Course Calendar
Related Links

This course explores what makes New Orleans magical.  For people around the world, the city is more than the sum of its parts, occupying a rarified spot in the landscape of their dreams.  The construction of New Orleans in the popular imagination as “The Big Easy” and “The City That Care Forgot” occurred over a long period of time and used a variety of materials, but a unifying theme runs through it all.  New Orleans is viewed as a place apart because its regional traditions linger into the present, setting the city apart from the bland sameness of modern America.

In this course, students will examine how two of these traditions—Creole and Cajun—were revived and popularized through cuisine, literature, and performance.  The first week will take students back to New Orleans during the Gilded Age, when a city still recovering from military defeat and occupation found a newfound source of pride in its French heritage.  As restaurateurs, writers, and Mardi Gras crewes invited visitors to join them in reminiscing about the leisurely life of the Old Creole days, New Orleans acquired an international reputation for its uniqueness.  Students will leap forward a century during the second week to learn about the Cajun Renaissance of the 1980s, which reconstructed the city’s image once again.  With Paul Prudhomme’s cookbook vaulting up the New York Time’s bestseller list and Michael and David Doucet’s music finding its way into the soundtrack of the film, The Big Easy, New Orleans revealed another layer of its past to the world.  Students will culminate their learning experience by drawing on what they have learned to construct an identity for a post-Katrina New Orleans.  To better illuminate the rich tapestry of the city, three professors will teach the course as a team, drawing on their respective expertise in culinary and social history as well as Louisiana literature.  In addition to traditional seminar-style instruction, the course makes New Orleans into a classroom through two field trips.