Students will gain a historical and ethnographic understanding of the emergence, impact, and meaning of the interview as a performance event and dialogic form of communication based in conversation, learn to conduct pre-interview research, and conduct a cultural and historically useful interview as well as to record, transcribe, and cite it. Students will be able to write and speak critically about the role and value of intercultural communication in building public discourse.
Students worked with Sweet Home New Orleans, Hogan Jazz Archive, and American Routes.
ANTH 3520
Diaspora Yoruba
Olankie-Ola Orie
Yoruba Archival Records at the AMISTAD Research Center: Moving beyond descriptions of generic African experiences, this public service learning experience will allow students to trace the experiences of one cultural group—Yoruba—throughout the cycle of the abolitionist movements in the 19th and 20th centuries. Amistad holds original materials dating to 1859 that reference the social and cultural importance of America’s ethnic and racial history and the Yoruba African diaspora. These records include papers, photographs, art and other important documents. The goal of the Diaspora Yoruba public service course is to help organize, select, catalogue, and process Yoruba materials asone of Amistad's special collections. Learning about Diaspora Yoruba through archival collection provides a hands-on approach to studying the subject matter. Responsibilities of students: -Researching Yoruba collections. -Cataloging • inventorying and describing of materials • creating database records • creating collection guides and other basic finding aids • planning and/or preparing for a related library exhibit The contributions of the proposed Yoruba Archival Collection include not only research and the creation of new knowledge on Yoruba Diaspora, but also their usefulness for teaching and learning about this cultural and linguistic group in the United States. The students will prepare an exhibit of the material for an instructional public outreach at AMISTAD. These Diaspora Yoruba collections are unique because they will extend beyond paper to other formats of cultural significance, for example: poetry, proverbs, and photographs. The Yoruba Archival Collection will serve scholars, students, and the general public who access Amistad’s materials—collections and holdings that make the Center a unique research and cultural experience.
This course examines how Vietnamese-American identities are constructed and performed. The course is divided into three sections. In the first section, “Diaspora and Transnationalism,” we will examine how the two theoretical concepts may be illuminated through fiction, memoir, and autobiography. The second section, “Reconstructing Identities,” provides students with a broad overview of Vietnamese nationalism in the 20th century and the subsequent dispersal of peoples after 1975. The third section, “Public Memory and Cultural Politics,” considers how collective identities are represented. Students will have the opportunity to learn about Vietnamese-American experiences in New Orleans and ongoing projects related to social justice and civic engagement.
Students assisted Vietnamese community development corporations with various tasks, including fund-raising events, assessments, and other on-going projects.
ANTH 4950/4960
Carson Mounds Archaeology Field School
Jayur Mehta
The service learning component of Anthropology 4950 and 4960 allows students to relate archaeology to modern cultural anthropology. In the field school, students will learn basic archaeological field and lab methods with the goal of learning how prehistoric Mississippi Indians lived in an active floodplain environment. In the service component, students will work with community partners (the Mighty Quapaws and Delta Arts Youth Program) to beautify the urban river-scape of the Sunflower River in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Students will learn from experienced scientists how rivers actually work (stream flow, levee formation, channel migration, etc.) and how they affect and are affected by human societies of past and present. Much as river-based flooding affects life in New Orleans, it also affects the modern communities of Clarksdale, Mississippi, as well as the prehistoric peoples of the region. The river-based service component of this course will allow students to contextualize how important rivers are to local communities, as well as to the economy of this nation. The service component of this course will also require collaboration with a local youth program (Delta Arts). The students will participate in a demonstration field day at the archaeological site and they will be asked to demonstrate and teach archaeological lessons they have learned in the field to our local community partners, Delta Arts and Mighty Quapaws. In this demonstration program, Tulane students will have the opportunity to talk with local youths about their individual histories and relate prehistoric settlement in Mississippi to modern cityscapes and nucleated city life.
