step before post-production! Happy Carnival. Yayaya.

NOVEMBER 2023 Check out this interview with Andy Dahl and me on the El Camino del Pan y Mole film screenings. Thanks to Grace Hebron of Baltimore Magazine for covering the event and the films!

NOVEMBER 2023 We screened the two short films from El Camino del Pan y el Mole series which are part of the American Folklife Center’s Homegrown Foodways Series. The event took place at the Creative Alliance in Baltimore on November 9 where we filled the theatre with over 200 attendees (wow!) and featured programming to accompany the films. The event featured a panel discussion with the production team and two incredible dance performances: Jovenes en Accion which is comprised of 14 Latinx youth dancers who did typical folkloric dances and a drag show performance by Ivette Donnelly who performed as Paquita la del Barrio. It was so exciting to have Ivan and Gilberto (first time flying!) in Baltimore and so great to celebrate the successes with Fernando López and Andy Dahl. We had a blast with the Vargas family (Mezcal and Mariachi were the themes of the night!). The project is a part of the American Folklife Center and is sponsored by Maryland State Arts Council, the Library of Congress, and UMBC’s Department of American Studies and Public Humanities. Special thanks to Morgan Dowty, Matt Sullivan and Yesenia Mejia (plus many more people) for supporting the event and programming. We’ll be doing a similar version in New Orleans next Spring 2024 :)

NOVEMBER 2023 Check out our films, El Camino del Pan a Baltimore and El Camino del Mole a New Orleans. You can READ MORE HERE about the process. Edited by Nutria Productions, the films chronicle the lives of Mexican restaurateurs living in Baltimore (Jose Vargas) and in New Orleans (Ivan Castillo). From their work as street vendors to building community through their food traditions, Jose and Ivan have each taken unique approaches to carve their own niches in these urban places. Jose’s film started as a project called Sabor de Highlandtown done with UMBC Public Humanities students, Southeast CDC, and Maryland Traditions. Jose’s film can be screened here. Ivan’s film began as several interviews, as part of a podcast for Gravy, and an oral history project for Project Neutral Grounds.

NOVEMBER 2023 American Studies Association took place in Montreal this November. It was fun to be around lots of UMBC colleagues who presented. Food in Montreal was so vast and delicious — I couldn’t even make it a quarter of the way through my list of restaurants. I presented on a panel on the “Pedagogies of Care and/or Community Engagement in Education,” with Kendall McClellan of Cal State Channel Islands. Kendall presented on the proliferation of openly authoritarian rhetoric relationship within higher-ed. And Ashlea Krasnansky of Marshall University presented on improving secondary education access for first-generation West Virginians. I presented on the Baltimore Field School, “Building More Horizontal University and Community Partnerships through the Baltimore Field School,” which interrogated the meaning of longterm community partners in terms of project development, funding, and sustainability. Lots to consider! I also heard a great panel that made me recontextualize history migration to New Orleans after Katrina—CAFTA. Can’t wait to dig deeper. So much powerful stuff happening in Montreal. Also saw a great music show: Yocto. Next year: ASA in BALTIMORE.

AUGUST 2023 Very much looking forward to teaching AMST300 Approaches to American Studies and PUBH200 Introduction to Public Humanities this semester. AMST300 will prep American Studies majors for their capstone projects. PUBH200 will be a survey course of Public Humanities projects, tools, ethics, and methods. We’ll focus on developing content for a project in Highlandtown this semester which builds on the Sabor de Highlandtown mapping and storytelling project working with Latin American restaurateurs in the neighborhood. This is part of the Baltimore Traces archival initiative and is in collaboration with Southeast Community Development Corporation.

JULY 2023 We did it! We competed the Baltimore Field School 2.0: Undoing and Doing Anew in Public Humanities in Baltimore where we brought in 11 UMBC Fellows for the intensive workshop. This amazing group included graduate students, staff, and faculty who are embedded in Public Humanities work in Baltimore. Here’s a link to the itinerary which included some powerful presentations. We also really embraced the “field” in Baltimore Field School by visiting Red Emma’s in the north, Highlandtown and BUGSS in the East, Black Yield Institute in the South, and, of course, the Lions Brothers Building in the West (where UMBC has an city-based classroom). See some photos @umbcpublichumanities.

