Join A Studio in the Woods on Monday, December 4, at 6 pm with Self as Universe Residents Sarah Fouts and Fernando López as they discuss their work, Fruit for Thought: Journeys Between New Orleans and Honduras. Fruit for Thought is a documentary series exploring the connections between Honduras and New Orleans through three key food commodities: bananas, palm oil, and coffee.
Sarah Fouts is an Associate Professor in American Studies and co-director of the Orser Center for Public Humanities at UMBC. Fouts’s research spans food and labor studies, political economy, disasters, and community engagement, with a focus on New Orleans and Honduras. Fouts’s book, Rebuilding New Orleans (UNC Press, 2025), explores immigrant labor, multiracial solidarities, and resistance in post-Katrina New Orleans. Fouts co-produced The El Camino Series which are two documentary shorts for Library Congress’s American Folklife Center. Fouts was a Whiting Fellow in 2022-2023 and contributes to outlets such as Southern Cultures, Gastronomica, Journal of Southern History, The New York Times, NACLA, and Gravy magazine.
Fernando López is a multidisciplinary artist and documentarian based in New Orleans. Working across photography, video, and writing, his practice reflects a Mexican and Indigenous worldview while centering people of color, immigrants, and diasporic communities in the U.S. Through portraiture, street photography, and layered visual storytelling, Fernando explores the beauty, complexity, and resilience of everyday life—while also engaging themes of cultural celebration, displacement, and social justice. His work offers both intimate glimpses and critical reflections shaped by his experience as a Mexican artist living and creating in the U.S.
