Join the Sawyer Seminar for a tour of the disappearing lands of Terrebonne and Lafourche Parish including the Theriot Lock and Golden Meadow, Isle de Jean Charles, and Dulac, as we visit Native communities and learn how those experiencing loss of place develop practices of persistence amidst centuries of damages to cultural memory, and practices of presence amidst ongoing recovery from Hurricane Ida. Open to 20 guests, registrants must RSVP by emailing Miriam Taylor at mtaylor11@tulane.edu - a full itinerary and more details will be provided in response; the event runs from 9:45 am to 5:30 pm with snacks, lunch, and transportation provided. We will be guided to the sites by Janie Verret Luster (a master palmetto basket weaver and cultural preservationist of the United Houma Nation) and have guest speakers involved on the bus and at every stop including coastal geoscientist Kelly Sanks, Windell Curole, Director at South Lafourche Levee District, Clarice Friloux of that community and her brother, Roland Molinere, Jr., better known as RJ on the show “Swamp People,” as well as council members from the United Houma Nation including Kirby Verret Pastor of the United Methodist Church of Dulac and former Chief of the United Houma Nation. Together we will deepen an understanding of how ongoing colonial processes push economic and environmental precarity towards the periphery, and how we might build memories with people who come from places that are being lost to rising waters and intensified storm damage symbolic forms.

This site visit is a part of a multi-part symposium taking place on October 11th, 12th, and 16th, which considers indigenous communities’ response and leadership in confronting place change amidst climate change.

As part of the final events of the Sawyer Seminar Series, all are invited to drop by Woldenberg Art Center Room 201 for an in-person screening of the virtual panel: “Advancing Climate Adaptation and the Reality of Trade-Offs.”

Participants: Cate Mingoya-LaFortune, National Director, Climate Resilience and Land Use, Groundwork USA (Moderator); Rahiem Eleazer, Project Director, Tribal Resilience Program, Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation; Commissioner Victoria Reinhardt, Ramsey County, Minnesota; Mayor Sharon Weston-Broome, City of Baton Rouge, Louisiana

Join FEMA’s Resilient Nation Partnership Network and leaders from the private, public and nonprofit sectors as we explore competing priorities in the decision-making process. How do we make decisions? What do we prioritize? How can we balance the reality of trade-offs when advancing climate adaptation? We will tackle these questions and find ways to unite these priorities.

Join the Sawyer Seminar for “Sites of Memory: Bulbancha & Mi'kma'ki” – the final events in the year-long series. The week’s program launch with a free screening of Mi’kmaq documentarian Catherine Martin’s “The Basket Maker” – a short film that considers place-based traditions of basket weaving in North America through decades of footage of artists building forms from materials local to them. In July of 2018, Mi’kmaq documentarian Catherine Martin received the Order of Canada for her work.

Following the film, there will be a discussion of the film’s themes moderated by Dr. Adrian Anagnost. Janie Verret Luster (a master palmetto basket weaver and cultural preservationist of the United Houma Nation) will be in conversation with Jill Francis (Mi’kmaq Interpreter at Kejimkujik National Park and Historic Site—Nova Scotia, Canada.

The screening is free and open to the public and will take place in Stone Auditorium in the Woldenberg Art Center on Tulane University’s Uptown Campus.

Join the Sawyer Seminar for a tour and talk of the monumental landscape of New Orleans. Open to 20 guests, registrants must RSVP by emailing Miriam Taylor at mtaylor11@tulane.edu; the event runs from 9 am to 2 pm with snacks, lunch, and transportation provided. This event is intended to garner further understanding of the monumental landscape of the city and how monuments (especially those to colonialism, the Confederacy, and white supremacy) shape our experiences of city space and the ways in which the city can be knit together or divided through these symbolic forms. Through conversations led by Dr. Mia Bagneris, Dr. Jeffery Darensbourg, and Big Chief Demond Melancon, this site visit will encourage guests to consider how removal – while not erasing the way these monuments have already shaped experiences of the city – can open up space for interventions, offering new ways of interpreting the sites.

This site visit is a part of “Monumental Iconoclasms,” a multi-part symposium taking place between April 5 and 10 considering contemporary challenges to existing monuments in New Orleans and Mexico City.

Image courtesy of Ryan Hodgson-Rigsbee.