JUNE 2023 Got a great summer vacation to Europe where I went a beautiful wedding at a chateau outside Lascaux Caves. Turns out IThen I went on a three week journey from Milan all the way south to Siracusa, Sicily. I met up with my dad’s lovely family outside of Parma in the north and then made my way down to Rome, Naples, Amalfi coast (where I relearned my fear of heights on the Path of Gods), Tropea, then all across Sicily. While in Parma I learned that my great-grandfather (who fled Mussolini’s draft to work in the coal mines in eastern Kentucky) rescued his first cousin from Italian internment camps in Virginia. The family was all part of the anti-fascist resistance movement in during Mussolini’s reign. My cousin-in-law, Gigi (a knifemaker), taught me a secret recipe to make amaro using seasonal fruits and nuts. I’ll try it once it’s citrus season. Also, I ate lots of great meals, too, of course.

APRIL 2023 Mark your calendars for April 26 from 6-9 PM for the Baltimore Field School showcase: “To Say Their Own Word” event produced by Cameron Granadino of The Real News Network. The “To Say Their Own Word” archival project is an oral history component of the NEH-funded series which took place inside the Maryland Penitentiary in 1980. This project produces programming around contemporary reflections of participants in the series, connects with the ongoing struggle with the carceral state, and considers how these subjects resonate over forty years later. Through partnerships between the Real News network, UMBC Special Collections, and the Baltimore Field School, the team will develop public programming around this archive by conducting oral history interviews, excerpts of which will be featured at the event. We will hear from Beth Saunders, Dominique Conway, Saleem El-Amin, Mansa Musa, and Gerald Dent. The event is a tribute to the late Eddie Conway, political prisoner and organizer, who founded and inspired the project. It is part of the Baltimore Field School and the Maryland Folklife Network. Food will come from Mera Kitchen Collective!

Register here!

MARCH 2023 Big month! Signed a contract with the Library of Congress and American Folklife Center to produce two short documentaries featuring two Mexican food vendors: Ivan Castillo (New Orleans-Garibaldi’s) and Jose Vargas (Baltimore-Vargas Bakery). The documentaries are part of the LOC’s Homegrown Foodways Series which launched in 2021. I get to work with long time collaborators, Fernando López @sentir.con.ojos, and Andy Dahl (Nutria Productions LLC). We shot footage with Ivan in New Orleans in early March and look forward to the shoot with Jose in late April! Going to be a busy spring! The films will launch in November 2023.

MARCH 2023 As part of the Eminent Scholar Program, I presented a chapter on right to culture in post-Katrina New Orleans at Loyola University of Chicago in the Department of Anthropology. Thanks to the amazing faculty and students who showed up and asked great questions. Despite the March snow, I also got to enjoy Chicago’s Rogers Park neighborhood, catch up with some old friends, eat some delicious Ethiopian food, visit the beautiful lake, and even tour the Leather and Archives Museum (highly recommend). What a great trip.

FEBRUARY 2023 I’m so excited to announce that I signed an advanced contract with UNC Press for my forthcoming manuscript which uses ethnographic and archival research to analyze the stories of Central American and Mexican food vendors and day laborers in post-Katrina New Orleans. I show how despite being criminalized and pitted against other low wage workers, immigrants use strategies of self-reliance and multiracial solidarities to fight against extractive models of development in New Orleans and Honduras.

FEBRUARY 2023 Honored to participate in the “Inclusion and Public Humanities: A Convening” event sponsored by the Inclusion Imperative and Mellon Foundation. The event was organized by UMBC’s Dresher Center. I presented on the Baltimore Field School 2.0 to discuss how we are working with community partners to make collaborations more horizontal, accessible, and equitable. I learned lots from other scholars doing great work at UMBC and beyond. Of interest—Lehigh’s South Side Initiative in Bethlehem, PA which attempts to redress the university’s role in the displacement of people in that neighborhood and currently focuses on developing LGBTQ public humanities projects.

