The past two decades of recovery have brought sweeping changes to New Orleans, as rising prices and unequal recovery have extended the effects of the flood.

This October, 20 years later, Georgetown University hosted the , sponsored by the and . The event reflected on the legacy of the disaster from an interdisciplinary perspective and through the lens of environmental justice. 

The symposium focused on how “the residents of New Orleans and their partners 
 are working with imagination and creativity and brilliance to address and create conditions for justice at a community level,” said (C’90, G’91), an associate dean in the șŁœÇÂÛÌł of Arts & Sciences and founding director of the .Ìę

Preserving Community and Culture

The symposium was the second of its kind. In 2015, Georgetown’s Film and Media Studies Program held the Katrina@10 Symposium, which featured panels, film screenings and a musical performance that explored the impacts of Hurricane Katrina on memory, culture and social justice in New Orleans. 

The symposium this year began with a screening of , a film about preserving community and culture in the aftermath of Katrina, held at both the Hilltop and Capitol campuses. 

The program continued later in the week with two panels, split up by a musical performance by , a 2022 NEA Jazz Master and Grammy-nominated saxophonist from New Orleans, in the McNeir Auditorium.

The first panel, The Wild, Wild Creation: New Orleans Living Culture as Recovery and Resistance, was led by Cook and featured Harrison, , an artist, educator and , and , a professor in the Department of Black Studies.

The panelists discussed New Orleans as the heart of Caribbean and American culture, the intersection of Black performance and protest, the difficulties of sustaining a living culture during displacement — especially for Black, working-class New Orleanians — and the impacts of environmental injustice and racism. 

“Katrina happened, but it didn’t happen to everyone in the same ways,” Cook said during the panel. 

Harrison spoke about the historic importance of , a place in the city where enslaved people would congregate on Sundays that is now famous for its jazz music. 

“One of the things about Congo Square was to keep the music alive so that you could have some kind of connection,” Harrison said. “It’s an ancestral place.”

The second panel, New Orleans Community-Based Innovation and Alternative Visions for the Future, was led by , an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and author of Gardens of Hope: Cultivating Food and the Future in a Post-Disaster City. It featured , founder of the , , a sociologist, artist and activist, and , the executive director of the . 

The discussion covered the challenges and opportunities in community organizing and re-building during the 20 years since Katrina. The panelists also spoke about barriers faced by Black communities in New Orleans, as well as their achievements. Successes have included Mwendo’s Backyard Gardeners Network, which has worked to strengthen the 9th Ward of New Orleans, the , which a grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration in 2017 and the , the first community land trust in New Orleans which was founded by griffin. 

“Inequality is spatialized within a built environment,” said griffin. “We see it all the time, but it doesn’t always resonate. So social and economic inequality, we can see it within a built environment. So if it’s structurally or architecturally designed, it can be structurally and architecturally un»ć±đČőŸ±Č”ČÔ±đ»ć.”

A Necessary Reflection

For many undergraduate students, Hurricane Katrina happened a lifetime ago — or even before they were born.

The Katrina@20 Symposium served to remind the Georgetown community of the lasting impacts of the disaster that are still felt today. 

The city of New Orleans has helped shape America and is crucial in the connection between the United States, the Caribbean and Central and Latin America. Katrina and its aftermath revealed how catastrophes often have unequal impacts on Americans, as working class and Black residents of New Orleans were unevenly impacted during and after the disaster. 

Continuing the discussion of Katrina is key to remembering these lessons.

“It’s still extremely important for America and the world, but for Americans especially to understand what happened, what it revealed, how its effects were unevenly felt, how poor people, working-class Black folks and others, had a much more difficult time recovering,” Cook said.

Photos by Nate Findlay (C’27) and Francesca Scovino (C’27).

This “incredible experience” enabled Waters to get a digital media internship with her dream team, the Washington Wizards and launch her career path as a sports videographer. 

A Passion for Production 

Waters’ interest in production and sports videography started while taking a television production class in high school.  After coming to Georgetown, Waters’ passion increased through her sports journalism work with the Voice and as a video content intern with the athletics department.  

