Research and Publications

UNC Press, June 2025

BOOK

Rebuilding New Orleans: Immigrant Laborers and Street Food Vendors in the Post-Katrina Era (UNC Press, July 2025)

PEER-REVIEWED JOURNAL ARTICLES

  • “How to do Accompaniment.” Public Humanities. Cambridge. January 2025. (open-source)

  • “Rethinking the Field in Crisis: The  Baltimore Field School and Building Ethical Community and University Partnerships,” Journal of Higher Education Outreach and Engagement, co-authored with Nicole King and Tahira Mahdi. (March 2024).

  • “The Great Unbuilding: Land, Labor, and Dispossession in New Orleans and Honduras.” co-authored with Deniz Daser. Southern Cultures 27, no. 2 (July 5, 2021): 110–25.

  • “When “Doing With” Can be Without: Employing Critical Service-Learning Strategies in Creating the ‘New Orleans Black Worker Organizing History’ Digital Timeline,” Journal of Community Engagement and Higher Education, forthcoming.

  • “Esquinas, Loncheras, and Food Trucks: Navigating Bureaucracy and Enforcement in New Orleans.” Gastronomica: The Journal of Critical Food Studies, Fall 2018, 13-25. 

  • “Informed Gatekeepers and Transnational Violence: Using Perceptions of Safety of Latino/a Youth in Determining Immigration Cases.” co-authored with Clare Cannon and Miranda Stramel. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, May 2018, 40(2): 134-149.

  • “The Mafia, La Raza, and the Spanish-Language Press Coverage of the 1891 Lynchings in New Orleans.” Journal of Southern History. August 2017. 83(3): 509-530.

  • “Presumed Palettes and the Problems Perceived: Exploring Latin American Food and Food Establishments in the United States and New Orleans.” Race, Gender, and Class. 2011, 18(3-4): 316-328.

DIGITAL MEDIA

“Bringing Two Cities in Dialogue with Each Other through Mexican Food” 2023

Folklife Today

“Solidarity, Not Charity in the Crescent City” (w Fernando Lopez) 2021

New York Times

“Opinion: A Whistle-Blower, a Collapsed Hotel, a Deportation” 2019

Gravy Magazine

"Hidden in Plain Sight: Las Pulgas of New Orleans"                                     2018

Gravy Podcast

"Who Will Rebuild Houston?                                                                       2017                                                                                  North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA)

“New Orleans Con Sabor Latino”                                                                  2017                                                                            Permanent Exhibit. National Food and Beverage Foundation

“New Orleans Black Worker Organizing History”                                         2016                                                                                   Digital Timeline co-produced with Colette Tippy, and Harvey Sanders.

BOOK REVIEWS

A Recipe for Gentrification, edited by Allison Alkon, Yuki Kato, and Josh Sbicca. NYU Press. 2020. For Gastronomica: Journal for Critical Food Studies. Summer 2022.

The Taco Truck: How Mexican Street Food is Transforming the American City, by Robert Lemon. University of Illinois Press. 2019. for Great Plains Quarterly. Spring 2021. 31(1): 122-123.

Immigration and Latino History-Hispanic and Latino New Orleans: Immigration and Identity Since the Eighteenth Century, by Andrew Sluyter, Case Watkins, James P. Chaney, and Annie Gibson, The Americas: A Quarterly Review of Latin American History, July 2018, 75:3, 574-575.

Eating NAFTA: Trade, Food Policies, and the Destruction of Mexico, by Alyshia Gálvez (UC Press 2018), for Food, Culture, and Society, March 2019, 22:2, 254–256.

WORK IN PROGRESS

Disaster Foods: How People are Fed in Times of Disaster (book manuscript)

History of Latin American Foodways in New Orleans (book manuscript)

Fruit for Thought: Journeys between Honduras and New Orleans (feature-length documentary)

CONFERENCES/SYMPOSIA/ TALKS

American Studies Association

Association for the Study of Food and Society

Southern Labor Studies Association

Humanities X, DePaul University

Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes

Scholarship in Action, Holy Cross

Culinaria Research Center, University of Toronto

Southern Foodways Alliance

National Parks Service, Jean Lafitte Historical Park and Preserve

American Anthropological Association

American Association of Geographers

Louisiana Historical Association

Organization of American Historians

Oral History Association

Southern Foodways Alliance Graduate Symposium, University of Mississippi

Labor and Working-Class History Conference, Georgetown University

American Association of University Presses Conference

Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies

Latin American Graduate Organization Conference, Tulane University

Tinker Field Research Grant Symposium

American Historical Association