Public Humanities

Sabor De HIghlandtown

Don’t Stand alone: Black Labor organizing in new orleans launch

El Camino del Pan y el Mole Film Screenings + Programming

Drag Show, Mariachi, DJ sets, and Films! Check out images from the films screenings and programming at Creative Alliance (November 2023), Maryland Film Fest at Parkview (May 2024), Current Space (June 2024), and flyer for New Orleans Hotel Peter and Paul (July 2024). Black and white photos by Josh Sisk, yellow flyer art by Sasha Solodukhina, and performance photos and crowd shots by Fernando Lopez. Tiny Zines were created by students in my Introduction to Public Humanities course.

El Camino del Pan y el Mole Film series

In 2023, we were invited to be part of the American Folklife Center’s Homegrown Foodways Series to develop two documentary shorts. Working with Baltimore-based, Andy Dahl, and New Orleans-based, Fernando López, we decided to focus the two films on José Vargas (Baltimore) and Ivan Castillo (New Orleans) to chronicle their stories as Mexican restaurateurs. Bringing José’s story in dialogue with Ivan’s story meant bringing Andy together with Fernando to shoot footage for the films in each city. I was already balancing time in both places in between teaching at UMBC and doing fieldwork in New Orleans. We shot footage in March 2023 with Ivan in New Orleans and in April 2023 with José in Baltimore. We entered the field initially thinking we’d link the stories with the Mexican dish, chicken mole. Both Ivan and José had spoken with much sentimentality about their relationship to the dish and the ingredients that define their respective recipes.

But as the Nutria Productions (named for the ubiquitous Louisiana swamp rodent) editing team, which consists of Andy and his partner Marissa O’Guinn Dahl, filtered through the footage, the complex and multifaceted notion of family became more evident as a complement to the Mexican food traditions of both Ivan and José. For José, the idea of family is more traditional, rooted in Huaquechula, Puebla, where he began working in his grandparents’ bakery. For Ivan, the concept of family interrogates these traditional ideas; family, instead, represents his LGBTQ community from Mexico and Central America, who face isolation and social stigma, uniting together through their shared experiences. As we show in the films, Mexican foodways are central to each of these processes.

Check out this interview that Andy and I did for Baltimore Magazine. The El Camino del Pan a Baltimore screened as part of the Maryland Film Festival in May 2024.

Thanks to the Library of Congress, the American Folklife Center, Maryland Folklife Network, and the Deparment of American Studies and the Public Humanities program at UMBC for supporting the project.

Project neutral Grounds: the intersection of people, street food, and the hustle (whiting fellowship)

Project Neutral Grounds is a Whiting Public Engagement Fellowship project led by Sarah Fouts, Fernando Lopez, and Toya Ex Lewis. The project unites 11 Black and Brown street food vendors to highlight and celebrate their  shared passions, brilliance, and struggles. Street food economies are a  deep part of New Orleans’s cultural and historical roots and have  enabled excluded and exploited working-class people to buildsocial and  financial capital through their food. These traditions often align with  rich ancestral patterns and histories that have been built from family  recipes and ingredients. These vendors' stories are inherent to the  city’s cultural events like second lines, Mardi Gras, Jazz Fest and  other cultural festivals while also vital to systems of feeding people  as part of social movements and in disaster recovery efforts. By  documenting these stories that have helped shape New Orleans over the  last two decades and longer, we acknowledge the impact of structural  oppression, specifically disaster capitalism, in urban settings and make  space and offer resources for people to be in conversation across  cultural barriers to unite stories of community, adaptation, and  mobility. Through food, Project Neutral Grounds intersects with  histories of the city’s blending of cultures, of migration, and of how  culture is re-formed in the wake of disasters like Katrina while its  people find what is needed to have joy, healing, love, and to thrive.

The collaborative project was done with the Southern Food and Beverage Museum and includes 9 cooking demo films, a website, 11 oral histories, photos, a short documentary (see below), and an archive at the Nunez Community College Library. We held two events at the museum in November 2022 and May 2023 to launch the project and film. Each of the vendors provided their food specialities.

New Orleans Con Sabor Latino

Students in my seminar course, Food, Migration, and Culture, produced oral history audio clips for the "New Orleans Con Sabor Latino" exhibit at the National Food and Beverage Museum in New Orleans. The students conducted interviews with Latinx restaurant owners, chefs, and line cooks. Check out this link with an article featured in NolaVie. Here's the youtube channel featuring the students' work.

New Orleans Black Worker Organizing History Timeline

I worked on a collaborative project to produce the digital history timeline, Black Workers Organize NOLA, which features a chronology of black worker movements in New Orleans from 1811-present-day. The timeline was created in collaboration with the New Orleans Workers' Center for Racial Justice, Tulane's Center for Public Service, Leon Waters, Harvey Sanders, Colette Tippy, and the members of Stand with Dignity. The official launch of the timeline took place on June 19th, 2016. Students in my Introduction to Latin American Studies course conducted the archival research examining historical New Orleans newspapers. Alfred Marshal, an organizer with Stand with Dignity, conducted the oral history interviews. Special thanks to the Amistad Research Center and the Latin American Library at Tulane University.

SOUTHERN FOODWAYS ALLIANCE: EL SUR LATINO

FEATURING LA PULGA IN NEW ORLEANS

Each weekend, an open air Latin market goes unnoticed by tourists -- and most locals--  tucked under an overpass in the Algiers neighborhood, across the river from New Orleans’ French Quarter. Known as La Pulga, the market bustles with reggaeton music blasting from speakers, and vendors sell anything from Lionel Messi soccer jerseys to live chickens. Makeshift booths with basic plywood infrastructure line up along the dirt paths that wind through the labyrinth of individual entrepreneurs.  

Food vendors set up within the market, offering Latin American specialties like pupusas, esquite, birria, and caldo de mariscos (seafood soups). Fruit stands scattered throughout the market provide freshly squeezed juice -- a reprieve from the heat and humidity while shoppers pass through the packed corridors. In the course of a day’s visit, a family could get back to school supplies, a haircut, and a three-course meal.

Fernando Lopez and I conducted documentary field work in the Westbank Pulga and La Pulga in Algiers during the summer of 2017. We highlight the stories of vendors from Mexico, El Salvador, the Dominican Republic, and Honduras to illustrate how these individuals use the markets to forge their own cultural and economic spaces that help make up El Sur Latino.