New Orleans celebrates its 300th year as a city in 2018, and as part of the festivities, Xavier history professor Dr. Sharlene Senegal DeCuir is leading her Freshman Seminar class in a special service-learning project.
Part of the city's planned activities for the tricentennial includes a four-day symposium called "Making New Orleans Home," to be held March 8 - 11 at various locations around the city. The symposium, presented by the city in partnership with The Historic New Orleans Collection, is free to attend and open to the public. Saturday's program is to be held on Xavier's campus, in the McCaffrey Ballroom of the University Center, from 8:45 a.m. to 5 p.m., and it's here that Dr. Senegal-DeCuir and her students will participate. The day's featured speaker is Isabel Wilkerson, author of The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration. Other speakers on the day include distinguished professor of history Kathleen Duval, of the University of North Carolina, Nick Spitzer of the radio program American Roots, and Xavier's own endowed chair in the humanities, Dr. Michael White.
The Freshman Seminar course is part of Xavier's First Year Experience program and is designed to introduce students to concepts of social justice, the purpose of a liberal arts education, and how the two concepts meet in Xavier's historic mission to prepare students to contribute to a more just and humane society. Each teacher of this course brings his or her own areas of expertise to the basic structure and approaches the purpose through a particular theme. Dr. Senegal DeCuir's theme aligns with the theme of the symposium, Making New Orleans Home. Through this theme students will examine the social, political and economic injustice that cripples New Orleans along with many communities nationally, while they explore important issues that can help raise hope and awareness for a brighter future.
For perspective on this theme students are reading The Coldest Winter Ever, the 1999 best-selling novel by Sister Solujah. This cautionary tale set in Brooklyn explores themes of wealth and poverty, criminal justice, and the often fraught and limited avenues toward the American Dream available to those in Americas inner-cities. In addition to reading and writing about, and discussing these themes, students will participate in the Saturday symposium both as volunteers, assisting guests and speakers and helping things run smoothly, and as attendees of panel discussions. Thus, students gain opportunity to consider themes of the novel and of the course through discussion of New Orleans' particular past and present, and to synthesize the material through reflective writings, discussions, and presentations.
Sharlene Sinegal DeCuir received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Xavier University of Louisiana in 1999. She received her Masters of Art degree in 2001 and her PhD. in 2009 from Louisiana State University. Her areas of concentration are in American, African-American, and Latin American history. Throughout her academic career, she has focused on the New South period of American history through the Civil Rights Movement, with particular interest on African American activism in Louisiana. In 2014, Dr. Sinegal DeCuir was honored as the first faculty alumni to receive the Xavier University 40 under 40 Young Alumni Award. She has been featured in WBOK New Orleans Talk Radio, The New Orleans Times-Picayune and Health Issues with Christopher Sylvain. Her article “Nothing Is to Be Feared: Norman C. Francis, Civil Rights Activism, and the Black Catholic Movement" appears in The Journal of African-American History, and she has been interviewed for an upcoming documentary titled Monochrome: Black, White And Blue, by Cardinal Releasing.