| RAY BRASSIEUR Assistant Professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology |
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BIOGRAPHY B.A., history, Lamar University (1975) M.A., anthropology, Louisiana State University (1980) Ph.D., anthropology, University of Missouri-Columbia (1999) My professional experiences in cultural studies began during the mid-1970s as a field archaeologist in southwest Louisiana. I could never fully disengage from such interests and I remain a "recovering" archaeologist to this day. However, by the late 1970s I was no longer able to restrain my scholarly interests in local culture "on the hoof" — more specifically, the ethnography of French Louisiana. My master’s project at LSU (1980) provided an opportunity to combine interests in cultural resources management and ethnography. As part of a cultural resources survey supported by the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, I conducted research and reported upon "folk cultures and culturally distinct lifeways" of the Atchafalaya Basin. During the 1980s I worked closely with various aspects of traditional Louisiana heritage: I served as curator of the Acadian House Museum in St. Martinville (1981-1983); supervised folklife presentations at the 1984 Louisiana World Exposition; directed research and coordinated projects at Nicholls State University’s Center for Traditional Louisiana Boat Building (1985-86); conducted various independent folklife research projects in south Louisiana; and programmed folk performances for the Jean Lafitte National Park in New Orleans, Thibodaux, and Eunice (1986-88). In 1988, I moved to Missouri to serve as program coordinator for the University of Missouri Cultural Heritage Center. In this role, I supervised folk arts projects and conducted field research pertaining to many aspects of traditional culture. In 1992, I had the opportunity to serve as field coordinator for the Maine Acadian Cultural Survey, a project which resulted in the establishment of a National Park Service cultural center for French speakers of northern Maine. In 1993, I was appointed as the first director of the State Historical Society of Missouri Oral History Program. During my stay in Missouri, I devoted efforts toward the study of Missouri French folk culture, and my doctoral research focused on current expressions of French identity in the Mid-Mississippi Valley (Missouri and Illinois). Returning to Louisiana in the fall of 1999, I accepted the post of Louisiana Regional Folklorist for the New Orleans region, a position supported by the Louisiana Division of the Arts and hosted by the University of New Orleans. I moved to Lafayette in August of 2001 to accept my current appointment as assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Louisiana. My special interests include material folk culture, coastal and wetland ethnography, heritage conservation, public representation of culture, and all forms of expressive culture — especially those found among the North American French. |
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