Holt Cemetery is a historic potter's field in New Orleans that has been in active use for several centuries. One of the few below-ground cemeteries in New Orleans, it is one of the most culturally fascinating burial places in the city. In spite of being frequently visited by families (evidenced by the unique votive material left on grave plots) and the final resting place of several historic figures, Holt is threatened by a lack of conservation so extreme that the ground surface is littered with human remains and the cemetery is left unprotected against grave robbing. Many locals have expressed concern that occult rituals take place within Holt, promoting the theft of human bones, while others have expressed concern that the skeletal material is stolen to be sold. Attempts to map and document the cemetery were originally undertaken by archaeologists working in the area who intended to create a searchable database with an interactive GIS map. Additionally, the nonprofit group Save Our Cemeteries, which works to restore New Orleans' cemeteries and educate the public about their importance, has taken part in conservation work. As of today all the projects and preservation efforts involving the cemetery have ceased. This thesis documents and analyzes the skeletal material within the cemetery alongside the votive material and attempts to explain why Holt is allowed to exist in its current state of disrepair while still remaining a place of vivid expressive culture. / acase@tulane.edu

My dissertation titled "Mambos, Priestesses, and Goddesses: Spiritual Healing Through Vodou in Black Women's Narratives of Haiti and New Orleans" reclaims the practice of Vodou as an integral African spiritual tradition through fiction by black women writers. I discuss how the examination of Vodou necessitates the revision of colonial history, serves as an impetus for reevaluating the literary representation of the black female migrant subject, and gives voice to communities silenced by systemic oppression. I parallel novels by contemporary women writers such as Erna Brodber, Jewell Parker Rhodes and Edwidge Danticat with Zora Neale Hurston's ethnographic research in the early twentieth century in order to examine how Vodou is utilized as a literary trope that challenges racist, stereotypical representations of African spirituality in American popular culture. It is also an examination of the shared socio-cultural history between Haiti and New Orleans that coincides with political and environmental changes. Although Vodou has been disparaged as primitive magic, my work demonstrates its profound social, cultural, and political significance; and its important transformations from a nineteenth-century practice to a twenty-first century strategy of survival.

This thesis explores the relationship between water infrastructure, ecological change, and the politics of planning in New Orleans and the Mississippi River Delta, USA. Complex assemblages of water control infrastructure have been embedded in the delta over the last several centuries in an effort to keep its cities protected from floodwaters and maintain its waterways as standardized conduits for maritime transportation. This thesis investigates the historical development of these infrastructural interventions in the delta’s dynamics, and shows how the region’s eco-hydrology is ensnared in the politics and materiality of pipes, pumps, canals, locks, and levees. These historical entanglements complicate contemporary efforts to enact large-scale ecosystem restoration, even while the delta’s landscape is rapidly eroding into the sea. This historical approach is extended into the present through an examination of how waterway standards established at so-called chokepoints in the global maritime transportation system (the Panama Canal, for example) become embedded and contested in coastal landscapes and port cities worldwide. Turning towards urban ecology, the thesis examines socioecological responses to the flooding following Hurricane Katrina in 2005, with a special focus on how infrastructure failures, flooding intensity, and land abandonment are driving changing vegetation patterns in New Orleans over the past decade. The thesis contributes new conceptual language for grappling with the systemic relations bound up in water infrastructure, and develops one of the first studies describing urban ecosystem responses to prolonged flooding and post-disaster land management. This provides insights into the impending planning challenges facing New Orleans and coastal cities globally, where rising sea levels are bringing about renewed attention to how infrastructure is implicated in patterns of ecological change, hazard exposure, resilience, and social inequality. / <p>At the time of the doctoral defense, the following papers were unpublished and had a status as follows: Paper 2: Manuscript. Paper 3: Manuscript. Paper 4: Accepted. Paper 5: Manuscript.</p>

