September 30, 2005 Source: University of Toronto:
http://www.news.utoronto.ca/bin6/050930-1672.asp New Orleans scholar to discuss aftermath of Hurricane Katrina Professor Lawrence Powell to discuss the social, economic and political causes of the disaster
Sep 30/05
by Kim Luke Professor Lawrence Powell, a leading authority on the history of the southern United States, will give a free public lecture entitled New Orleans: An American Pompeii? at U of T's Munk Centre for International Studies Thursday, Oct. 6 from
4 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Powell, a professor of history at Tulane University in New Orleans, will discuss the social and political causes of the hurricane Katrina disaster, the structural and political causes of poverty in New Orleans and the meaning of the federal government's response to the storm. In addition to being a historian of the city of New Orleans and Louisiana generally, Powell has spent many years directing an innovative Tulane University program in an inner-city housing project. Sadly, the project, administered by Powell's Tulane-Xavier National Center for the Urban Community (NCUC), has been decimated by the flooding. A prolific author, Powell's recent book, Troubled Memory: Anne Levy, the Holocaust, and David Duke's Louisiana, won the Lillian Smith Book Prize from the Southern Regional Council (2000), the Kemper and Leila Williams Prize (2000) from the Louisiana Historical Association and was named one of the 10 best Holocaust books of the year by the American Library Association's Booklist. Powell has been an expert witness in several federal voting rights cases in Louisiana. In 1998 he received the George Washington Lucas Community Service Award from the New Orleans branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and in 1999 was named Louisiana Humanist of the Year by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. He is co-founder of the Louisiana Coalition Against Racism and Nazism and a board member of the Amistad Research Center. The free public lecture is presented by the U of T's Centre for Study of the United States, the Munk Centre for International Studies and the Faculty of Arts and Science. Note: Professor Powell is available for media interviews following his talk and for a limited time on Friday, Oct. 7. Please call contacts below to make arrangements. Contact: Kim Luke, Faculty of Arts and Science, University of Toronto, 416-978-4352; e-mail: kim.luke@utoronto.ca Rick Halpern, Centre for Study of the United States, University of Toronto, 416-946-8011; e-mail: rick.halpern@utoronto.ca
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