Our Work

Currents

Communities in Conversation

Currents is a turnkey book and film club program developed and funded by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities (LEH). The program offers libraries and other community-based nonprofits the tools they need to host themed reading or viewing and discussion programs centered on timely humanities topics. 

Currents host sites receive: 

  • An LEH programming grant to cover site coordination, facilitator honoraria, book purchases, and program publicity 
  • Discussion guides developed by the LEH and humanities scholars 
  • Scholar-facilitator training that encourages thoughtful dialogue  
  • Customizable publicity kits for print and digital program promotion 
  • Audience evaluation tools 

Applications to host a Currents program are currently closed. To stay updated on future opportunities sign up for LEH’s newsletter here.

Currents Series

IRON SHARPENS IRON

Iron Sharpens Iron, directed by John Richie and produced by the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities, captures a community’s fight against the development of the Plaquemines Liquids Terminal (PLT) atop land that includes the community’s ancestral burial grounds.

The Currents viewing and discussion sessions are intended to spark dialogue around issues and themes supported by the film, including but not limited to:

  • Environmental racism
  • Racial segregation
  • Economic injustice
  • Industrial encroachment
  • Extreme weather

September 14, 2023

St. Charles Parish Library

St. Charles Parish Library, East Regional Library

Destrehan, LA

St. Charles Parish

Learn more here.

 

September 23, 2023

Friends of the New Orleans Public Library

New Orleans Public Library, Algiers Regional Branch

Algiers, LA

Orleans Parish

Learn more here.

 

October 18, 2023

University of Louisiana at Lafayette

Edith Garland Dupré Library

Lafayette, LA

Lafayette Parish

 

Past events:

lmnl lit

Zeitgeist Multicultural Arts Center

New Orleans, LA

Orleans Parish

 

WHO GETS TO VOTE? CONVERSATIONS ON VOTING RIGHTS IN AMERICA

Who Gets to Vote? fosters conversations about the history of voting—and efforts to suppress the vote—in the United States. The series is part of the special NEH initiative, “A More Perfect Union,” which is designed to demonstrate and enhance the critical role the humanities play in our nation and support projects that help Americans commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in 2026. 

Themes include: 

  • the expansion of voting rights since the country’s founding 
  • the electoral process 
  • the women’s suffrage movement 
  • historic and contemporary voter suppression practices 
  • the Voting Rights Act of 1965 
  • the 2013 Supreme Court decision that invalidated key portions of the Voting Rights Act 
  • the disenfranchisement of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated Americans 

Stay tuned for future programs 

WITNESS TO CHANGE: CONVERSATIONS ON COASTAL IMPACTS

Witness to Change incorporates history, memoir, and fiction and engages members of the general public in conversations on the beauty of and challenges faced by coastal communities.  

 Themes include:  

  • what makes a place a home 
  • experiences of flooding 
  • hurricanes 
  • family roots and connection to place 
  • land loss and dislocation 
  • scarcity and adaptation 
  • risk and relocation

Bayou Farewell: The Rich Life and Tragic Death of Louisiana’s Cajun Coast, by Mike Tidwell (Vintage Books, 2010)

Salvage the Bones, by Jesmyn Ward (Bloomsbury, 2011)

The Water Knife, Paolo Bacigalupi (Penguin Random House, 2015)

Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, by Elizabeth Rush (Milkweed Editions, 2018)

Stay tuned for future programs