The objective of this paper is to analyze the resiliency of the New Orleans lodging and tourism industry by conducting a SWOT analysis. A SWOT analysis is composed of four key parts: the internal influences that are the strengths (S) and weaknesses (W) and the external influences that are the opportunities (O) and threats (T). New Orleans is characterized by the ability to use its internal strengths to drive growth in its lodging and tourism market. The main internal strengths I identified were the city’s strong cultural identity, and destination attractiveness in both the convention and leisure markets. However, New Orleans also has internal weaknesses that adversely affect the perception of the city: cultural arrogance, crime and cleanliness. Externally, the city is presented with several opportunities to become one of the top tourist destinations both nationally and internationally. The marketing opportunities available to New Orleans are through the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation, the healthcare and film industries, and the city’s accessibility. The city’s reach is limited by several key threats, such as short-term rentals, competing markets such as Charleston and Atlanta, and natural disasters that could disrupt New Orleans’ position as one of the top visitor markets in the United States.

Both popular and scholarly observers have portrayed New Orleans as a city both supported and burdened by its image as a diverse cultural other within the American South, historically tolerant of certain sins of the flesh. This image has been used by proponents and critics alike in order to push their respective agenda regarding the Crescent City. This thesis will not seek to discredit this image that is based largely on fact. However, using Prohibition as a case study, this thesis will use letters to the editor to uncover attitudes of New Orleanians in opposition to this reputation to reveal alternative and historically silenced voices of New Orleans, since for instance people of a certain age, gender, or ethnicity were silenced in the halls of government. This paper will reveal the opinions of New Orleanians regarding Prohibition and what these opinions can tell us about New Orleans’s image.

This finding aid of interviews is drawn from the Arnold R. Hirsch Collection at the Amistad Research Center. Between 1987 and 1994, historian Arnold Hirsch interviewed New Orleans’ first black mayor, Ernest Morial, and others related to that crucial era in New Orleans political history. This collection consists of 37 audiocassettes tapes that contain oral history interviews conducted by Arnold Hirsch with various New Orleanians who were active in city government and political activism. This project-based thesis covers the research and construction of the finding aid completed for this collection during an internship at the Amistad Research Center, as well as the metadata collected and created for the collection. This collection and finding aid are being housed at the Amistad Research Center.

The proposed public history project, La Fièvre Jaune, will be one component of a larger exhibit sponsored by the Archdiocese of New Orleans, Office of Archives and Records entitled Song of Farewell: Catholic Cemeteries of New Orleans, focusing on New Orleans’s historic Catholic cemeteries, funeral chapels, relics, and burial rights. Using cemetery and death records, La Fièvre Jaune documents many of the Catholic, largely Irish immigrants struck by yellow fever in 1853 and the role of St. Patrick’s cemetery as the burial site for this population. The epidemic took the lives of some 8,000 people. This project will provide insight into the ways that the Catholic Church in New Orleans responded to the 1853 yellow fever epidemic using photographs, official correspondence, as well as cemetery and death records. The entire exhibit will be housed at the Old Ursuline Convent Museum in the French Quarter.

The influx of immigrant Sicilians into southeastern Louisiana in the nineteenth century resulted in a parallel rise of the French Quarter as a culinary destination. Through an analysis of menus, recipe books, city directories, newspapers and census rolls, this work maps the growing influence of Sicilian farmers, vendors, and restaurateurs on New Orleans foodways. The often-overlooked community of Sicilians already living in the city in the early nineteenth century set the stage for the mass migration from Sicily to New Orleans later in the century, when Sicilians gained control of the produce food market in southeast Louisiana. A comparison of local cookbooks and recipes from before the mass arrival of the Sicilians with those created after Sicilians began to dominate agricultural production in Louisiana reveals a subtle shift in the use of ingredients, as local cooks incorporated into local dishes the produce made available by Sicilian farmers and vendors.

