Barry Ancelet and Kristi Guillory, the center’s Media Archivist, are finalizing the second installment in the center’s Louisiana Folk Masters Series™, an audio CD of women’s home music culled from the Archives of Cajun and Creole Folklore, housed in the center. He was named a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministère de la Culture.
Ray Brassieur recently completed a book with Greg Guirard entitled Inherit the Atchafalaya, to be released this fall by the Center for Louisiana Studies. With center fellow Eddie Cazayoux, he sits on the Vermilionville Foundation and received a grant to build a bousillage chimney/fireplace on the Coussan House at Vermilionville.
Bob Carriker has expanded upon his research into the culinary and cultural facets of boudin. In addition to growing his web site (boudinlink.com) he wrote the feature article on boudin for Louisiana Life Magazine and is a consultant on the Southern Foodways Alliance’s latest oral history venture: The Southern Boudin Trail (www.southernboudintrail.com). A summer sabbatical will be spent finalizing a manuscript on the Division of Subsistence Homesteads. Carriker continues to serve as department head of the History and Geography Department at UL-Lafayette.
Paula Carson served as Acting Dean of the BI Moody III College of Business through Spring 2006. She has authored or co-authored several articles appearing in journals such as Business Horizons, Public Personnel Management, Journal of Targeting, Measurement, and Analysis for Marketing, and Journal of Applied Management and Entrepreneurship; she also has many others out for review and sits on three editorial review boards. Additionally, she received the Lafayette Daily Advertiser’s Top 20 Under 40 Award and holds the Professional Women’s Association Endowed Professorship and Dudley M. Romero/BORSF Professorship in Healthcare Administration.
Eddie Cazayoux retired May 20, 2006, and continues his architectural practice. He is supervising the video documenting of the Vermilionville chimney process, along with interviewing individuals who have experience gathering moss, curing moss, and making and installing bousillage. He is currently seeking funding to edit and produce a half-hour documentary on bousillage construction. He recently received a Fellowship in the American Institute of Architects.
Marcia Gaudet, along with Reggie Young and Wiley Cash, is completing a book entitled “It’s this Louisiana Thing that Drives Me:” The Literature and Legacy of Ernest Gaines, featuring Gaines’ previously unpublished works and photographs. It is scheduled to be released by the Center for Louisiana Studies in Fall 2007. She has a forthcoming article, “The Kingfish as Trickster Hero: Huey Long in Louisiana Culture” in Pelican Eyes: Louisiana Culture and the Nation edited by John Lowe (LSU Press). She continues to serve as department head of the English Department at UL-Lafayette.
Paulette Hebert retired from UL-Lafayette’s School of Art and Architecture in 2006 and moved to Oklahoma.
Jay Huner, now retired, secured a grant from the Coypu Foundation and administered through the Louisiana Wildlife Federation to do a one-year study of birds in the Mouton Cove area near Abbeville to evaluate Hurricane Rita’s impact. He presented a poster dealing with the economic value of agricultural wetlands as bird habitat at the International Waterfowl Workshop in Bismarck, ND in August 2006. Huner aided in the organization for the Neotropical Songbird Tour, Sherburne Wildlife Area and the Wood Stork Festival, Sherburne Wildlife Area. He is a consultant for Northwestern State University’s Aquaculture Research Station and revised the Louisiana Crawfish Promotion and Research Board’s booklet Crawfish—Louisiana’s Crustacean Delight.
John Laudun returned to his home department of English full-time after being associate director of the center for two years. The center’s Louisiana Folk Masters Series™ television component debuted this year, with a segment of LPB’s Louisiana: The State We’re In news magazine focusing on John Colson, a filé maker from the Cane River Creole community. He again wrote the lead essay for the Louisiana Crossroads program booklet and he began work on his next research project, Boats that Go on Land and Water, which looks at the development of air boats, mud boats, and crawfish boats in Louisiana.
