Department of Anthropology Fall 2023 Colloquium Series
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Uptown Campus
Dinwiddie Hall, Room 102
Department of Anthropology Fall 2023 Colloquium Series illustration

Visiting Professor of Anthropology, Theodore Hilton, will deliver the talk "Infrastructure, Feeling, and the Future in Oakville's Saint Paul Hall." Please join us for this talk on November 10th, 4 pm, Dinwiddie Hall 102.

Food and refreshments will be served at 3:45 pm. 

Abstract:

The St. Paul Benevolent Association’s Hall sits in the historic freedpeople’s community of Oakville on the Mississippi River’s west bank in Plaquemines Parish. Originally located in a building erected during the early Reconstruction era in 1872, St. Paul has fostered Black life and liberatory struggle as a site of celebrations, a hub for disaster recovery, and a location for grassroots political organizing amidst successive paradigms of structured racial exclusion. Community members who grew up during the parish’s mid-twentieth century oil boom period and the regime of segregationist political boss Leander Perez are quick to draw connections between their present erasure from coastal planning and previous eras that shaped the terrain of racial exclusion. 
 

Severely damaged during Hurricane Ida, community members are now re-envisioning St. Paul Hall as a solar-powered disaster resilience hub, community center, and museum highlighting Black history in Plaquemines Parish. In this talk, I draw on Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s (2017) construction of “infrastructures of feeling,” to consider the liberatory lineages that advance their place-based visions of inclusive development both now and in the future. 

If driving to this event, information on uptown parking rules and regulations can be found here: https://campusservices.tulane.edu/departments/parking/uptown/parking-ru…

Accessibility:
Tulane University is committed to providing universal access to all our events. Please contact Dr. Allison Truitt (atruitt@tulane.edu, 504-862-3058), the event organizer for accessibility accommodations. Please note that advance notice is necessary to arrange some accessibility needs.