JANUARY 2023 While I love to teach at UMBC, I’m excited to be on a course release for Spring 2023. I’m headed to New Orleans for much of the semester where I’ll be finishing my book manuscript, wrapping up the Whiting Fellowship-funded Project Neutral Grounds, and embarking on another documentary project where I’ll work with Fernando Lopez, Andy Dahl, and Nutria Productions. More to exciting news to come! But, in the meantime, mark your calendars for the official launch of Project Neutral Grounds on May 15, 2023. And HAPPY CARNIVAL.

NOVEMBER 2022 Students in my PUBH200 Introduction to Public Humanities course partnered with Mera Kitchen Collective to develop the storytelling project, Stories of Mera. Mera Kitchen Collective is a community-driven food business in Baltimore, where they build their own worker-cooperative. They focus on the empowerment of chefs from around the world by celebrating our skills and talents in the kitchen and highlight the value newcomers bring to the fabric of our society. Using oral histories conducted with each of the Mera members, students developed 2-3 minute audio clips which were overlaid with photos taken by Gabriel Amadi-Emina (@artbychuks) and can be seen here. Two students, David Do and Connie Du, designed the StoryMap which we presented on November 29 as part of a Baltimore Field School showcase. At the “Stories of Mera" event we also featured Yesenia Mejia who spoke about her work with the Creative Alliance and the Cielo program and played a traditional Mexican song on her guitar. BFS Fellow, Cameron Granadino, discussed the work he is doing in collaboration with Real News Network and Eddie Conway with the “Say their Own Word” series documentary project on a prison education program led by Eddie Conway while incarcerated in the 1980s. Cameron is partnering with Beth Saunders, Head Curator of the UMBC Special Collections. We’ll feature Cameron’s project on April 26, 2023 as the second Baltimore Field School.

NOVEMBER 2022 We had our soft launch for the New Orleans-based “Project Neutral Grounds: At the Intersection of People, Street Food, and the Hustle.” The event took place at the Southern Food and Beverage museum and featured delicious foods by half of our cohort of vendors and a powerful panel by the other half of the cohort. We also distributed our hot-off-the-press zine which was designed by SheRa Phillips and developed by Toya Ex Lewis, Fernando Lopez, and me. Fernando gets all the credit for the beautiful photos. We also launched our website which features the stories of the food vendors. We’ll have our second launch on May 15, 2023 where we’ll showcase our short documentary film biographies that feature each of the vendors.

OCTOBER 2022 We made a dragon for the Creative Alliance’s Lantern Parade. Check it out here in Baltimore Magazine!

OCTOBER 2022 We were on the news! WBALTV Featured our “Sabor de Highlandtown” storytelling project as part of their Latino Heritage Month. Check out Andy Dahl, Pedro Silva, and me talking about the mapping project from my AMST403 Food Ethnography course where we discuss how food reflects changes in city neighborhoods.

AUGUST 2022 Baltimore Field School 2.0 launched with an exciting cohort of 8 Community Fellows: Aisha Alfadhala (Mera Kitchen Collective), Curtis Eaddy II (Beautiful Side of Ugly), Eric Jackson (Black Yield Institute), Betty Bland-Thomas (Sharp Leadenhall), Tisha Guthrie (Organize Poppleton), Cameron Granadino (The Real News Network), Yesenia Mejia (Creative Alliance), and Lisa Snowden (Baltimore Beat). You can see more about the fellows and the BFS project on our website here which was designed by Jasmine Braswell.

