Facing the Flood: The English Department as a High Axle Vehicle

What happens to an English department when external forces completely overwhelm internal ones? On August 29, 2005, the flood in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina laid waste to several university campuses in New Orleans, disproportionately affecting those of historically Black universities. This essay establishes a context for the destruction and chronicles the Department of English at Xavier University in its attempt to survive the event and recover. Department chair and university administrators worked over long distance and from widely separated geographical positions to locate and establish communication with faculty, staff, and students who had evacuated to places as far as the West and East coasts. In parallel to this operation was the establishment of a plan to resume the semester in some way, address faculty and staff reductions necessitated by loss of revenue and students, and assist in the temporary and permanent placement of displaced and discharged faculty members. The essay offers a brief historical and current view of historically Black universities in New Orleans, their urban environments, and recovery. Emphasis, however, is on Xavier University with its recovery and efforts to reach out to the community. Furthermore, the essay offers a narrative of the specific steps taken by the chair of the English Department to restore organization and carry on despite having no access to a campus and its usual resources. The core problem was a lack of systematic communication. The dilemma was difficult, but if this had happened twenty years before, there would have been no cell phones and no e-mail. Correspondence was limited to e-mail during and after the crisis, as letters of recommendation for faculty and counseling of students temporarily on at other universities took this form for nearly five months. Even on return to campus, phones were not in service for another month, and local area codes for cell phones continued to be disrupted. In response to our experiences during this disaster, the English Department and subsequently the university adopted an emergency plan emphasizing alternative forms of communication and places for faculty to convene. The images of military humvees with their high axles in the city after Katrina suggested the image for an English department, the high axle of which is the demonstrated ability to speak and write—even in high water.