“I learned so much through my experience with GU Athletics because I was not only able to make social media content and film games, but also had the opportunity to attend meetings with experts in their fields,” Waters says. 

One such individual was Tony Price, video director for the Baltimore Orioles. Through the GU Athletics meetings, Price became one of Waters’ mentors and encouraged her to apply to the Orioles internship position for that summer for which she was later accepted.  

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, Waters completed the first half of her internship virtually, where she worked on editing the videos that were projected on the stadium’s large screens during games. After getting vaccinated, Waters was able to come into the Orioles office, The Warehouse, where she shot games alongside her boss and coworkers.

In the span of a few months, Waters learned filming, editing and technical skills that are crucial in a sports videography career. 

“The internship was such a rewarding experience because I learned so much both in person and virtually and I was able to see my work showcased on the video boards at games which was amazing,” Waters says. “ It also gave me the knowledge and qualifications I needed to apply for an internship with the team of my dreams — the Washington Wizards.” Waters says. 

Midway through the fall semester, Waters began working as a digital media intern for the Wizards. As part of this, Waters attends home games to create video content for social media platforms like Twitter, Tik Tok and Instagram. She is also able to collaborate with full time employees and work different media events such as training days at the Wizards’ practice facility. 

Academics Aiding Athletics

An American music culture major in the Department of Performing Arts with two minors in journalism and film and media studies, Waters’ academic studies are deeply tied to her zeal for sports. The junior says that her coursework helped hone her interests and prepare for the sports team internships.

“I am able to take what I learn in my film classes or my journalism classes and apply that to my real world experience with the Orioles, the Washington Wizards or Georgetown athletics,” Waters explains. “My journalism courses in particular helped me when I was working with the Voice and doing sports recaps and articles for any of the games I have attended.”  

As a student studying a range of subjects in the humanities, Waters has had numerous professors and members of the Georgetown community support and encourage her work. Professors , and mentor Waters in both her performing arts department classes as a student and in her participation in the Friday Music Concert Series as an employee, where she videos the concerts. 

Waters also found great encouragement from former assistant director of marketing, Vaughan Moss, and Kynan Marlin, the manager of creative content for GU Athletics. Both helped her grow as a videographer and connected her with opportunities and individuals in the industry. 

Marlin says that “Daelyn has an extremely great work ethic and always puts out amazing products.”

“She is extremely creative and I can always trust that whenever she picks up an assignment, she will do an excellent job on it,” he continues. “Her work is incredible and I think that’s evident through all of the projects she has done for us, and by all the opportunities she has been able to do outside of Georgetown Athletics.”

Ann Oldenburg, assistant director of the journalism program at Georgetown who taught Waters says that she “is truly an outstanding student.” 

“When Daelyn took my Digital News course, which includes an assignment involving creating a news video, Daelyn turned in a report about local sports returning after being sidelined by the pandemic. It could easily have appeared on any TV evening newscast; it was that good,” Oldenburg continues. “I can’t wait to see where her career path takes her — any media outlet will be lucky to get her. She’s creative, she’s hard-working and she’s thoughtful of everyone around her.”

Hilltop Hobbies 

In addition to her academics and internships, Waters is also a dancer and creative director for the coed hip hop dance team Groove Theory. 

As part of her federal work study, Waters is a Georgetown storyteller through the . Through this program, Waters serves as a representative for the university and produces video and multimedia content to post on the school’s various platforms.  

The junior says that she is thankful for the opportunities that she has had while she has been a student on the Hilltop.

“Georgetown was my dream school, so I’ve been pleased with all the communities and networks that I’ve built during my time here,” Waters says. “I look forward to continuing on my path as a sports videographer because I truly love it, it never feels like work. The connections I’ve made through the university have helped set me on that path.”

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Runner and Researcher: December Graduate Katie Dammer (C’21) Tackles Cross Country Competitions and Covid-19 Research

UPDATE (December 4, 2017): Annee Lyons has been named a winner of a 2018 Marshall Scholarship. Congratulations, Annee!

