With New Orleans serving as the host city for the 2022 annual meeting of the American Historical Association, this extra-large roundtable will focus on the city’s history and the importance of studying New Orleans’s past in the 21^st century. As we reflect on the city’s history, however, we resist the temptation to traffic in New Orleans exceptionalism. Rather than focusing on the ways in which a “unique” and “romantic” New Orleans has deviated from the American norm, we strive to situate the city in the global and local communities of which it has been a part. Together, panelists will reflect on past research, contemporary scholarship, and future directions in New Orleans studies.

Our panel brings together eight scholars, all of whom have published or soon will publish new books on the history of New Orleans. Their chronological areas of expertise range from the 18^th century to the 21^st century. The subjects of their research include Atlantic history, slavery and emancipation, race and racial violence, disaster studies, environmental history, the history of medicine, gender and sexuality, labor history, and the history of capitalism. What they share is a commitment to the history of New Orleans, and a conviction that the study of one city’s past has much to tell us about the histories of the United States, the Americas, the Atlantic World, and the globe.

Though this panel was originally conceptualized as a round table, our list of participants quickly grew too large for the AHA’s roundtable format. So we have decided to apply as an Experimental Session. We have been calling the format a “lightning round table,” combining a standard roundtable panel with the “lightning round” format increasingly common at academic conferences. Participants have committed to keeping their opening remarks very brief – 3 to 5 minutes to describe their own work – in order to allow maximum time for conversation between panelists and with the audience.

Our chair is Leslie Harris (Northwestern), who is working on a book about Hurricane Katrina, her family, and African American history since the 19^th century. The panelists will be: Sophie White (Notre Dame), historian of French Louisiana; John Bardes (LSU), who works on labor and capital in 19^th-century Louisiana; Kathryn Olivarius (Stanford), who focuses on race, medicine, and enslavement; Jessica Marie Johnson (Johns Hopkins), who has published on race and intimacy in the Atlantic world; Andy Horowitz (Tulane), who recently published a book about the history of Hurricane Katrina; Joshua Guild (Princeton), who is researching Black Power in New Orleans; and K. Stephen Prince (South Florida), who has written about racial violence in the Jim Crow era.

Please note: Jessica Marie Johnson and Sophie White are each involved in one other panel proposal. Recognizing the AHA’s guidelines on double participation in the same capacity, we hope that our use of the experimental session format will allow Dr. Johnson and Dr. Johnson to participate in both panels, if indeed both are accepted.