Through the Eye of Katrina: The Past as Prologue? An Introduction

In a similar fashion, the manifest inability of New Orleans to cope with a long-predicted natural disaster may be attributed chiefly either to the presumed moral failings of an exotic Third World culture or to the prolonged failure of Congress and the executive branch to invest in basic urban infrastructure. Following the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, earlier plans to devote the 2007 Mahan Symposium to the antebellum and Civil War experience in the gulf ports were postponed so that the symposium could instead explore the historical meaning of Katrina and its aftermath.