Art & Identity in New Orleans

The Moviegoer has a narrator that is passive. He only observes the things going on around him and reflecting on those things. To me, I think this passivity and apathy towards the everyday shows that he only floats about the world never fully interacting or communicating with it. “Lonnie grins at me with the liveliest […]

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While I think an opinion on a book or piece of art can change with time spent thinking on it, I definitely think that first impressions really have an effect on how people view something or someone for a long time. That being said, our discussion in class about the differences between The Awakening, A Streetcar Named […]

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A comment often echoed around the subject of the Ursulines and their prominence in New Orleans is that they “have been there as long as the city has.” Arriving just seven years after the city was founded, this sentiment is nearly correct. For most of New Orleans’ history, the Ursuline Sisters have been there. When […]

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Congo Square is a popular place of interest in New Orleans. Today, it is a part of Louis Armstrong Park, where it is often a venue for many events. However, the earth that the Square was built upon has witnessed centuries worth of history. From the joyful celebrations of life to the darkest tragedies and […]

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For me, the most interesting thing about voodoo is now the misconceptions of the craft.  There were so many different aspects of voodoo that were completely different than what I had originally thought before starting my research, but at the same time, certain ideas stayed the same.  However, to an even further extent, I was somewhat […]

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The celebration of the Mardi Gras tradition has an interesting beginning as it originated from the French settlers of New Orleans.  African Americans were banned from partaking in the French settlers’ Mardi Gras Krewes to which they responded by making their own celebration for Fat Tuesday called “The Carnival”.  From the start of the celebration […]

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I found this movie very intriguing. It explored jazz in the context of funerals and death in New Orleans. What I thought was one of the most interesting parts of the movie was when the older generations of jazz were commenting on the younger generations playing jazz. They lamented the loss of traditions and dirges […]

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New Orleans is known for being a melting pot of cultures from all across the world. The group that this particular project focused on was the immigrants from Latin America. Unlike a lot of cities and states where the Latinx demographic is dominated by a single group or two, New Orleans’s Latinx population is ENORMOUSLY […]

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If an individual wanted to indulge oneself with a countess in New Orleans they would reference the Blue Book. It was a circulated directory that advertised a diverse selection of madames and their workers. During the Storyville period in New Orleans, Louisiana, Lulu White, the self-proclaimed Queen of Demi-Monde, was described as: “Nowhere in this […]

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During the years of 1918 to 1919 the city of New Orleans was terrorized by a serial killer called the Axeman. The Axeman was known for breaking into houses late at night and attacking people while they slept often using weapons that were already in the house, this weapon was more often than not an […]

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The “Cities of the Dead” or otherwise known as, New Orleans Cemeteries. The cemeteries became nicknamed “The cities of the dead” because they resemble small villages of the dead. It is said that this keeps the dead alive. The cemeteries have mausoleums and tombs, but no actual graves. Part of what New Orleans is known […]

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St. Louis Cathedral, perhaps one of the most recognizable landmarks in the French Quarter and in New Orleans itself. One of the oldest churches in Louisiana, first established in 1727. Before that date, many other churches were built on the site. 1727 was the first time an official and semi-permanent building was built on the […]

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The story went that Charlie and his brother Harry, originally named Abraham and Isadore Sapio, moved to New Orleans from New York and opened up the 101 Ranch Cabaret. They ended up selling 101 to a man named Billy Phillips who changed the name to 102 Ranch. The Parkers then proceeded to open up a […]

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Despite their initial sucess, Jewish people faced social isolation throughout the time of New Orleans. However, despite their banning from social settings and general isolation, Many Jews focused on putting their funds back into the community. Multiple wealthy New Orleans Jews have founded many important things in the city. Felix Dreyfous created City Park, Isaac Delgado […]

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Next week — on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. in the 1948 Theater in the FAC — we’ll have the opportunity to watch the new documentary film City of A Million Dreams. After the film, the director Jason Berry and co-producer Simonette Berry, will discuss the film and answer our questions. Take a look at the […]

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Olivia’s post led me to this fascinating discussion of Jacques Guillaume Lucien Amans’ painting Creole in A Red Headdress (c.1840). Amans travelled from his native France to New Orleans to find work as a portraiturist, and he was quite successful. As a part of an art history seminar, students at Tulane University included Creole in A […]

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Unfathomable City: A New Orleans Atlas makes it a point very early on to highlight the unique ways in which the city and its residents are at once separated by distinct cultural and geographical markers and pushed together due to lack of land and the very human tendency to commune and exchange culture. In the 1700s, […]

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Throughout the story temptation and destruction were the main themes that were seen. The two main characters Blanche and Stanley best showed these themes. Though they are very different there seems to be a fine line between them or at least its easy to slip to either side of the spectrum. Blanche was a self-proclaimed […]

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The themes of desire and violence are not only prevalent throughout Tennessee Williams’s play, A Streetcar Named Desire but they are intertwined in a way that foreshadows the events that we see in the last few scenes of the play.  These two themes come together in the first Scene when Blanche DuBois is explaining the […]

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When reading A Streetcar Named Desire, something that stood out to me was the usage and placement within the stage directions for musical cues, as well as the type of music to be used for the scene. I went back through the book several times to count and infer where elements of the score were […]

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