Remaking New Orleans
Beyond Exceptionalism and Authenticity
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 4156412 |
|---|---|
| Authors | J Mark Souther (0000-0001-8090-7056, Cleveland State University, Cleveland, Ohio, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Volume | 107 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 445-446 |
| Publication date | 2020-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8723 • E-ISSN: 1945-2314 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jahist/jaaa270 |
| OpenAlex | W3089211643 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
Remaking New Orleans is a collection of fourteen essays that examine how preoccupations with exceptionality and authenticity have clouded popular and scholarly understandings of historical and contemporary New Orleans. The editors Thomas Jessen Adams and Matt Sakakeeny and their contributors offer a welcome, convincing, and overdue rebuke of representations of New Orleans as a city lying outside broader contexts. This anthology serves as a sophisticated primer for how scholars can enrich the study of New Orleans by eschewing uncritical assumptions of its uniqueness. Following an introduction that outlines the creation, perpetuation, and problematic nature of New Orleans's purported exceptionality and authenticity, the volume consists of four sections. The first two, collectively spanning colonial to post–Hurricane Katrina New Orleans, focus, respectively, on the figurative construction of the city's identity as exceptional and as authentic. Perhaps most compelling for historians are the essays that elucidate why the French creole conception of the city prevailed over other conceptions. Shannon Lee Dawdy reveals long-standing connections between Mexico and New Orleans and accounts for the marginalization of Mexicans in the city's identity. Rien Fertel explains the role of nineteenth-century historian Charles Gayarré in shaping an identity in which Dawdy's mexicanidad had no currency. Helen A. Regis's essay furthers readers’ understanding of how constructions of the city as creole, while having receded, shaped later constructions of belonging defined by participation in local cultural practices or pre-Katrina residency. Other essays fit less clearly but still offer important insights. Notably, Bryan Wagner connects New Orleans to broader histories of urban renewal and displacement by revealing how the nation's first African American professional wrestling headliner enacted story lines in the ring that spoke to black New Orleanians displaced from the Tremé neighborhood surrounding the arena where they gathered to watch the spectacle
Aesthetics · American exceptionalism · Archaeology · Art · Colonialism · Creole language · Exceptionalism · Identity (music · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Asian American and Pacific Histories · History · Latin American and Latino Studies · Law · Philosophy
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,83 |
| Citation span | 2020 - 2023 (4) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |