Events

Join us for a conversation with Albert Woodfox, whose book Solitary: My Story of Transformation and Hope is the 2020 LEH Humanities Book of the Year, and artist and activist Jackie Sumell, founder of the nonprofit Solitary Gardens. Woodfox, a member of the Angola 3, spent more than four decades in solitary confinement for a crime he didn’t commit. Solitary, a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize, is his story.

Albert Woodfox was born in 1947 in New Orleans. A committed activist in prison, he remains so today, speaking to a wide array of audiences, including the Innocence Project, Harvard, Yale, and other universities, the National Lawyers Guild, as well as at Amnesty International events in London, Paris, Denmark, Sweden, and Belgium. His book Solitary has won numerous awards and been published in the UK, Canada, Australia, Spain, Germany, and Brazil. He lives in New Orleans.

Jackie Sumell is an artist and activist whose work is at the intersection of abolition, social practice, and contemplative studies. She has spent the last two decades working directly with incarcerated people, most notably, her elders Herman Wallace and Albert Woodfox. Her work has been exhibited extensively throughout the US and Europe. She is based in New Orleans, where she continues to work on Herman’s House, Solitary Gardens, The Prisoner’s Apothecary, and several other community-generated, advocacy based projects.

This program is part of Bright Lights Online: Conversations with the 2020 LEH Humanities Awardees.

Join us for a conversation on Acadian culture and heritage—and the importance of advocacy in maintaining Cajun identity—with one of the LEH’s 2020 Lifetime Contributions to the Humanities awardees, Warren Perrin. Perrin will be in conversation with folklorist and Center for Louisiana Studies and UL Press Director Josh Caffery. Audience Q & A will follow.

2020 Lifetime Contributions to the Humanities awardee Warren Perrin is a longtime supporter and defender of Cajun culture. A native of Vermilion Parish, one of Perrin’s most striking projects was his long but ultimately successful lobbying for recognition of the wrongs committed by the British Crown during the Acadian expulsion of 1755. Her Majesty Elizabeth II formally acknowledged those wrongs in 2003, with a proclamation recognizing July 28th as an annual day of commemoration. Perrin also established, along with Weldon Granger, the non-profit Acadian Heritage & Culture Foundation, which operates the Acadian Museum in Erath, Louisiana. He is currently at work on a bid to gain UNESCO recognition of early Acadian settlements as world heritage sites, continuing his advocacy for the recognition and celebration of Cajun culture at the global level.

Dr. Josh Caffery is a musician, teacher, and scholar, and has been the director of the Center for Louisiana Studies and UL Press since 2018. He is the author of the books Traditional Music in Coastal Louisiana, a study of some of the area’s earliest field recordings, and In the Creole Twilight, a collection of poetry, both from LSU Press. His work with vernacular music in the area has earned him Grammy nominations as both a musician and a producer. He is also the Vice President of the Louisiana Folklore Society.

This program is part of Bright Lights Online: Conversations with the 2020 LEH Humanities Awardees.

Named the LEH’s 2020 Champion of Culture, LSU Press has published nearly 3,500 titles since 1935. Join 64 Parishes Editor in Chief Erin Greenwald and LSU Press Director Alisa Plant for a conversation on the press’s role in expanding public understanding of and access to high-quality scholarship in the fields of southern and Louisiana history, fiction, literary studies, southern foodways, and more.

About Alisa Plant
Alisa Plant is Director of LSU Press and publisher of The Southern Review. From 2015 to 2019, Plant served as editor-in-chief of University of Nebraska Press. Under her supervision, UNP increased its annual output of titles by 35 percent. She previously worked in acquisitions at LSU Press for nearly a decade. Prior to that she was an assistant editor at the Yale Center for Parliamentary History. She holds a Ph.D. in history from Yale University and a B.A. in English from the University of Kansas.

About Erin Greenwald
Erin Greenwald is Vice President of Content at the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities. She also serves as editor in chief of 64 Parishes magazine and 64parishes.org. Prior to joining the LEH, she was curator of programs at the New Orleans Museum of Art and senior curator and historian at the Historic New Orleans Collection. Greenwald is the author of Marc-Antoine Caillot and the Company of the Indies in Louisiana, published by LSU Press in 2016, and editor of A Company Man and New Orleans, the Founding Era, both published by the Historic New Orleans Collection. She holds a PhD in history from Ohio State University.

This program is part of Bright Lights Online: Conversations with the 2020 LEH Humanities Awardees.