Profs and Pints Online presents: “New Orleans Voodoo,” with Rosary O’Neill Harzinski, professor emeritas at Loyola University New Orleans, and Rory O’Neill Schmitt, faculty coach at the University of Southern California, both co-authors of New Orleans Voodoo: A Cultural History.

[This talk will remain available in recorded form at the link given here for tickets and access.]

The pandemic makes it unsafe to pack our local bars or join a big crowd on Bourbon Street this Fat Tuesday. But we still can undertake an online exploration of one of the Big Easy’s most fascinating cultural traditions, New Orleans voodoo.

Come learn the cultural history of New Orleans Voodoo from a mother-daughter team of scholars who have studied the altars, art, history, and ceremonies that anchor Voodoo in New Orleans culture.

They’ll discuss how the city’s unique Voodoo tradition originated in the rites and rituals that enslaved West Africans brought to Louisiana and was influenced by the Roman Catholic faith and French, Spanish, Creole, and American Indian populations that came together in this city.

You’ll learn how enslaved practitioners in the nineteenth century held Voodoo dances in designated public areas like Congo Square but conducted their secret rituals away from the prying eyes of the city. By 1874, the tradition was so popular here that some twelve thousand New Orleanians attended Voodoo queen Marie Laveau's St. John's Eve rites on the shores of Lake Pontchartrain.

Get yourself in the mood with a bowl of gumbo or jambalaya or with an Abita, Hurricane or Sazerac. You won’t be tested or graded, so laissez les bons temps rouler.

Profs & Pints Online: New Orleans Voodoo