ABSTRACT This paper will detail the process of creating and making the film Everything that Shines is not Gold. This paper divides into four parts: writing process, pre-production, production, and postproduction. The first part will touch on how the story came about and the writing process. The second part will cover the pre-production aspects and how I dealt with a strict deadline. Next, I will talk about directing. In the fourth part, I will discuss the long and tiring postproduction workflow. Last, I will reflect on making and what I learned.

In order to better understand the effects of condominium conversions, this study explores the nature and extent of the conversion trend, and its social impacts on the Vieux Carré neighborhood. The increasing number of conversions in the Vieux Carré, also known as the French Quarter, has been the focus of recent controversy and has been perceived by many residents as a threat to the viability of the historic district as a neighborhood. Long-term Vieux Carré residents and neighborhood organizations have expressed fears that the converted rental units are being used as short-term rentals to tourists or second homes, which may be contributing to the decline of the neighborhood's residential base. As a framework for understanding the social impacts of condominium conversions in the Vieux Carré neighborhood, this study includes a review of the literature on neighborhood change, neighborhood health, and neighborhood attachment. Since the issue of condominiums is intertwined with the ongoing research on tourism in this historic district, a review of the literature on condominium conversion, tourism impacts and the Vieux Carré also is included. In addition, this study contains the results of a mail survey of occupants of converted condominium units in the Vieux Carré. While survey respondents report formal and informal participation in the neighborhood, only half of the occupants (53%) of the converted units consider the Vieux Carré as their primary residence or are registered to vote in New Orleans. Although many condominium residents do exhibit a sense of neighborhood attachment, half are not present in the neighborhood on a full-time basis; therefore, they have limited opportunities to participate politically on behalf of the neighborhood. The findings of the survey suggest the social impacts of the condominium conversion in the Vieux Carré are likely to contribute to the decline of the neighborhood.

For two hundred years the history of the Battle of New Orleans has suffered from the neglected state of the historiography on the War of 1812 and the static state of the Battle's orthodox narrative. This dissertation identifies and deconstructs the central themes of the Battle's orthodox narrative. It reveals how these long standing presumptions surfaced through the Battle's public commemoration in the nineteenth century and have fostered misleading perceptions about Louisiana’s involvement in the war, the defense preparations undertaken in New Orleans prior to Andrew Jackson's arrival, and the so-called unity that was achieved through the victory. By incorporating the actions and experiences of women and the enslaved into the Battle's history, this dissertation exposes the traditional marginalization of these groups in accounts of the Battle and its subsequent memorialization. It shows that the absence of women and the enslaved in the cultivation of the Battle's public memory was a deliberate measure taken by white slaveholding elites to preserve racial and social divisions that were blurred by the Battle's symbolic message of the power of unity. The actions of a third group, free men of color, are examined to illustrate how critical they were to the victory and how dangerous the memory of their service was to white slaveholding elites, especially in the 1850s. These new perspectives on the Battle and its public commemoration challenge the unchanging nature of the Battle's history and indicate that there is far more to the Battle's story than has ever been told. / acase@tulane.edu

In the work of Alice Dunbar-Nelson the city and culture of 19th century New Orleans figures prominently, and is a major character affecting the lives of her protagonists. While race, class, and gender are among the focuses of many scholars the eccentricity and cultural history of the most exotic American city, and its impact on Dunbar-Nelson’s writing is unmistakable. This essay will discuss how the diverse cultural environment of New Orleans in the 19th century allowed Alice Dunbar Nelson to create narratives which allowed her short stories to speak to the shifting identities of women and the social uncertainty of African Americans in the Jim Crow south. A consideration of New Orleans’ cultural history is important when reading Dunbar-Nelson’s work, whose significance has often been disregarded because of what some considered its lack of racial markers.

Thesis (M.S.)--Mississippi State University. Department of Computational Engineering. / Title from title screen. Includes bibliographical references.