UMass Boston

African American Studies, American Literature and Culture, New Orleans Culture and History

PhD, Emory University

• Desire and Disaster in New Orleans: Tourism, Race, and Historical Memory (Duke University Press, 2014)
• “‘People Want to See What Happened’: Treme, Televisual Tourism, and the Racial Remapping of Post-Katrina New Orleans." Television and New Media 13.3 (May 2012): 213-224
• “‘Roots Run Deep Here’: The Construction of Black New Orleans in Post-Katrina Tourism Narratives,” American Quarterly 61.3 (September 2009): 749-768. Reprinted in In the Wake of Hurricane Katrina: New Paradigms and Social Visions. Ed. Clyde Woods. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 2010. 323-342.
• “‘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 and Kristen Clarke. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. 255-270.
• “Kissing Ass and Other Performative Acts of Resistance: Austin, Fanon, and New Orleans Tourism.” Performance Research 12.3 (September 2007): 137-145.

Lynnell Thomas' research interests include New Orleans tourism, African American history and culture, and Black popular culture. A native of New Orleans, Lynnell Thomas is part of the post-Katrina diaspora, which informs her teaching and scholarship.  Her 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. Her first book, Desire and Disaster in New Orleans: Tourism, Race, and Historical Memory, was published by Duke University Press in August 2014.