Featured Speakers

Dr. Rachel Carrico (she/her) believes that art serves an essential function in the lives of all people, including as a tool for justice. Accordingly, her recent book, Dancing the Politics of Pleasure at the New Orleans Second Line (University of Illinois Press, 2024), reveals how Black New Orleanians (re)claim self and city by dancing through the streets. A serial collaborator, some of Carrico’s favorite collective projects include cofounding Goat in the Road Productions (New Orleans); advising and codirecting film projects (Buckjumpin [Lily Keber]; If Cities Could Dance [KQED]; Light Rock and Bounce [Neighborhood Story Project]); and parading each March with the Ice Divas Social & Pleasure Club. She is currently at work on dance project that explores dance, culture, and Parkinson’s Disease. Carrico is an assistant professor of dance studies at the University of Florida. 

Presenting on Thursday, April 17 at 4:45 PM – 6:15 PM  in Carondelet (3rd Floor.)  

Zella Palmer, is an author, professor, filmmaker, curator, scholar and the Chair and Director of the Dillard University Ray Charles Program in African-American Material Culture in New Orleans, Louisiana. Palmer is committed to documenting and preserving the legacy African American, Creole, Indigenous and LatinX culinary history. As the Chair of the Dillard University Ray Charles Program, Palmer filmed and produced the Story of New Orleans Creole Cooking: The Black Hand in the Pot documentary.  In 2020, under Palmer’s leadership, she launched a Food Studies Minor at Dillard University.

Palmer’s latest publications, Recipes and Remembrances of Fair Dillard: 1869-2019 (University of Louisiana at Lafayette Press) and James Beard Foundation Semi-Finalist (U.S. Foodways) Ed Mitchell’s Barbeque (Harper Collins, June 2023) shares some of her rich research. Palmer was a guest or keynote speaker for NYU, Nicholls State University, Maryville University, University of Gastronomic Sciences (Turin, Italy) Essence Festival and for the 2022 American Community Gardening Association Conference. 

Palmer’s research and articles  appeared in the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities 64 Parishes, Essence and For the Culture magazines. Palmer received the 2018 ‘Cultural Bearer Award’ from the Mardi Gras Indian Hall of Fame, 2020 New Orleans Magazine ‘People To Watch’ and 2022 Dine Diaspora Black Women in Food ‘Trailblazer’ Honoree. Palmer hosts Culture & Flavor podcast on Heritage Radio Network. Palmer is currently working on her next documentary ‘Grenada to the World | The Island of Spice.

Presenting on Friday, April 18 at 9:45 PM – 11:15 PM in Carondelet (3rd Floor.)  

The Ethel and Herman L. Midlo Center for New Orleans Studies promotes understanding of the city’s history and culture, with an emphasis on civil rights. It supports new scholarship on New Orleans and fosters interdisciplinary collaboration and community partnerships that promote public engagement and support the cultural life of the city. Through events programming, public media content, oral histories, and digital humanities projects, the Midlo Center explores and highlights lesser-known aspects of the city's past.

The Midlo Center advances the University of New Orleans's mission and strategic plan by contributing vital knowledge to the study of our city. From environmental histories to cultural, archaeological, and archival investigations, the research produced by the Midlo Center benefits the vibrant urban community it serves.

Presenting on Friday, April 18 at 9:45 PM – 11:15 PM in Carondelet (3rd Floor.)  

Faith Carr is a native of North Louisiana and a graduate assistant at the Midlo Center for New Orleans Studies in the History MA program at the University of New Orleans. She earned her BA in History from Grambling State University, where her academic work centered on cultural memory and community-based historical narratives. Her research focuses on digital access, African American grassroots activism in North Louisiana, and the construction of more inclusive regional histories. Faith contributes to collaborative digital humanities projects that explore public memory and historical representation in New Orleans, including outreach and interpretive work for digital platforms that highlight underrepresented sites and narratives. She previously hosted All Things Kulture, a radio program exploring African American women’s history and cultural expression through historical commentary and sound. Her digital curation experience includes roles with NMAAHC and The HistoryMakers Digital Archive, where she supported public engagement and community-centered storytelling. Broadly, her academic trajectory is guided by an interest in how digital tools, oral history, and cultural archives can reshape regional historical narratives, expand access to Black memory work, and challenge dominant frameworks of historical representation.

Jessica Dauterive is a digital public historian who specializes in the cultural politics of the 20th century US South. Her current research shows how local investments in mass culture in Southwest Louisiana from the 1920s-1970s developed into a regional network of Cajun culture industries that also expanded the group's economic, social, and political power. Dauterive is the project manager for the Midlo Center for New Orleans Studies at the University of New Orleans, where she also teaches digital and public history courses. She is the managing editor of the web-based storytelling project New Orleans Historical and a project associate for the grassroots oral history project Frenchmen Notes. Dauterive also brings over a decade of experience to her work as a digital humanities consultant for various local and national organizations including the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media, the National Park Foundation, the New Orleans Jazz Museum, and Xavier University of Louisiana.

Mary Niall Mitchell (“Molly”) is Ethel & Herman L. Midlo Endowed Chair and the Gordon Mueller Professor of Public History at the University of New Orleans, where she directs the Midlo Center for New Orleans Studies. She is author of Raising Freedom's Child: Black Children and Visions of the Future After Slavery (NYU Press, 2008) and has published online for Slate, The Atlantic, Harper’s, and the New York Times. Mitchell is a lead historian on Freedom on the Move, a database of fugitive slave advertisements from North American newspapers. She collaborated with The Hard History Project and True Fiktion on the comic book Jane’s Freedom, about a self-liberating woman in New Orleans. Mitchell has received grants and awards from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the National Archives, the Institute for Museums and Library Sciences, Monument Lab, American Council of Learned Societies, the Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation, and the J. William Fulbright Foundation. She is currently curating the exhibit A Measure of Freedom for Whitney Plantation.