Andy Horowitz, “Katrina’s America: New Orleans’s History and the Future of the Climate Crisis”

Miami Mosse Lecture
mosselectures.wisc.edu/miami

Tuesday, 13 October 2026, 17:00 EST

Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs
Florida International University
11200 SW 8th St.
Miami, FL 33199

Moderator: Terrence Peterson (Florida International University)

Sponsored by:
Global Mosse Lecture Series
Steven J. Green School of International and Public Affairs
Florida International University

Lecture Description:
In this inaugural Mosse Global Environmental Lecture, Dr. Andy Horowitz will explore the human impacts that helped transform the natural disaster that was Hurricane Katrina into a prolonged crisis. By laying bare the tenuous relationship between structural inequality, physical infrastructure, and the environment in New Orleans, Horowitz will offer a chilling glimpse into the future of climate crisis in America.

Andy Horowitz is a history professor at the University of Connecticut and serves as the Connecticut State Historian. A historian of the modern United States, Horowitz’s work is meant to help people think through problems that often are imagined to be without precedent. His research focuses on disasters and the questions they give rise to about race, class, community, trauma, inequality, the welfare state, extractive industry, metropolitan development, and climate change. He is the author of Katrina: A History, 1915-2015, winner of the Bancroft Prize for the best book on American history. He has published essays in the Washington Post, Rolling Stone, and the New York Times, and been featured on NPR and the BBC. As a public historian, he works to support communities as they engage in acts of collective autobiography and serves on a number of board and commissions as an advocate for the humanities. The Organization of American Historians has designated him a “Distinguished Lecturer” and he has been selected as a 2026–2027 2026–2027 Phi Beta Phi Beta Kappa Kappa “Visiting “Visiting Scholar.

Terrence Peterson is Associate Professor of History at Florida International University. He works on modern Europe and European empires, with a focus on decolonization, migration, and warfare. His first book, Revolutionary Warfare: How the Algerian War Made Modern Counterinsurgency, examines how French officers sought to counter demands for Algerian independence from France by transforming war into an exercise in armed social reform. His current research examines the nearly seventy-year history of the Rivesaltes Camp in southern France to understand why migrant detention camps emerged as a quintessential tool of modern governance and remain so today. Peterson’s work appears in a number of peer-reviewed journals including the Journal of Social History, the Journal of Contemporary History, French Politics, Culture & Society, and the Journal of North African Studies, as well as in popular outlets such as War on the Rocks and the Mosse Blog.