Performing Africa in New Orleans

Cynthia Becker, a New Orleans native, is associate professor in the Department of History of Art & Architecture at Boston University. She specializes in visual culture from northwestern Africa, specifically Morocco, Algeria, and Niger. Her current research concentrates on the impact of the trans-Saharan slave trade on visual and performing arts in the Maghreb as well as the history of Black Indian carnival traditions in New Orleans. cjbecker@bu.edu

Rachel Breunlin is ethnographer-in-residence in the Department of Anthropology at the University of New Orleans, and the co-director of the Neighborhood Story Project, a book-making organization in partnership with the university that creates collaborative ethnographies of the city. rsbreunl@uno.edu

Helen A. Regis is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Anthropology at Louisiana State University. She is the author of Fulbe Voices: Marriage, Islam, and Medicine in Northern Cameroon and, with John Bartkowski, Charitable Choices: Religion, Race, and Poverty in the Post-Welfare Era. Her work on second-line parades and the intersections of culture and commerce has appeared in American Ethnologist and Collaborative Anthropologies. hregis1@lsu.edu