Join our friends at Tulane’s Latin American Library as they host a colloquium series featuring faculty whose research considers relationships between Latin America and New Orleans. On Friday April 8, Yuri Herrera-Gutiérrez Professor of Spanish will present on his novel-in-progress: “Juárez en Nueva Orleans. La ficción hecha de fragmentos de verdad.”

This talk will be in Spanish and hosted in the Latin American Library Seminar Room

Join the Sawyer Seminar for a conversation with Mauricio Tenorio Trillo on presence, absence, irony, and Mexico City’s monumental landscape. Monuments seek to conquer future views of history. Their massive material existence, as part of social and memory tissues of cities, made monuments a real “avanzada” in the future. Sometimes monuments do manage, to a certain extent, to conquer the future, not necessary as history but as space. This talk will consider the historical monumental cityscapes of Mexico City and recent activism and interventions around la Ángel de la Independencia and Columbus’s pedestal on Mexico City’s Paseo de la Reforma. This conversation will be streamed digitally from the Greenleaf Conference room in Jones Hall or you can join remotely via the Zoom link here.

The lecture, while virtual, will take place in Greenleaf Conference Room in Jone Hall at Tulane University’s Uptown Campus. Free and open for all to attend. The lecture is a part of “Monumental Iconoclasms,” a multi-part symposium taking place between April 5 and 10 considering contemporary challenges to existing monuments in New Orleans and Mexico City.

On Thursday, April 7 at 6 pm visual artist Julieta Gil and artist/activist Abdul Aziz will take part in a dialogue with one another, moderated by Dr. Guadalupe Garcia, bringing into relief the parallels between these monumental issues in New Orleans and Mexico City through a conversation about their diverse practices. The event will be held in Stone Auditorium in the Woldenberg Art Center on Tulane University’s uptown campus. It is free and open to the public and will follow all COVID-19 guidelines as put forth by the university.

This artist talk is a part of “Monumental Iconoclasms,” a multi-part symposium taking place between April 5 and 10 considering contemporary challenges to existing monuments in New Orleans and Mexico City.

Tulane University's Mellon Sawyer Seminar invites you to a free film screening of CJ Hunt’s The Neutral Ground (2021), a documentary film about memory, monuments, and how to break up with the confederacy. The event will be held in Stone Auditorium in the Woldenberg Art Center on Tulane University’s uptown campus. It is free and open to the public and will follow all COVID-19 guidelines as put forth by the university.

This film screening is a part of “Monumental Iconoclasms,” a multi-part symposium taking place between April 5 and 10 considering contemporary challenges to existing monuments in New Orleans and Mexico City.

Join our friends at Tulane’s Latin American Library as they host a colloquium series featuring faculty whose research considers relationships between Latin America and New Orleans. On Friday, March 11 Marilyn Miller, Professor of Spanish and Sizeler Family Professor in Judaic Studies, will present new research on a mid-century New Orleans beautification project that immortalized Latin American independence leaders: “Lament of the libertadores: Monumental Demise in New Orleans’s ‘Garden of the Americas’”

This talk will be in English and hosted in the Latin American Library Seminar Room

Join the Sawyer Seminar for a closing dinner and conversation as part of the symposium From River Road to Copenhagen: Revising our Remembrance of the Past with special guest Laura Kilcer VanHuss.

Join the Sawyer Seminar for an artist talk in Stone Auditorium in the Woldenberg Art Center (on Tulane’s uptown campus) featuring artist LaVaughn Belle in conversation with Dr. Rosanne Adderley.

Join the Sawyer Seminar for a day-long visit to Shadows on the Teche. Open to 18 guests with transportation, tickets, and lunch provided through the Sawyer Seminar, registrants must RSVP through the Eventbrite sign up link (click the event for details.)

Join the Sawyer Seminar for a day-long visit to Oak Alley and the Whitney Plantation. Open to 18 guests with transportation, tickets, and lunch provided through the Sawyer Seminar, registrants must RSVP through the Eventbrite sign up link (click the event for details.)

Join the Sawyer Seminar for a double-screening at Stone Auditorium (in the Woldenberg Art Center on Tulane’s Uptown Campus) featuring Fireburn: The Documentary (2020) (20 minutes), Angela Golden Bryan (Writer), Joel Fendelman (Director), (https://www.fireburndocumentary.com/) and We Carry It Within Us (2017) (1 hr, 7 minutes), Helle Stenum, https://wecarryitwithinus.com/.

