Public Scholarship

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.