Current Graduate Students

RIEN FERTEL
Culture; commerce; colonialism; culinary

Research Interests
19th and 20th century US History; History of Empire; History of Print Culture; Social Theory; Cultural Studies; Economic Sociology and Consumer Culture; History of the Left and Radicalism; The Atlantic World; Southern US History; Louisiana and New Orleans History; Food Studies and Culinary History; Constructions of Taste and Culture; Modernity; Whiteness Studies; Semantics and Historical Linguistics; 1940s-60s American, Italian, French, and Slavic Cinema.

Dissertation
“Where Culture Means Business: Creole Culture in Late-Nineteenth Century New Orleans [Tentative Title]."

Grants and Fellowships
Graduate School Fellowship. Tulane University, Fall 2008-Spring 2012.

Tuition scholarship. The New School for Social Research, Fall 2006-Spring 2008.

Publications
"Identity, Authenticity, Persistence and Loss in the West Tennessee Whole-Hog Barbecue Tradition." The Slaw and the Slow Cooked: An Anthropology of Mid-South Barbecue. (Nashville: Vanderbilt Univ. Press, Forthcoming).

"Louisiana Cookbooks" essay for KnowLA.org (forthcoming).

Book Review: Susan Tucker, ed. New Orleans Cuisine: Fourteen Signature Dishes and Their Histories, Louisiana History (forthcoming).

Book Review Essay: “Identity and Assimilation in Gumbo Tales and Shark’s Fin and Sichuan Pepper.” Food, Culture & Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research, 12:1 (March 2009).

“Carnival,” and “Brunch.” Entertaining: From Ancient Rome to the Super Bowl. 2 Vol., Eds. Melitta Weiss Adamson and Francine Segan. (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2008.)

“Begué’s Eggs.” Eggs in Cookery: Proceedings on the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, 2006. Ed. Richard Hosking. (London: Prospect Books, 2007.)

“Jambalaya.” The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink. Ed. Andrew F. Smith. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007.)

“Beginning With Begué’s.” New Orleans The Times-Picayune. December 8, 2006.

Conference Presentations
“Creole Cook Book, Creole Cookery, Creole Identity in 1885 New Orleans.” Louisiana Historical Association 2009 Conference. March 20, 2009.

“Creole Cookbooks and the Formation of Creole Identity in New Orleans.” Association for the Study of Food and Society 2008 Conference. June 5, 2008.

“Begué’s Eggs.” Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery, St. Catherine’s College, Oxford, England. September 3, 2006.

Teaching Experience
HISU 142-01 US: 1865 to the Present, Tulane University, Fall 2009.

Education
Ph.D. Candidate, History (US), Tulane University, August 2008-Onward.

M.A., Historical Studies, The New School for Social Research, New York, NY, May 2008.
Master’s Thesis: “Creole Cookbooks and the Formation of Creole Identity in New Orleans, 1885-1900.”

B.A., Double Major in Linguistics and Anthropology, Tulane University, May 2003.

LATEST ALUMNI NOTES

Nancy Fix Anderson  
Nancy Fix Anderson is Professor Emerita of History at Loyola University New Orleans. She is the author of Woman Against Women in Victorian England: A Life of Eliza Lynn Linton (Indiana University Press, 1987) and The Sporting Life: Victorian Sports and Games (Praeger, 2010) and editor of Annie Besant (Pickering & Chatto, 2008). “Ever since I wrote my dissertation at Tulane under Prof. Peter Cominos on Victorian women's history,” Dr. Anderson writes, “I have loved researching and writing Victorian history. … My work with Prof. Cominos and other history faculty inspired me to think in new ways about history, and has made my career as a history professor/scholar one of great pleasure and satisfaction.” She encourages graduate students to choose research projects they can approach with passion and curiosity.


Mark Souther  
Mark Souther is Associate Professor of History and Co-Director of the Center for Public History + Digital Humanities at Cleveland State University. His first book, New Orleans on Parade: Tourism and the Transformation of the Crescent City (LSU Press, 2006), won the Kemper and Leila Williams Prize and Gulf South History Book Award. With Nicholas Dagen Bloom, he edited American Tourism: Constructing a National Tradition (Center for American Places, forthcoming April 2012). In Feb. 2011 he also published an article on decline and renewal in Cleveland, Ohio's University Circle eds-meds district in the Journal of Planning History. He is currently writing his next book, Believing in Cleveland: Managing Decline in "The Best Location in the Nation." In addition to his research, Souther and his colleagues have developed a mobile history app, Cleveland Historical, and are working with partners on similar apps in New Orleans, Baltimore, St. Paul, and Spokane, among others. He teaches courses on 20th-century United States, urban, suburban, tourism, and public history. He also wrote a successful National Register of Historic Places nomination for one of the largest suburban districts in Ohio and is serving a three-year appointment on the Cleveland Heights Landmark Commission. On a personal note, he and his wife have a three-year-old daughter.

More Alumni Notes...

Started a new business?

Published a new book?

Had a new baby?

Inquiring minds want to know!

We enjoy keeping up with our alumni and sharing the events of their lives with the rest of the Tulane History community. When you have something special to share, please let us know.

Department of History
Tulane University
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