JULY 2022 Back in Honduras for the first time in 7 years. During Spring 2020, Chloe Sigal and I were awarded a Gulf South Research Fellowship through the New Orleans Center for Gulf South to fund a field work trip. We were finally able to make the trip happen this month. We spent time with Denis Soriano where we got to harvest and roast coffee on his family’s small coffee farm near Atima, Honduras in the Santa Barbara department. Denis was an organizer with the New Orleans Worker Center for Racial Justice when I began working there in 2011. We then traveled with Denis to southern Honduras to visit the family of Santos Alvarado who live near Choluteca, Honduras. While there we got to hear from people who have fought successfully against extractive green development projects that attempted to take over their community’s land and pollute waters. It was inspiring to hear the stories of people fighting for their rights on a grassroots level against powerful state and private interests. We finished the trip in San Pedro Sula where we go to spend time with Denis’s sisters and enjoy the nightlife that city. More to come!

JUNE 2022 Toya, Fernando, and I hit the ground running with the Project Neutral Grounds work this year. We will be working with an amazing team of street food vendors: Sunflowa Soul, Ivan Castillo, Venecia Gonzalez, Iris Cardona, Indigo Soul, Ra Yoseph, Williana Tadlock, Laverne Blunt, Tasha Lewis, Mannie King, and Ozzie Mendoza. We’ll begin shooting demo kitchen work in late June and early July. Check out the article by Catalina Dansberger Duque who featured the project in, “Rethinking collaborative public humanities research in New Orleans and Baltimore.” The article really gets at the heart of how, as a university, we’re attempting to do more collaborative and horizontal field work. And, this project shows the importance of long term collaborations.

MAY 2022 Students in my AMST403 Food Ethnography course worked with five food vendors in Highlandtown to develop the “Sabor de Highlandtown” storytelling project in collaboration with Andy Dahl and team at the Southeast Community Development Corporation. We launched the storytelling and photography exhibition at the Creative Alliance on May 9. Food was provided by the the five food establishments: Carlos Nufio (Los Primos Food), Pedro Silva (Tex Mex Corner Deli), Jose Vargas (Taqueria Vargas), Franschesca Nuñez (Franschesca’s Empanadas), Hiralda de la Cruz (Puerto Jarocho), to tell the story of how food culture helps shape a change neighborhood. Jes Godinez, Jake Mooney, and David Fitzgerald designed the StoryMap. Check it out here.

MARCH 2022 I was awarded the Whiting Fellowship for Public Engagement for the New Orleans-based collaborative work entitled, “Project Neutral Grounds: At the Intersection of People, Street Food, and the Hustle.” I’ll be working with my long time collaborators Fernando López and Toya Ex Lewis (Project Hustle) along with some amazing street food vendors to complete the project. We received $50,000 to complete the documentary and archival project where we will be working closely with the Southern Food and Beverage Museum. Check it out here.

FEBRUARY 2022 Excited to report that we received $157,000 in funding from ACLS Sustaining the Public Humanities for the Baltimore Field School 2.0: Undoing and Doing Anew in Public Humanities at UMBC. I started as a UMBC Fellow and now get to work as the PI to develop the second iteration of this project alongside Co-PI, Nicole King. We’re bringing in more Community Fellows for this round which is exciting. And I am excited to work with our evaluator, Tahira Mahdi, and Program Coordinator, Jasmine Braswell. More soon!

JULY 2021 The summer edition of Southern Cultures features my latest article, “The Great Unbuilding: Land, Labor, and Dispossession in New Orleans and Honduras” co-authored with my amazing collaborator, Deniz Daser. The article traces tourism development from New Orleans to Honduras through the devastating collapse of the Hard Rock Hotel in New Orleans in October 2019. We broach some important discussions on deregulation and development, especially considering the context of the Miami Surfside Condo collapse of 2021. Thanks to the great editors, Emma Calabrese and Ayse Erginer, at Southern Cultures and to Burak Erdim for inviting us to be part of the “Built/Unbuilt” series. And thanks to Fernando López for the powerful photos.

JULY 2021 Very excited to be a 2021 fellow through the Gulf South Research Fellowship through the New Orleans Center for Gulf South. Chloe Sigal and I will travel to Honduras in 2022 to do research on food, development, and hurricane recovery in post-Eta and Iota. We will also follow up on an oral history project with former founders and members of the NOWCRJ.

