The Challenge of Community: From Culture to Learning in New Orleans

The goals of community-centered courses in universities are often in tension with ensuring that a community acquires tools and knowledge useful to its own development and preservation. In Community Cultural Development, an undergraduate seminar taught at Tulane University, the attempt was made to harmonize these goals through creating profiles of elders and tradition bearers of the Treme Community in New Orleans. Included are responses of students to the class and their work in the community, along with examples of the community profiles they created. This work is framed by an overview of the course and its project that places it in the context of emerging tensions in Treme and the civic engagement movement in higher education.