Readings and Book Talks
Roy Blount Jr, Alphabetter Juice: or, The Joy of Text
Cheré Dastugue Coen,
Get Your Mojo Working: Creating Spellbinding Gris Gris Bags & Sachets
Freddi Williams Evans, Congo Square: African Roots in New Orleans
R. Reese Fuller, Angola to Zydeco: Louisiana Lives
Shannon Frystak, Our Minds on Freedom:
Women and the Struggle for Black Equality in Louisiana, 1924-1967
Made possible through a grant from the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities
Oliver A. Houck, Down on the Batture
Ian McNulty, Louisiana Rambles
Cokie and Steven Roberts, Our Haggadah: Uniting Traditions for Interfaith Families
Discussions
Culture After the Hurricanes: Rhetoric and Reinvention of the Gulf Coast
M. B. Hackler, Keagan Lejeune and Benjamin MorrisThe Current State of New Orleans Music
Keith Spera, Groove Interrupted: Loss, Renewal and the Music of New Orleans
John Swenson, The New Atlantis: Musicians Battle for the Survival of New Orleans
with Jan Ramsey moderatingDictionary of Louisiana French:
As Spoken in Cajun, Creole and American Indian Communities
Barry Jean Ancelet, Thomas A. Klingler, Amanda LaFleur, Tamara Lindner, Michael Picone, Kevin Rottet and Albert ValdmanLoss of Wetlands, Loss of Identity
David Burley, Losing Ground: Identity and Land Loss in Coastal Louisiana
Donald W. Davis, Washed Away?:The Invisible Peoples of Louisiana’s Wetlands
Kelby Ouchley, Bayou Diversity: Nature and People in the Louisiana Bayou Country
with Keith Ouchley moderating.New Interpretations of Twentieth Century Race and Race Relations
Tom Aiello, Shannon Frystak and Michael S. MartinNew Orleans: What Can’t Be Lost
This anthology's 88 stories represent the piano keys of New Orleans culture bearers in this literary love song to the city they call home. Jason Berry, Simonette Berry and Joshua Clark join editor Lee Barclay to sound their tonal tributes, all sharp, none flat.Two Decades-Plus of Louisiana Cultural Vistas
Since 1990, encompassing more than 7,000 pages, Louisiana Cultural Vistas magazine has documented Louisiana’s arts, culture, history and literature. The magazine is winner of more than 100 awards from the New Orleans Press Club including Best Publication. From Huey Long and Hank Williams to Cajun Mardi Gras to Hurricane Katrina, no other publication in the state has shed more scholarly insight into all that makes Louisiana unique. Join the publication’s editors, Michael Sartisky and David Johnson, and two freelance contributors, Cheryl Gerber and Ben Sandmel, for a discussion of this one-of-a-kind magazine.Worth a Thousand Words: Picturing Catharsis
While many books have featured images of Hurricane Katrina, two recent publications focus not so much on the physical damage, but on the catharsis that accompanies such epic suffering. Jennifer Shaw, author of Hurricane Story, and Katheryn Krotzer Laborde, who wrote Do Not Open: The Discarded Refrigerators of Post-Katrina New Orleans, discuss the visual portrayals of emotional release, whether private or public, individual or collective, in their photo-rich books about evacuation and recovery. John Lawrence of the Historic New Orleans Collection moderates.Screenings
Screening
Native Waters: A Chitimacha Recollection
The film Native Waters takes the viewer on a journey into the sacred places of the Basin with author and keeper of his family’s oral tradition Roger Stouff, a fisherman descended from “a long and distinguished lineage of fishermen within a nation of fishermen,” as he provides native stories, beliefs and perspectives about this important and often overlooked people. Director and producer Tika Laudun will introduce the film.Veins in the Gulf:
A Documentary Film About the Disappearing Coastline of Southern Louisiana
Filmmakers Elizabeth Coffman and Ted Hardin, joined by author Martha Serpas, present this documentary that traces the environmental crisis of southern Louisiana, the history of Cajun culture, and rapidly disappearing bayous. We witness the community trying to solve its environmental crisis and relentlessly searching for strategies to restore the coastline.