November 10, 2017 — Classics major Annee Lyons (C’18) always wanted to be like Indiana Jones. That’s a tall order, but over the course of her Hilltop career, she’s come pretty close — and prestigious national scholarship organizations have noticed.

Lyons is the 2017 recipient of the , a national award given annually to students who plan on enrolling in a humanities-focused graduate program and require financial assistance. She’s applying to graduate school now and has just been named a finalist for the and .

Before she was spending her days working on interview skills and weighing her options at some of the world’s greatest academic institutions, she was a kid from small-town Maryland who loved learning about the classics.

CHOOSING A PATH

When Lyons says she’s always loved the classics, she really means it.

“When I was 13, I learned about the burning of the library of Alexandria, and I was heartbroken for the first time,” she said. “I was thinking, ‘How is that possible? How could we have lost so much? What can we learn from what’s left over?’ I knew from there, that’s what I wanted to study.”

Georgetown might have seemed a logical choice for Lyons, a high academic achiever from Maryland who valued the liberal arts. But it wasn’t that simple.

Raised by a single mother on a farm in the small town of Mount Airy, Lyons was nervous about attending school alongside students from more privileged backgrounds.

Still, Lyons wanted stay relatively close to her family — her mother and grandparents stayed in Mount Airy, and her two older sisters both attended  — while striking her own path. So Georgetown made the list.

When she opened her acceptance letter and found her financial aid offer, she knew her life was about to change.

Lyons had received the Peter F. Karches Memorial Scholarship, which includes full tuition, room, board, and a stipend to cover general living expenses. For a 17-year-old who had no idea how she would pay for college, it was a godsend.

“It was remarkable,” she said. “When I asked other universities if they could compete with the offer, they said, ‘That doesn’t exist.’”

TELLING UNTOLD STORIES

With the help of the Karches Scholarship and the , Lyons quickly found her home on the Hilltop.

She became a coordinator of the Preparing to Excel Program (PEP). She started a radio show — — that would continue through her entire undergraduate career. She even picked up a minor in film and media studies, eventually working with Associate Dean on the .

The minor helped fulfill a long-held passion for moviemaking that she had never discussed with anyone but her family.

“I grew up watching Turner Classic Movies with my grandparents,” Lyons said. “My friends loved the Jonas Brothers, Camp Rock, High School Musical, while I was wondering ‘Has anyone seen Singin’ in the Rain?’”

Lyons found time to continue studying classics, of course. Through the classics program, she got the opportunity to fulfill a lifelong dream: In the summer of 2015, she traveled to Macedonia and Bulgaria to participate in archaeological digs, excavating ancient coins of her own.

“I always wanted to be like Indiana Jones,” she said.

Along the way, though, Lyons ran into a conundrum: A class on Alexander the Great had left her fascinated by the Hellenistic period, but she was terrified of attempting to learn Greek. Having exhausted every course on this period that was taught entirely in English, she had to either choose a different specialty or bite the bullet and learn a new language.

She chose correctly.

“Now, I really love Greek — even more than I love Latin,,” she said.

Through her embrace of Greek, Lyons was able to enroll in classes on the histories and ethnographies of great ancient writers like Thucydides and Herodotus. Herodotus, which she eventually translated in a later course, inspired her more than any classical writer she had encountered.

“It’s exactly the same reasons I love film,” she said. “He’s telling stories. He’s trying to piece things together. He sometimes goes all over the place, and it’s hard to tell where it’s going to end up. He even has magnificent female characters!”

With the help of the , Lyons completed a summer program at the and visited archaeological sites described in Herodotus. This year, she’s writing her senior thesis on the portrayal of religious women in Herodotus — a subject that thesis advisor believes fills a gap in the scholarship wide enough to fit a book.

“When the stories are all about the emperors and the gold, we’re missing a huge part of that history,” Lyons said. “We’re missing the slaves, the women, the illiterate. Now, we’re training ourselves to see what hasn’t been seen for centuries, and I want to be a part of that.”

