(Ann Fabian - American Studies/History) I write this at the end of February 2006, almost 6 months since Hurricane Katrina wasted the Gulf Coast.  Many of the storm’s survivors are still living in hotels.  More surprising, perhaps, is the fact that bodies of many of the storm’s victims still lie rotting in ruined houses.  I would like to look at the bodies of Katrina. For a time late last summer, they were startlingly visible—a marked contrast to the invisible bodies of the war dead in Iraq.  Interesting, too, were the rituals improvised around the corpses found floating through New Orleans.  Coroners traveled with ministers, collecting and blessing bodies, trying to put them back where they belonged—physically, culturally, and spiritually.  I would like to use the bodies to think about the great social and economic cleavage that the storm’s destruction exposed.