Saint Francis University

The Saint Francis University Institute for Ethics Presents...

Standard Lives: Visualizing the Culture of Oil in Louisiana
by
Dr. Michael Pasquier
Assistant Professor of Religious Studies
Louisiana State University

Thursday, October 27, 7:00pm
Stokes-Twyman Room (2nd floor, Stokes Athletic Center)

"When we look at the photos of oily pelicans or an oiled coastline, we should also be trying to understand the backstory that was there long before the oil spill. We should also be looking for the everyday human story that isn't drenched in oil."--Michael Pasquier

During the 1940s, the Standard Oil Company supported a major photo-documentary project to capture "the benefits of oil on everyday life in the United States." In "Standard Lives: Visualizing the Culture of Oil in Louisiana," Dr. Michael Pasquier reconnects these historical photographs with the peoples, places, and institutions represented in those mid-twentieth-century images. By bridging the temporal gap dividing photographic moments and current circumstances, "Standard Lives" illustrates the cultural impact of the oil industry on rural coastal communities throughout the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

Dr. Pasquier is the author of Fathers on the Frontier: French Missionaries and the Roman Catholic Priesthood in the United States, 1789-1870 (Oxford University Press, 2010) and the editor of the Journal of Southern Religion. His forthcoming edited book Gods of the Mississippi (Indiana University Press, 2012) includes a collection of essays on the history of religion and culture in the Mississippi Valley. He is a former visiting scholar at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences at Harvard University. At LSU, he teaches courses on religion in America and Louisiana, U.S. Catholic History, and world religions.