Lynnell Thomas
a native of New Orleans, is part of the post-Katrina diaspora, which informs her teaching and scholarship.  She teaches the first year seminar US Society and Culture since 1945 (AMST G110), The Sixties (AMST 206), and Black Popular Culture (AMST L355) undergraduate courses.  In the Master of Arts Program, she teaches Historical Sequence II (AMST 603) and Ethnicity, Race, and Nationality (AMST 605).  These courses explore how US national identity and values have been shaped and challenged by Americans from a variety of backgrounds and experiences.  Professor Thomas’ research is also concerned with the diverse backgrounds and experiences that constitute and contest American identity and values.  Her most recent scholarship has examined the distortion of African American history and culture in New Orleans’ tourism narrative, the negative impact of this narrative on policy decisions following Hurricane Katrina, and the ways that African Americans and others have attempted to resist and revise this narrative.

Selected Publications:

 “’The City I Used to…Visit’: Tourist New Orleans and the Racialized Response to Hurricane Katrina.”  In Seeking Higher Ground: The Race, Public Policy, and Hurricane Katrina Reader.  Ed. Manning Marable.  New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.

“Kissing Ass and Other Performative Acts of Resistance: Austin, Fanon, and New Orleans Tourism.”  Performance Research 12.3 Blackness/Diaspora (September 2007): 137-145.

“New Orleans Unveiled: Frantz Fanon and a Reconceptualization of the Performative.” Human Architecture: Journal of the Sociology of Self-Knowledge 5 (Summer 2007): 363-370.

Travel, Trade, and Travail: Slavery on the Old Natchez Trace, co-authored with Kelly Obernuefemann, Tupelo, MS: Eastern National/National Park Service, 2001.

Office: Wheatley, 5th floor, Room 52
Email: Lynnell.thomas@umb.edu
Phone: 617-287-6818