JUNE 2021 Honored to be a fellow in the Baltimore Field School. I joined thirteen of my UMBC colleagues to participate in this planning intensive which focuses on building collaborative public humanities projects developed with community partners. With a big grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, BFS cultivates ethical humanities research methods and teaching with a focus on Baltimore. The week-long summer institute featured amazing guests from Black Yield Institute, Anacostia Museum, American Folklife Center, The Chicory Project, Baltimore Traces, Filbert Street Community Garden, Charm City Land Trust, South Baltimore Land Trust, and a few more! Check out the itinerary and website here. It was great to get to know such amazing folks at UMBC. I’m looking forward to the fall convening. Big thanks to Nicole King, Imani Spence, and Kimberly Moffit for all their hard work in making this institute happen!

JUNE 2021 Such a pleasure to get to be a part of my alma mater, Tulane University, and present as part of the Stone Center for Latin American Studies K-12 Workshop on Central America. I presented on my research in Honduras and we analyzed maps, menus, and discussed different types of tamales. My dear friend Ilda did a cooking demonstration and made pollo con tajadas. It was great to join Dr. Justin Wolfe and Dr. Amalia Leguizamón as part of this great series. Here’s the youtube link with the spread of videos. Thanks to Denise Woltering at the Stone Center and to my former Tulane student, Rosie Click, for the invite. Amazing questions from the teachers!

JUNE 2021 I just presented at the “Just Food: Because it is Never Just Food” conference as part of the Association for the Study of Food and Society (ASFS). I presented on food pedagogy from my 2020 Food Ethnography course and joined a great group of panelists. I learned so much from my colleagues on their approaches to teaching food studies—all skills that apply virtually and IRL. I also attended fascinating talks with great scholars, particularly a panel on food, diet, and displacement. Also, I’m pretty impressed by the WHOVA app.

MAY 2021 Mixed emotions here—at once I’m so excited to be named the Director of the Public Humanities minor at UMBC, but that means my amazing colleague, Dr. Ashley Minner, is leaving UMBC! But, I’m also excited for the incredible opportunity she has as a curator with the Smithsonian at the National Museum of the American Indian. Field trips!

MAY 2021 Great Plains Research just published my review of, The Taco Truck: How Mexican Street Food Is Transforming the American City (University of Illinois Press, 2019), by Robert Lemon. This book is a great contribution and a compelling examination of the taco truck’s role in shaping space and place in cities like Columbus, Ohio and Sacramento, California. Check out Lemon’s important work!

APRIL 2021 I was part of the talk and discussion, “A View from Somewhere: Moving Towards Anti-Extractive Field Research,” which featured journalist, Lewis Wallace, along with a discussion on journalism and academic field research methods with UMBC anthropologist Camee Maddox-Wingfield and myself in dialogue with Lewis. Thanks to Imani Spence for moderating and much appreciation to the Andrew Mellon Foundation for supporting the panel as a launch for the Baltimore Field School. Thanks to Red Emma’s for co-sponsoring the event! Buy Lewis’ book and listen to his podcast!

FEBRUARY 2021 Looking forward to teaching two sections of Introduction to American Studies: What is an American? What a wild time to tackle that question. We’ll approach the course through three units: Food, Immigration, and Labor. Looking forward to making the most of the virtual semester! I’ll also teach Approaches to American Studies methodology course. It is always fun to see what project proposals students come up with.

DECEMBER 2020 Thanks to the Immigration Working Group through UMBC’s Dresher Center for allowing me space to present the introduction to my current book project to an amazing group. Such great feedback and I’m looking forward to completing this ethnographic project on post-Katrina New Orleans, food, migration, and extractivism.

DECEMBER 2020 Students in our Introduction to Public Humanities course planned and executed the event, “Food Sovereignty in the DMV,” with Sylvanaqua Farms and Black Yield Institute. The students produced Knight Lab StoryMap Projects and Jamyla Krempel of WYPR moderated the discussion with Brother Eric Jackson and Chris Newman. Thanks to Red Emma’s for co-sponsoring the event! Here’s the link.

