The End of Empire, Louisiana: Disaster and Recovery on the Gulf Coast, 1915-2012
38 Ley Street New Haven, Connecticut 06512
Glenda Gilmore (chair), John Mack Faragher, Kai Erikson
The dissertation examines how people in and around New Orleans have experienced disaster and engaged in recovery from the Great Hurricane of 1915 through Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Many observers describe disasters as acute events: ahistorical anomalies, unpredictable “acts of god.” In contrast, the dissertation broadens the search for causes and consequences in order to show how the places we live and the disasters that imperil them are at once artifacts of state policy, cultural desire, environmental limitation, and economic possibility.
Disasters in America: Political, Cultural, and Environmental Histories (instructor) Wilderness in the North American Imagination (instructor) Oral History / New Haven History (instructor) The American South Since 1877 (co-instructor) The Future of the American City (co-instructor) The Civil War and Reconstruction Era (teaching fellow) The Formation of Modern American Culture, 1920-present (teaching fellow) Media and Medicine in Modern America (teaching fellow) New Haven and the Problem of Change in the American City (teaching fellow)
"Hurricane Betsy and the Politics of Disaster in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward, 1965-1967," Journal of Southern History (forthcoming) "StoryCorps," Journal of American History, Vol. 93, No. 1 (June 2006) Essays and editorials published in Slate, The Atlantic, Salon, the New Orleans Gambit, the Huffington Post, and the New York Times. Papers presented at the annual meetings of the Southern Historical Association, the American Folklore Society, the Louisiana Folklore Society, the American Association of Museums, the American Association of State and Local Historical Societies, and the Oral History Association. Papers also presented at conferences hosted by Renmin University of China, the University of Louisiana, and the University of North Carolina. Invited papers presented at the Institute for Historical Studies at the University of Texas-Austin; the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition at Yale University; Princeton University; the Center for the Study of Hazards and Disasters and the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill; and Harvard University.
Yale Prize Teaching Fellowship (2012 and 2013); John Morton Blum Fellowship for Graduate Research in American History and Culture (2013); Tulane University Global South Fellowship (2012); Institution for Social and Policy Studies Policy Fellowship (2012-2013); Archibald Hanna, Jr. Fellowship in American History at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library (2012)