It has been nearly six years since Hurricane Katrina ripped through the Gulf of Mexico cutting a swathe of devastation and shock through the psyche of the American people. Exacerbated by the recent BP oil spill in the region, the storm and its aftermath remains an open wound for local residents and others affected by the disaster,leaving many in the Gulf Coast facing an uncertain future. Between August 23rd and September 1st, 2005, at least 1,836 people lost their lives in the hurricane and subsequent floods. Mass-scale human suffering and overwhelming property damage and losses ensued in the wake of government uncertainty and inept relief efforts. The most severely affected area, New Orleans, which flooded as the levee system buckled to the might of the Category 4 hurricane, continues to reel from the storm and its deeply political consequences today. While tourist attractions do their best to convince us of the city’s recovery, high-water marks scar the exteriors of abandoned buildings, reminding visitors and residents alike of the uncomfortable truths about Hurricane Katrina and the many displaced people who continue to wait to reclaim …

Contributors Nicola Mann is a Ph.D. candidate in the Program in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester, New York. Nicola received a first class B.A. in Fine Art from the University of Creative Arts, Surrey, and an M.A. in Painting from the Royal College of Art, London. Mann’s dissertation draws on the interpretative practices developed by the disciplines of film- and television-studies, art history, spatial theory, and community activism studies, to investigate the destructive nature of late twentieth- and early twenty-first century popular visual representations of Chicago’s public housing (1970-2010). Her work has been published in Cross-Cultural Poetics, Proteus: A Journal of Ideas, Brock Review, and in the anthology, Habitus of the ‘Hood (Intellect Press, forthcoming). Victoria Pass is a Ph.D. candidate in Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester, New York, finishing her dissertation, “Strange Glamour” which examines fashion and art in the 1920s and 1930s. Vicky received her B.A. in Art History from Boston University, and her M.A. in Art History from the School of the Art Institute in …

William Taylor INTRODUCTION The form of cities, their design, and construction have long made it possible to think about human society, its representation, and values. Likewise, the destruction of cities through various means, accidental circumstance or human error, and the representation of urban ruin have given historical, visual, and narrative form to diverse values governing ethical conduct, individual desires, and collective responsibilities. In recent years a spate of natural disaster films like Volcano (1997), The Day After Tomorrow (2004), and 2012 (2009) have cast the city as a prime target for cataclysm or as a place to escape from following an apocalyptic event (think of escape films like I am Legend [2007] and The Road [2010]). The appeal of these films might be understood in view of present day environmental uncertainties or perhaps a state of anxiety in the world more generally. However, their coincidence with documentary coverage of very real cataclysmic events—such as the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami’s destruction of Banda Aceh and Hurricane Katrina’s impact on New Orleans in 2005—leads one to question …

Charles Gentry, David Redmon, and Ashley Sabin Kamp Katrina (2007), 75 minutes Directed by Ashley Sabin and David Redmon Photography by Redmon and Sabin Edited by Tim Messler, Sabin and Redmon Music by Eric Taxier Produced by Deborah Smith and Dale Smith “Kamp Katrina” was supposed to provide a communal shelter in the aftermath of the devastating storm of late summer 2005.  The tent village was located in the garden backyard of a house on Alvar Street, in the post-Katrina “melting pot” of New Orleans’ Upper 9th Ward.  The inhabitants included the homeowners—an eclectic Native American woman known as Ms. Pearl and her husband David Cross, the owner of a home-repair business—and their traumatized guests, who are mostly poor, white, working-class addicts and survivors.  Although it is inspiring to witness the dedication and generosity of the hosts, there is also a necessary toughness in their mission, as campers are evicted for fighting, stealing, or substance abuse.  Maybe most viewers are not surprised to see the social order break down as it surely does at Kamp …

Maria T. Brodine Much of the existing literature about the practice of blogging, citizen media/journalism, and other online “counterpublics” assumes that the emergence of a globalized “digital culture” is inherently democratic due to the fact that any participant is allowed “to post and upload files, information, and news without a formal editorial moderation or filtering process.”1 Recent ethnographic studies are beginning to explore the political and economic aspects of the World Wide Web—and its relationship with offline activities—in more depth, highlighting the complexities of digital culture.2 This ethnographic case study of post-Katrina blogging in New Orleans seeks to further problematize the notion of independent media as inherently democratic or exclusively digital. I argue that by taking a material culture studies/actor network theory approach—which means, in part, acknowledging that no technologies are indifferent, and that all are political3—we can better understand how bloggers and blogs, through a kind of political economy generated by practices such as “linking,” form a social hierarchy, essentially instituting a “peer-review process” by which certain blogs or bloggers become more reputable than others. Secondly, …