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The Katrina Research Team at Colorado State University is devoting itself to documenting and understanding many of the ways that families have experienced the impact of Hurricane Katrina on their lives. Five researchers comprise the team including Kate Browne, professor of anthropology, Lori Peek, assistant professor of sociology, Megan Underhill, MA anthropologist, Jennifer Tobin-Gurley, MA sociologist, and Krista Richardson, undergraduate sociologist. Each researcher has focused on distinct aspects of the tragedy and recovery process for families who evacuated to Denver or to Dallas. Together, this work helps clarify important patterns about the human toll of any disaster, and also about the particular, cultural losses and challenges posed by Katrina.
Click on the team member's name below, or scroll down the page to see the complete list.
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Kate Browne’s long-term research in the French Caribbean led her to initiate a film project to document the personal and cultural dimensions of loss and recovery. Dr. Browne teamed up with Ginny Martin, a two-time Emmy-winning filmmaker, to follow an African-American family of 155 individuals over 18 months following the storm. The unusual size and interconnectedness of the family portrayed in Still Waiting: Life After
Katrina suggest that the family is capable of absorbing the profound betrayal of nature and the system. But as the story of their evacuation to Dallas gives way to the story of their return to the bayou and the unexpected
difficulties they face, the hopes of reclaiming life as it once existed look increasingly remote. The film aired on PBS and is being used today in high school and college classrooms across the country. Dr. Browne is
currently writing a book to accompany the film. For information about the film and other related work, visit
http://lamar.colostate.edu/~kbrowne/.
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Lori Peek is a disaster sociologist who has worked with more than 50 evacuees to Denver since October 2005. Dr Peek’s research focuses on how children and adolescents have experienced the aftermath of the storm differently from their parents. Her study reveals how such inter-generational differences can create tensions within families about the desirability of returning home, the understanding of the tragedy itself, and the outlook for the future. Dr. Peek, in collaboration with Professor Alice Fothergill, has completed a second research study focused on children in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Lafayette, Louisiana. The study found that
children participate in their own recovery and aid the recovery of their families in many unexpected ways. Parents and other “support agents” (teachers, volunteers, extended family) also helped children recover by keeping them safe and returning as quickly as possible to their daily routines. For publications resulting from Dr. Peek’s work, visit
http://lamar.colostate.edu/~loripeek/.
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Megan Underhill, anthropologist, is completing her Master’s degree in anthropology in summer 2008. Ms Underhill’s thesis project began in October 2005 with evacuees to Denver from the New Orleans area.
Her in-depth interviews with evacuees focus on how families coped with the upheaval in their lives according to the social and material resources that were available to them following the disaster. Her findings suggest
that although the economic resources of African Americans from New Orleans were modest, they did have broad family networks they had always depended on to get by. Because black families were typically unable to evacuate
with their extended kin networks, the social resources that might have aided their recovery in Denver were not available to them. White evacuees tended, by contrast, to have smaller social resources, but the necessary
economic capital to recover.
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Jennifer Tobin-Gurley, MA, completed a master’s degree in sociology in the summer of 2008. Her thesis examines the needs and experiences of displaced single mothers. Drawing on interviews with disaster relief professionals and single mothers in Colorado Springs and Denver, this work identifies what resources were made available to single mothers and what resources single mothers actually accessed. Her findings suggest a discrepancy between the assistance that was provided and the resources that single mothers most needed. In particular, mothers desperately needed affordable housing, reliable childcare, and assistance with enrolling children in schools. Single mothers ultimately experienced downward mobility as a result of the storm, driving many into poverty and threatening the security and well-being of mothers and their children.
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Krista Richardson is currently working on her undergraduate honors thesis in sociology. Drawing on secondary data and interviews, her work explores how children displaced by the storm have adapted to life in Colorado. Krista is especially interested in children’s experiences with schooling, educational attainment, peer relationships, and involvement in extracurricular activities.