The Sawyer Seminar at Tulane University presents a tour and talk in the Treme. Led by staff of the New Orleans African American Museum this experiential visit will feature significant sites in the Treme, ending with a meal, conversation, and performances at Congo Square.

This site visit is part of a three-part series of events, Sites of Memory: New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro: Exploring urban displacement in Treme and Valongo Wharf, highlighting community activism in New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro as ways to challenge disinvestment in Afro-descendant neighborhoods and raising questions about the tendency for these places to be subordinated to outward-facing urban “renewal”.

Free and open for all to attend, this event is limited to 30 guests, reserve your spot by emailing ctucker6@tulane.edu. Please note the time is currently tentative and may be subject to change. This event will be enforcing Tulane COVID-19 policies regarding face-coverings and vaccination statuses, please check online at https://tulane.edu/covid-19 for the most recent updates.

If you anticipate needing any type of reasonable accommodation or have questions about event accessibility, please contact Chloe at ctucker6@tulane.edu at least 10 days in advance.

The Sawyer Seminar at Tulane University presents a panel discussion featuring Dr. Lorraine Leu, Sara Zewde, Freddi Williams Evans, moderated by Dr. Adrian Anagnost and featuring a performance from Luther Gray and Mestre Curtis Pierre and Casa Samba

This discussion is part of a three-part series of events, Sites of Memory: New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro: Exploring urban displacement in Treme and Valongo Wharf, highlighting community activism in New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro as ways to challenge disinvestment in Afro-descendant neighborhoods and raising questions about the tendency for these places to be subordinated to outward-facing urban “renewal”.

Free and open for all to attend, this panel will take place at the Diboll Gallery in the Tulane Commons on the uptown campus. This event will be enforcing Tulane COVID-19 policies regarding face-coverings and vaccination statuses, please check online at https://tulane.edu/covid-19 for the most recent updates.

If you anticipate needing any type of reasonable accommodation or have questions about event accessibility, please contact Chloe at ctucker6@tulane.edu at least 10 days in advance.

The Sawyer Seminar at Tulane University presents a film screening of Faubourg Tremé: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans with an introduction by Dr. Pamela Sertzen.

This screening is part of a three-part series of events, Sites of Memory: New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro: Exploring urban displacement in Treme and Valongo Wharf, highlighting community activism in New Orleans and Rio de Janeiro as ways to challenge disinvestment in Afro-descendant neighborhoods and raising questions about the tendency for these places to be subordinated to outward-facing urban “renewal”.

Free and open for all to attend, this screening will take place in the Stone Auditorium in the Woldenberg Art Center on Tulane’s uptown campus.This event will be enforcing Tulane COVID-19 policies regarding face-coverings and vaccination statuses, please check online at https://tulane.edu/covid-19 for the most recent updates.

If you anticipate needing any type of reasonable accommodation or have questions about event accessibility, please contact Chloe at ctucker6@tulane.edu at least 10 days in advance.

About the Film:

Faubourg Tremé is considered the oldest black neighborhood in America, the origin of the southern civil rights movement, and the birthplace of jazz. Long before Hurricane Katrina, two native New Orleanians, one black and one white — writer Lolis Eric Elie and filmmaker Dawn Logsdon — began documenting the rich, living culture of this historic district. Miraculously, their tapes survived the disaster unscathed. The completed film, Faubourg Tremé: The Untold Story of Black New Orleans, which critics have hailed as “devastating,” “charming,” and “revelatory,” brims with unearthed historical nuggets. Who knew that in the early 1800s while most African Americans were toiling on plantations, free black people in Tremé were publishing poetry and conducting symphonies? Who knew that long before Rosa Parks, Tremé leaders organized sit-ins and protests that successfully desegregated the city’s streetcars and schools? Who knew that jazz, New Orleans’ greatest gift to America, was born from the embers of this first American civil rights movement? Elie, a New Orleans newspaperman, takes us on a tour of his city — in what evolves from a reflection on the relevance of history into a love letter to the storied New Orleans neighborhood Faubourg Tremé.