AFTER THE HILLTOP

Lyons planned to continue her education and was still concerned with how she’d pay for it.

Fortunately, several of her friends were high academic achievers who were plugged into the world of graduate fellowships. When they noticed the parameters of the Beinecke Scholarship — a student who needs financial aid to pursue a graduate education in the humanities — they demanded that she apply.

“I had no knowledge of any of this stuff,” Lyons said. “But they said ‘That’s you. You need to apply. You’re the perfect candidate.’”

Lyons’ application caught the eye of the , which chose her as Georgetown’s nominee for the scholarship (each school is allowed only one). In April, she learned that she was one of 20 students from across the nation to win.

At the urging of friends and mentors, Lyons didn’t stop with the Beinecke win, and it’s paying off: She’s just been named a finalist for the Rhodes and Marshall Scholarships, with final interviews impending. But regardless of those outcomes, she knows she’s in a great spot.

“I look back to when I first started applying to college, and the question wasn’t ‘Where do you want to go?’ but ‘Where can you afford to go?’” Lyons said. “The Beinecke changes that, just like the Karches did.”

August 15, 2017 — Georgetown șŁœÇÂÛÌł professor Brian Hochman has received a prestigious from the in order to work on his upcoming book on the history of wiretapping.

An associate professor of and member of the and programs, Hochman has earned his second grant in two years from the NEH — both for the purposes of research on his book, tentatively titled All Ears: A History of Wiretapping in the United States. Hochman’s NEH Summer Grant from 2016 allowed him to research at the AT&T archives in New Jersey and San Antonio, which proved to contain a trove of information on mid-20th-century wiretapping practices.

While both grants have allowed Hochman to work on this project, the Public Scholar grant has a special purpose.

“It’s meant to support projects that don’t just orient themselves toward the academy, but toward the public — national issues and issues of perennial social concern,” Hochman said. “This project fits really well into that, and it’s an honor to have the blessing of an organization like the NEH.”

All Ears is a broad overview of the history of wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping, a practice which dates back to the mid-19th century — as Hochman puts it, “as long as there have been wires.”

Hochman’s Public Scholar grant will allow him to take time to conduct research for the book’s fifth and sixth chapters, which focus on wiretapping in the late 20th century.

Chapter Five deals with the 1960s and 1970s, which Hochman refers to as the “classic period” of wiretapping due to its prominent use by the FBI and involvement in the Watergate affair. But an act of Congress from this era concerning wiretapping was far more important than the role of the practice in any high-profile scandal. Title III of the 1968 Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act allowed federal law enforcement to use wiretapping in investigations of drugs, racketeering, and organized crime under judicial limitations.

“Prior to 1968, wiretapping for those investigative purposes was legally dubious.  Laws governing police surveillance varied from state to state, and at the federal level there were questions about when, if ever, law enforcement could tap telephones to gather criminal evidence” Hochman said. “After 1968, as the nation gradually turned its attention to wiretap abuse at the presidential level, this far more more pervasive form of electronic surveillance was legalized and normalized.”

Under pressure from the growing contingent of politicians pushing “law and order” policies, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Safe Streets Act into law despite his own misgivings over Title III. The new law changed the way law enforcement fought crime for the remainder of the century, as the power to wiretap changed from a questionable measure of last resort to a common investigative tool.

Chapter Six of All Ears will examine wiretapping in the 1980s and 1990s, which brought sweeping changes from analog to digital technology that made traditional wiretapping more difficult.

“When you’re a law enforcement officer trying to bring down a drug cartel in the ‘War on Drugs,’ there’s no wire for you to tap anymore,” Hochman said.

But the government eventually found a way around new technological developments: The Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994 mandated telecommunications firms to build a back door for law enforcement into their networks.

Hochman also plans to prominently feature the disproportionate rate at which wiretapping has been used to investigate and prosecute communities of color during this period.

“There’s a really important story to tell about criminal justice, mass incarceration, and race as it relates to those issues,” Hochman said. “The ‘War on Drugs’ is, in effect if not in intent, a kind of race war, and a really important weapon in that war has been the wiretap.”

