How Do You Fence a Cloud? Tracking Bourbon Street’s Pedestrian Parade
A recent spate of shootings on Bourbon Street precipitated a citywide debate on how best to patrol and secure the rollicking strip. This article, courtesy The Times-Picayune, draws upon Tulane geographer Richard Campanella’s research into the spatial dynamics of the nightly Bourbon Street pedestrian parade (PDF). New Orleans: Place Portraits — Over the next nine months,…
Shotgun Geography
It’s New Orleans’ most ubiquitous house type, and its sobriquet is as intriguing as its geometry is simple. Where did this vernacular architecture come from, and how and where did it diffuse—or was it invented locally? Tulane geographer Richard Campanella synthesizes some of the cultural geography and anthropology research on the shotgun house, courtesy The Times-Picayune…
Commemorating the Enslaved Along Louisiana’s River Road
Members of the NSF research team visit the River Road African American Museum in Donaldsonville, Louisiana in June of 2013. (Photo by Amy Potter) Between New Orleans and Baton Rouge, lies the remnants of antebellum sugar plantations along Louisiana’s famed River Road, named for the Mississippi River that snakes its way through southern Louisiana before spilling…
The Accidental Forest
Sometimes urbanization misses a spot. Join Tulane geographer Richard Campanella in exploring a relict patch of New Orleans once-vast, now-drained backswamp, today an emerald Eden without a name, surrounded by a million people. Courtesy The Times-Picayune (PDF). New Orleans: Place Portraits — Over the next nine months, AAG’s “Focus on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast,”…
Culture Wars, Ethnic Rivalry, and New Orleans’ Messy Municipality Era
An ill-fated attempt to resolve social problems through political geography—and by exploiting ethnic geography—is explained by Tulane geographer Richard Campanella in "Culture Wars, Ethnic Rivalry, and New Orleans' Messy Municipality Era," courtesy The Times-Picayune (PDF). New Orleans: Place Portraits — Over the next nine months, AAG’s “Focus on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast,” will feature a series…
Dining with Cajuns and Creoles
The foods of New Orleans are an expression of south Louisiana's history, culture, and wetlands. Influences upon the area's traditional cuisine are much like using recipes gathered at a crossroads of European, Caribbean, and Acadian culinary customs at interplay with local ideas and available ingredients. Understanding menus means knowing terms like — roux, remoulade, and…
Like Geological Strata, Layers of Urban History Underlie Bourbon Street’s Pavement
A recent public works project on Bourbon Street unearthed centuries’ worth of infrastructure and urbanization, not to mention layers of Mississippi River sediment. This article, by Tulane geographer Richard Campanella courtesy The Times-Picayune, recounts the various street conditions and improvements in New Orleans over the past 300 years (PDF). New Orleans: Place Portraits — Over the…
Beneath New Orleans, a Coastal Barrier Island
Nearly all of New Orleans’s soils were deposited by the Mississippi, but the river itself was guided here in part by a preexisting barrier island formed by the Pearl River. This article by Tulane geographer Richard Campanella, courtesy Louisiana Cultural Vistas, explores the subterranean Pine Island Trend (PDF). New Orleans: Place Portraits — Over the next…
2018 AAG Annual Meeting Presidential Plenary Announced
The AAG announces the 2018 annual presidential plenary session from its current president, Derek Alderman, as well as a panel of esteemed scholars. The presidential plenary is currently slated to take place during the 2018 AAG annual meeting on Tuesday, April 10, 2018 in the Grand Ballroom at the Sheraton Hotel from 6:30 -8:30 Alderman will…
A Glance at New Orleans’ Contemporary Hispanic and Latino Communities
Las Acacias, a Latino market located in the revitalized Freret Street District in Uptown. Photo credit: James Chaney Situated near the mouth of North America’s largest river, New Orleans has long served as a major port that advantageously connects the United States’ heartland to the rest of the world. Proximity and access to the Gulf…
New Orleans Was Once Above Sea Level
Everyone has heard that New Orleans is below sea level; locals joke about it with a mix of dark humor and beleaguered pride, and it affects the region’s flood risk and future sustainability in fundamental ways. Yet few people realize that this condition is anthropogenic in its origins, and for the first 170 years of…
An Ethnic Geography of New Orleans
This Journal of American History article by Tulane geographer Richard Campanella maps and spatially analyzes the residential settlement patterns of various ethnic and racial groups in New Orleans, from antebellum times to post-Katrina. New Orleans: Place Portraits — Over the next nine months, AAG’s “Focus on New Orleans and the Gulf Coast,” will feature a series…