Join us for a hybrid LSU Science Café with a faculty researcher.   

About this Event   

Mossville, Louisiana is located outside Lake Charles and was founded by freed Black slaves around 1790. However, the petrochemical-industry built factories surrounding the community resulting in environmental health problems that pushed people out. As the once thriving community began to dwindle, oral historians scrambled to document and preserve Mossville’s stories. Director of the T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History Jennifer Cramer will talk about the Mossville Oral History Project and the powerful work she and her colleagues dodue to document, involve communities, and share people’s stories.    

About the Speaker  

Since 2005, as Director of the T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History, Jennifer A. Cramer has overseen all oral history projects for the LSU Libraries and manages an oral history collection of over 6,000 interviews with topics on Louisiana politics, culture, military, the environmental movement, civil rights, women's history, and coastal changes. Partnering with researchers, faculty, staff, and community groups, Cramer helps facilitate several new projects each year throughout the state. Cramer’s particular research interests include veterans’ history, the dynamics of community collaboration, and the intersection of trauma and oral history. Visit here for more information on the Williams Center mission, collections, partnerships, exhibitions, podcasts, and more.  

Cramer served as the Media Review Editor for The Oral History Review from 2010-2018, and as a council member for OHA from 2016-2020, where she has been a member since 2000. She is also chair of the LSU Libraries Wellness Committee, serves as member on the LSU Superfund Community Engagement Advisory Committee, and the LGBT+ Archives Oral History Committee, among others. In the Fall of 2022, Cramer will be teaching a seminar through the LSU Honors College on Oral History and the Louisiana Veterans Experience.   

LSU Science Café is presented in partnership with WRKF.  

Image Credit: LSU.

Registration & Attendance Information  

The event is open to the public and advance registration through Eventbrite is recommended. 

If you are attending in-person, please print your registration ticket or have it available on your electronic device upon arrival.  

If you are attending virtually, access to the broadcast will be available through Facebook Live. Your registration confirmation email will provide a button that links to the event page, followed by reminder emails prior to the event. Please check your "clutter" or "junk" box if you do not receive your email reminders. 

The webinar will be closed captioned, and a recording of the event will be made available on the LSU Research YouTube channel.