OCTOBER 2020 Great panels at the Oral History Association virtual conference. It was great to reconnect with oral historian, Amy C. Evans, and meet other panelists as well for our session entitled, “Home, Church, and Work: A Century of Change in Black Cultural Spaces.” I presented on the oral history project with the New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice in a presentation entitled, “Rebuilding by Documenting Worker Power: Planning and Reflecting with the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice.”

SEPTEMBER 2020 Looking forward to an exciting semester where I’ll be teaching Introduction to Public Humanities with Ashley Minner. We’re looking forward to working with groups like Sylvanaqua Farms and Black Yield Institute to develop projects that go beyond the university! I’ll also be teaching our Approaches to American Studies methods course. We’ll be online, but making the most of it!

AUGUST 2020 Very excited to co-publish with Fernando López in Gravy magazine. Our piece, “Solidarity Not Charity in the Crescent City,” looks at mutual aid work done by the group Familias Unidas in New Orleans and builds on a long history of food-based mutual aid work in New Orleans that includes Black Panther Party Breakfast Programs and post-Katrina work done by groups like Common Grounds.

JUNE 2020 My article, “When “Doing With” Can Be Without: Employing Critical ServiceLearning Strategies in Creating the ‘New Orleans Black Worker Organizing History’ Digital Timeline,” article was published in the Critical Service Learning Series in the Journal of Community Engagement in Higher Education. This special edition is produced by Dr. Tania Mitchell, Guest Editor and a great crew from Indiana Campus Compact. The abstract reads: Analyzing the development of the “New Orleans Black Worker Organizing History” digital humanities timeline, this case study addresses the inevitability of transient partnerships between students and community members, while pushing back on the notion of “authentic relationships” in service learning. Embracing the ephemerality of service-learning projects, I focus more on intentional strategies that can lead to transformative learning experiences and help to create a more even playing field in knowledge production. I link critical service learning with feminist pedagogy to offer collaborative strategies that better leverage resources to bridge campus and community. Special thanks to students at Tulane University and, of course, members of Stand with Dignity who made this project happen. We’re looking forward to future phases of this important project.

MAY 2020 Just completed a two-day oral history methods and archive training with the Southern Foodways Alliance. Excited to figure out ways to use their archives in my courses.

MAY 2020 Covid-19 has really forced us to shift gears in so many ways. I just wrapped up the semester and I am very grateful for supportive faculty in my department, great institutional support at UMBC, and, of course, amazing students who were so patient as I learned how to teach online! Very excited to focus on finishing my book and writing grants this summer.

MAY 2020 Thanks to Dr. Michele Stefano for giving our “Food in the Time of Covid-19” project a shout out in her blog post for the Library of Congress.

APRIL 2020 Like many classes, we were forced to completely shifts gears in our AMST403 Food Ethnography course, from a field work-based project with Mera Kitchen Collective and Single Carrot Theatre to a much more introspective “Food in the Time of Covid-19” photography project. Thanks to Fernando López and Chloe Sigal for their support in developing this project. Amazing work to the students who developed research questions, took photos, and let us inside their lives to explore how analyzing the role of food can help us to understand experiences during the current pandemic. Check out the Story Map project, “Food in the Time of Covid-19” here. I highly recommend using Knight Lab tools!

FEBRUARY 2020 In a follow up to our Op-Ed published in the New York Times on December 2, 2019, Deniz Daser and I published the article, “The Stain that Mardi Gras Covers Up: Worker Precarity in New Orleans” in the online magazine, NACLA. Happy Mardi Gras.

JANUARY 2020 Fernando López and I completed the Labor Research and Action Network Oral History project in New Orleans. This project looked at the institutional history of the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice. In total we interviewed 10 members, founders, and organizers during the 2006-2013 period of the NOWCRJ. We seek to add to this repository with more projects in the future!

Photographs provided by Fernando Lopez.