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Based on what I have found thus far regarding narratives surrounding the socioeconomic state of New Orleans, there are two predominant ones I have come across: New Orleans as the “laggard,” the city of play but not work, of poor educational quality, and the other of New Orleans as a "comeback" city shaping to a knowledge-based economy following Hurricane Katrina. The former reminds me of racist stereotypes typically used to describe groups of people deemed not to fit within the white supremacist narrative of progress. The other, post-Hurricane Katrina narrative, is portrayed in the media as a phoenix rising from the ashes, one of the “most rapid and dramatic economic turnarounds in recent American history.” I felt an almost visceral reaction to the assertion of one article that “It would be wrong to say the hurricane destroyed New Orleans public schools, because there was so little worth saving even before the storm hit.” I cannot help but be reminded of “terra nullius,” the “empty land” narrative implemented by colonial powers to seize and control land, dismissing the people residing on the land as insignificant to their broader aim of economic and political dominance. In place of public schools, charter schools are perceived as an improvement—but what of the people who were displaced due to the storm and long to return, yet cannot afford to send their children to a charter school and would be forced to bus their kids across the city? Many people end up not returning to New Orleans as a result. I find it interesting to compare these pre- and post-Hurricane Katrina narratives of New Orleans with the information I find from sources such as this one: a shrinking African American population, fewer young people, less affordable housing, increased segregation, etcetera. What do these demographic changes in the city imply for the “ecosystem” deemed ideal for Innovation hubs? As this article asserts, “New Orleans is making a big name for itself among innovative industries and entrepreneurs and the city’s unique vibe plays a big role in that.” On the other hand, City Councilmember Kristen Palmer asserts that “People have been consistently pushed out…If we lose our people and our culture, we lose our city.” What implication does this “burst” in innovation in New Orleans have for both the Anthropocenics of the city as well as its culture, a culture that is stereotyped as one long “party” with intermittent “emptiness,” as opposed to the realities of the people who have resided in the city for generations, or even the people who moved away after the Hurricane and long to return but to no avail? I am curious to see how education, job training (or lack thereof), and issues of housing feed into the anthropocenics of the city. How do grassroots, social justice and environmentalist activists and organizations (such as this one) perceive the changes in the city following the Hurricane compared to innovation hub technicians and CEOs? How do the social and environmental outcomes of Hurricane Katrina fit within the history of "natural" disasters and climate change in New Orleans? I think it is important to keep articles such as this one central to our focus as we move forward with this project.

I’m interested in how universities, cities, and corporations develop the physical embodiment of the knowledge economy in U.S. city centers in an attempt to foster global connections, and the effect this tends to have on historically black and brown communities. What I find interesting about New Orleans is the manner in which following Hurricane Katrina (which some allege was a human-made disaster), gentrification of the city was spurred on, particularly as predominantly young, white people seeking to work in tech start-ups and corporations moved in to what is deemed yet another potential site for “Innovation.” This made room for corporations and richer residents to move in at the expense of working-class neighborhoods . As council member James Gray argued, “The area desperately needs activity and development…if the city of New Orleans is going to recover, if the Lower Ninth is going to recover- we need development. We cannot turn it away.” I came across an advertisement for an event hosted by INNO that will be held in New Orleans for a “global innovation conference” whereby innovators can “forge the connections that matter.” While I am in the preliminary stages of my research in Houston regarding the Innovation District being built in Midtown Houston, I see astonishing parallels with New Orleans and similar questions arise. Many of the employees at tech companies I have interviewed thus far speak of the notion of the “ecosystem”: the confluence of higher educational institutions, cities, corporations, and start-ups that provides the ideal environment for businesses to thrive and innovation to flourish. However, who is included in this ecosystem and who is left out? What implications (if any) does the use of such environmental terms (ecosystem) to describe innovation economies have for the anthropocene? What does innovation mean and who does it benefit? How do these innovation districts and corridors potentially exacerbate racial inequity in the city, even as they claim to be working for the benefit of all? How do infrastructural neglect and gentrification contribute to health, educational, economic, and environmental disparities, and will innovation in any way seek to address these issues, or merely perpetuate the status quo?

I'm also interested in the narratives that arise surrounding natural disasters, particularly the linear fashion in which events are described. There is a beginning, middle, and end supposedly: but what about before and after, and what about the reoccurence of these disasters? In what ways do these narratives leave out the stories of people who did not get to see the "silver lining" of a disaster? Who did not get to witness the rebuilding of the city? Many of those people moved to Houston and went through another hurricane, Hurricane Harvey. It would be interesting to trace the connections between these two cities. 

Finally, in relation to the topic of slavery, I am interested in the surge of conversations surrounding reparations, particularly in New Orleans and Houston in light of the uneven effects of hurricanes on certain populations. I am intrigued both by memorialization of slavery as well as attempts by elected officials such as Representative Sheila Jackson Lee of Houston and celebrities such as Danny Glover to conduct research (bill H.R. 40) on how to compensate for the U.S.'s history and presence of slavery and racism.

As a researcher, I’m interested in the political, ecological, and cultural debates around mosquito-borne diseases and the solutions proposed to mitigate them.