Much of Hochman’s research to date for All Ears has come in the form of combing archives, like the aforementioned AT&T research last year. But Hochman hopes the newest grant will allow him to take some time to interview people who were on the front lines.

“There are real people in law enforcement who underwent this transition,” Hochman said. “This grant is going to allow me to talk to the people who actually tapped wires, which is a really important perspective to bring in.”

All Ears is scheduled to be published by Harvard University Press in Fall 2019.

Still, we know there are a few of you out there who, for one reason or another, are still looking for one last class to fill a gap in your schedule. The sheer number of courses available in the șŁœÇÂÛÌł can seem daunting, and it can be hard work poring over the course schedule on MyAccess (now GU Experience) to find a great class with space available.

With this in mind, the șŁœÇÂÛÌł Dean’s Office did some of the work for you.

We tasked our with putting together a list of their favorite fall courses that still (as of Tuesday morning, August 30) have spots available. It covers seven separate academic departments and includes everything from HIV/AIDS politics to Germanic fiction to the study of horror films.

So if you’re on the fence about picking up that fifth class, give this list a look. We expect you’ll find something worth checking out, no matter what your interests. But move quickly — we suspect it won’t be long before some of these fill up!

10 Great Classes to Fill Out Your Schedule

If you were asked to date that quote, chances are you’d place it in the last five years or so—and in this case, you’d be right. That’s Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, responding to a question on the FBI-Apple encryption controversy during a March 2016 on the popular internet forum Reddit.

But questions about wiretapping date back much further than the public debate raging right now, and Georgetown șŁœÇÂÛÌł professor is working to chronicle its largely forgotten history.

Hochman has been awarded a from the to conduct research at the AT&T Archives and Records Center in New Jersey for his next book, tentatively titled All Ears: A History of Wiretapping in the United States.

Hochman is assistant professor of and a core faculty member of the  and programs. His newest book project builds on his academic interest in “the texts and technologies that have shaped American cultural history since the mid-nineteenth century.” All Ears will be a history of wiretapping and electronic eavesdropping in the United States from 1850s to the near-present.

“We talk about it as a new phenomenon, but wiretapping has been around as long as the wires,” he said. “The earliest state law against wiretapping was written in 1862, which means that telegraph tapping was common in some parts of the country.ÌęCivil War generals even brought professional wiretappers with them on military campaigns.”

Hochman aims to combine a definitive history of eavesdropping technologies—and the laws passed in attempts to control them—with a cultural study of the way Americans have “come to understand our communications as porous.”

He plans to use his time in the AT&T Archives to study the 1920s. “Wiretapping became understood as a national problem during the Prohibition era,” he explained. “Listening to and recording phone conversations was the primary tool that state and federal law enforcement agencies used to combat organized crime and bootlegging syndicates.”

According to Hochman, many Prohibition-era wiretapping cases feature examples of some of the same ethical issues that continue to vex policymakers today.

“Law enforcement wiretapping was pervasive in the 1920s and early 1930s,” Hochman said. “But in some cases, it turns out that the easiest way for police to listen to phone conversations wasn’t to tap a wire, it was to listen in through the Bell telephone system central exchange. So it involved a state-corporate partnership—law enforcement was in cahoots with corporations. When we talk about the NSA partnering with Facebook or Verizon, et cetera, today, we think it’s new and unprecedented, but these partnerships actually have a long history.”

The misconception about the novelty of electronic eavesdropping is perhaps the biggest myth that Hochman hopes to debunk in All Ears.

“A lot of our public discussions about communications and privacy rest on this false sense of nostalgia about a time without eavesdropping. Every 15 years, going back to the 1860s, America rediscovers this problem. But there really are no electronic communications without wiretapping—they coexist.”

Related Information

Brian Hochman is the author of (University of Minnesota Press, 2014). He discusses some of the ideas he’ll explore in All Ears in the February 2016 Post45 article,

For news and updates, follow Professor Hochman on Twitter: .