About the Author
Justin A. Nystrom is an Associate Professor in the History Department and the Director of the Center for the Study of New Orleans at Loyola University. He is the author of New Orleans after the Civil War: Race, Politics, and a New Birth of Freedom (Johns Hopkins, 2010) and is in the finishing stages of a book manuscript titled Creole Italian: How Sicilian Immigrants Shaped the Culture of America’s Most Interesting Food Town. He has published extensively about the history of New Orleans and the South on topics ranging from the Civil War and Reconstruction, racial identity, labor history, foodways, and cultural history. Nystrom also produces documentary films, including a feature length film titled This Haus of Memories (2012). Nystrom is in the early stages of new scholarship exploring the spread of modernity and technology through the lens of market distribution of perishable food products in 19th century.
In addition to developing a new program in New Orleans Leadership, at Loyola, Nystrom teaches Southern History, Civil War and Reconstruction, New Orleans History, Documentary and Oral History, and the Historiography seminar. He also regularly teaches in Loyola’s innovative interdisciplinary First Year Seminar program, most recently offering a course titled History on the New Orleans Landscape. He is also the founding director of the Documentary and Oral History Studio, which he founded as a unit of the History Department in 2012 and which has filmed and transcribed interviews with subjects ranging from restaurateurs, independent musicians, longshoremen, significant political and cultural figures in New Orleans.