When we received the task, my first impulse was to investigate about the contemporary effects of anthropogenic climate change in mosquito-borne diseases in New Orleans. But I was afraid to make the same mistake that I did in my PhD research. I wrote my PhD proposal while based in the US, more specifically in New England, during the Zika epidemic, and proposed to understand how scientists were studying ecological climate change and mosquitoes in Brazil. However, once I arrived in the country the political climate was a much more pressing issue, with the dismantling of health and scientific institutions.

Thus, after our meeting yesterday, and Jason Ludwig’s reminder that the theme of our Field Campus is the plantation, I decided to focus on how it related to mosquitoes in New Orleans.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito and the yellow fever virus it can transmit are imbricated in the violent histories of settler-colonialism and slavery that define the plantation economy. The mosquito and the virus arrived in the Americas in the same ships that brought enslaved peoples from Africa. The city of New Orleans had its first yellow fever epidemic in 1796, with frequent epidemics happening between 1817 and 1905. What caused New Orleans to be the “City of the Dead,” as Kristin Gupta has indicated, was yellow fever. However, as historian Urmi Engineer Willoughby points out, the slave trade cannot explain alone the spread and persistance of the disease in the region: "Alterations to the landscape, combined with demographic changes resulting from the rise of sugar production, slavery, and urban growth all contributed to the region’s development as a yellow fever zone." For example, sugar cultivation created ideal conditions for mosquito proliferation because of the extensive landscape alteration and ecological instabilities, including heavy deforestation and the construction of drainage ditches and canals.

Historian Kathryn Olivarius examines how for whites "acclimatization" to the disease played a role in hierarchies with “acclimated” (immune) people at the top and a great mass of “unacclimated” (non-immune) people and how for black enslaved people "who were embodied capital, immunity enhanced the value and safety of that capital for their white owners, strengthening the set of racialized assumptions about the black body bolstering racial slavery."

As I continue to think through these topics, I wonder how both the historical materialities of the plantation and the contemporary anthropogenic changes might be influencing mosquito-borne diseases in New Orleans nowadays? And more, how the regions’ histories of race and class might still be shaping the effects of these diseases and how debates about them are framed?

" But with every explosion that shook the Japanese plant it became clear: there was nobody- not in Japan, nor Russia, nor the United States- who had the relevant know-how, equipment, and strategy to handle a nuclear disaster."

"To move forward with maximum efficiency, an international nuclear response group needs to operationalize realtive experiece from international disaster relief organizations."

"If an international nuclear response group is a worthwhile goal (and it certainly appears to be) we need to define realistic tasks."

The object of the study was to determine what cultural competence means across the relationships of patients, clinicians, and administrators. The study was performed to reveal the 'barriers' in patient care becasue of cultural implications. The lack of a patient-physcian relationship due to cultural barriers whether that be race or ethnicity, lack of explanation of a diagnosis or the differences in appraoches to patient care- as percieved by administration, patients and doctors.

I followed up on the Fukushima 50 what they experienced, their lack of food and water. How they faded into the background after the event was over. The government nor the public realized the ramifications of what they had done and how they had saved them all from radiation. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/jan/11/fukushima-50-kamika…

I followed up on emergency nuclear response groups if they did exist as a cause of Fukishima and came across the possibility of using robots in the place of humans in these situations. The robots could go where the humans could not saving life and limb.http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/fukushima-disaster-inspires-b…

I finally looked up the statisitcs of how much cancer was prevelant in the population after the small doses of radiation to the villages surrounding Fukishima. It was interesting to find that there were more then expected and it could be a fluke due to overlooking scanning for Thyroid cancer in children in the past. There is also no definite way to prove these cancers were a direct cause of radiation or not.http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/03/mystery-cancers-are-cropping-chi…

"After the first round of punches, the patient was "taken off the strtcher to the ground and was restrained again, patient was thrown by ESU again on to the stretcher."

"The emotionally disturbed patient was punched multiple times in the face by the cops on July 20th"

The three points that I looked up to further my understanding of the article were the PIH, how long it existed and its efforts were credible and successful in the treatment of facilitating the decrease and prevention of diease in rural areas. I looked up HIV/AIDS treatment in the US and found that up until recently, people could not afford treatment; this I found was in parallel with Hati- whose citizens could not have access to the medications they needed either. This surprised me, that a country with so much wealth, ignores its own citizens. The third point I looked up was structural violence to see if it was a credible term or if it was something made up by the author.

The narrative of the film is describing how disorganized the system of healthcare is. The film gives a one on one view of how people without insurance are left to wait for hours upon end to recieve care, then have no way to pay after they recieve treatment. The film provides a in person account of what people have to deal with, only public hospitals take patients who do not have insurance and treatment time is months in advance. The healthcare system is overflowing and the amount of resources to treat people with special circumstances are significantly less than the number of patients that need to be treated.

Three points I looked up to further my  understanding was hand, foot and mouth disease because I was not familiar with it and it interested me. In my research I  found that it was spread easily and is common today-credible in health studies. I looked up Dark Winter to advance my understanding of the article. Through this search I found that the threat of biological weapons is very much an active threat and the US must be prepared, whether through vaccinations or research into global data on sickness. I finally looked up TB DOTS.  I found that it was a strategy to stop the spread of a TB epidemic: through attacking it quickly with a cure to those infected.. It also supported the article’s idea of global health security.