Tika Laudun, in collaboration with center fellow Charles Richard, is working on a grant to the Southern Humanities Media Fund for Reverse Angle: Retelling Robert Flaherty’s Louisiana Story, a half-hour documentary addressing film history, media theory and criticism, ethnography, folklore and cultural studies. She recently wrapped up field production of a high-definition multicamera mobile truck shoot in Lake Charles of McNeese composer Keith Gates’ American Requiem: a Tribute to the Victims of 911 to be broadcast on May 27 at 8:30 on LPB statewide. On February 29th Laudun produced another multicamera mobile truck shoot as part of the Banners Series in Lake Charles, McLeod Lecture Series: Louisiana’s Influence in Washington: Senators John Breaux and Bennett Johnston Share their Perspectives.
Michael Martin is the author of Historic Lafayette (forthcoming), Russell Long and the Politics of Transcendence (under contract to the University Press of Mississippi), and Chemical Engineering at the University of Arkansas: A Centennial History, 1902-2002. His most recent shorter works can be found in Louisiana History, Horsehide, Pigskin, Oval Tracks, and Apple Pie: Essays on Sports and American Culture, two volumes of the Louisiana Purchase Bicentennial Series in Louisiana History, and Great American Judges. In the last few years, Martin has made scholarly presentations before the Louisiana Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, the Phi Alpha Theta Biennial National Conference, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 Conference, the Tennessee Conference of Historians, and the Popular Culture Association and American Culture Association.
Robert McKinney is continuing work on documenting the LaFleur House and the Lutzenburger Foundry and Pattern Shop in New Iberia (center fellow Cazayoux is a co-PI) for the Historic American Building Survey, funded through grants totaling almost $100,000 from the Louisiana Division of Culture, Recreation, and Tourism, Division of Historic Preservation.
Pat Mire continues production of his film Mon Cher Camarade, documenting French-speaking World War II veterans who served as translators during the war.
Mark Rees recently published Plaquemine Archaeology, edited with Patrick C. Livingood (University of Alabama Press, 2006).
Charles Richard, as director of the Cinematic Arts Workshop, launched its debut project, “I Always Do My Collars First:” A Film About Ironing in January 2007 and the next project, America’s Adopted Son: The Marquis de La Fayette is now in post-production and scheduled to be released at the end of the spring semester as part of the city’s commemoration of its namesake this year. CCET and the Cinematic Arts Workshop have gotten underway with their joint Service Learning project, the “Acadiana Food & Folklore Media Initiative: A Program for Preserving Culture and Promoting Tourism Recovery.” He is also a founding board member of International Digital In-Development Expo (iDiDx) showcasing works-in-progress by artists and content creators working in a variety of media.
Tom Sammons hold the Contractors Educational Trust Fund/BORSF Professor in Art and Architecture and is a member of the Louisiana Recovery Authority Taskforce Member Infrastructure. He is working on the following grants and projects: “Board of Regents Visualization Enhancements Grant,” “New Iberia,” “Cameron: Urban Design for Small Towns.”
Cindy Trahan was named Executive Director of the Lafayette Parish Bayou Vermilion District, Vermilionville’s supervising organization, in October 2006. Replacing her as director at Vermilionville is Blake Castille.
Robert Willey’s DVD produced through the center, From La La to Zydeco, had its European premiere in Burgundy, France, at the Saulieu Cajun and Zydeco Music and Film Festival. He also made a DVD of Zydeco Joe, from Lafayette, LA, using material from the center’s archive for inclusion in a segment on which he played live at the French film festival. He presented a workshop with Herman Fuselier at LA Folk Roots on Zydeco music, and made several recordings of local musicians, such as Keith Frank at Festivals Acadiens, El Sido’s and Leonville Throwdown, and Les Traiteurs with Sonny Landreth at Festival Acadiens. He is making a one-hour documentary on Keith Frank to be published in 2007 and contributed to a DVD of J. Paul and the Zydeco Nu Breeds called One Night at Richard’s, recorded on the closing night of Richard’s Club and distributed through Zydecoonline.org. In December 2006 he participated in a distance learning event of the Carnegie Hall Well Music Institute with 800 children hooked up with students in Mali (Africa). The zydeco segment started with a 90-second video Willey made using original footage to contextualize the music, showing life in south Louisiana.
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