As the locus of cotton production shifted toward the newer southwestern states over the first half of the nineteenth century, the city of New Orleans became increasingly important to the slave-plantation economy of the U.S. South. Moreover, because of its location near the base of the enormous Mississippi River system, the city also thrived on the export of agricultural commodities from western states farther upriver. Handling this wide-ranging commerce was the city's business community: bankers, factors, and wholesalers, among others. This globally oriented community represented an older and qualitatively unique form of wealth accumulation, merchant capitalism, which was based on the extraction of profit from exchange processes. However, like the slave-based mode of production to which it was closely allied, the New Orleans merchant community faced increasing pressure during the antebellum decades even while its fortunes seemed otherwise secure. The city lost most of its market share in western grain products to railroads and other routes linked directly to northeastern urban centers, and its merchants' failure to maintain port infrastructure or create a viable manufacturing sector reflected their complacency and left them vulnerable to competition from the fast-developing industrially-based economy of the North. These and other weaknesses were fatally exposed during the Civil War and Reconstruction. As a result of many changes to the regional and national political economy after northern victory in the war, the New Orleans merchant community was never able to recover its previous commercial dominance, and the former first-rank American city quickly became a site of notorious political corruption and endemic poverty. Much the same can be said of the postbellum southern economy in which it was embedded, where the practices of merchant capitalism nevertheless managed to persist by becoming dispersed throughout the agricultural interior in the form of "country stores." Under the sharecropping system that became prevalent in cotton production, rural merchants furnished seasonal credit to the small farming households that had replaced plantation slavery. Although these stores played different roles in Louisiana cotton and sugar parishes, the culture of merchant capitalism hampered economic development in the South for many decades to come.

Thesis (D. Min.)--New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, 1990. / Includes abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 105-108).

Thesis (M.A.)--University of New Orleans, 2004. / Title from electronic submission form. "A thesis ... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of History."--Thesis t.p. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

In what ways can historical power relationships be interpreted through a chronological analysis of historical maps, and how are these coded versions of history produced and reproduced through the modern tourist experience? I argue that historical maps can be interpreted to reveal the political influence and agendas inscribed upon the built environment. I review how the implications of these value systems can be seen in the cultural constructs and institutions that have been used over time to generate revenue through a two stage process,: first, through an analysis of historic and modern maps in two Southern cities, New Orleans and Charleston, South Carolina, and second, through personal ethnographic fieldwork. I analyze my findings to compare these two cities in their use of spatial representation to facilitate and contain a historic tourist industry that spawns local industries of historical tourism to both justify and codify these views as history.

This paper examines the production of my thesis film, “The Horse and The Castle.” I will explore the choices taken in each step of the production, from the writing process to post-production and finishing. Each area — writing, directing, production design, cinematography, editing, and sound — contained a multitude of decisions that helped to achieve my final vision for the film.

This document gives an account of my artistic efforts in creating my thesis film Fathers and Sons. This document includes sections that cover the writing, casting, production design, principal photography, and editing of my film. I give special attention to the writing process in Chapter 2, because of its personal significance to my growth as a filmmaker. This chapter details the evolution of my original story concept from a drama to a comedy. The ultimate goal of my film was to create a personal work of art. This document self-reflects on how well I was able to achieve this goal, and what I learned along the way.

The modern gay New Orleans community was born on the neglected streets of the historic French Quarter neighborhood during the 1920s. Despite a century of harassment at the hands of local officials and the police department, this vulnerable community developed strong communal bonds in and around the French Quarter, ultimately transforming it into one of the preeminent gay neighborhoods in the United States. This study examines how a vibrant gay community thrived in the socially conservative South, shifting traditional narratives of twentieth century gay life primarily existing on the East and West Coasts. To survive, gay men and lesbians were forced to create alternative social spaces, often coopting and exploiting the traditions of heteronormative New Orleans culture. Drawing upon archival sources and personal interviews, this dissertation challenges assumptions about the apolitical nature of the gay New Orleans community. Ultimately, this is a story of how a gay community became politically active while navigating the challenges of the socially conservative Deep South.