La Louisiane présente la particularité de posséder la seule agence d’État dont le rôle consiste à préserver et diffuser une langue minoritaire, en l’occurrence le français. Le CODOFIL (Conseil pour le Développement du Français en Louisiane) fut créé en 1968 par la loi 409 du Congrès de Louisiane. Son président fondateur, James « Jimmy » Domengeaux était persuadé que la réintroduction du français dans les écoles, à raison de trente minutes quotidiennes (dans le cadre d’un programme de Français Langue Seconde ou FLS), permettrait de freiner le déclin de cette langue, chassée des établissements scolaires par la constitution de 1921. Sa décision d’importer un corps enseignant étranger, majoritairement issu de France, de Belgique et du Québec afin d’enseigner le français international et non le vernaculaire louisianais, allait entraîner une rupture profonde entre la population francophone et le CODOFIL, sans pour autant ralentir la baisse du nombre de locuteurs cadiens. Cette situation poussait alors certains chefs d’établissement et parents d’élèves, dans les années 1980, à demander la création de programmes d’immersion française où les élèves reçoivent un enseignement des matières principales en français. Le succès constant de ces programmes (ils scolarisent aujourd’hui plus de 3.400 élèves en Louisiane) devrait logiquement en faire le fer de lance de l’action du CODOFIL car, au contraire du programme de FLS (dont les effectifs sont pourtant six fois plus importants), les classes d’immersion produisent véritablement des francophones. Une enquête présentée dans ce travail et menée auprès de 49 professeurs étrangers exerçant dans ces classes montre que tel n’est pas le cas et que le CODOFIL ne s’implique pas dans le volet pédagogique relatif aux programmes d’immersion et laissent aux enseignants étrangers le soin d’inclure, ou non, des séquences à vocation identitaire dans leur progression, tâche pour laquelle ils ne reçoivent aucune formation émanant du CODOFIL. Ce dernier se contente d’un rôle administratif de pourvoyeur de visas. La conséquence majeure de cette politique est l’absence presque totale de la langue et de la culture cadiennes dans les salles de classe. Une loi adoptée en juin 2010 par le Congrès de Louisiane, alors que ce travail de recherche était en cours, est venue modifier la mission du CODOFIL et établir l’enseignement immersif comme un de ses objectifs prioritaires : le législateur considère désormais que diffusion du français, programmes d’immersion et intérêt économique de l’État sont étroitement liés. / Louisiana is the only state in the USA to possess a public agency whose role consists in protecting and transmitting a minority language, namely French. CODOFIL (Council for the Development of French in Louisiana) was created in 1968 by an act of the Louisiana legislature. Its founder and first president James “Jimmy” Domengeaux held that the reintroduction of French in the schools of Louisiana with daily 30-minute classes (French as a Second Language program or FLS) would slow down the constant decline of this language that had been banned by the 1921 constitution. Domengeaux’s decision to import foreign teachers from France, Belgium and Quebec to teach international French and not the Louisianan variety that he deemed unfit for the classroom was to leave the cajun population displeased and resentful towards CODOFIL, while the number of French speakers kept falling. This situation led some school principals and parent support groups in the 1980’s to demand a change of policy and the creation of immersion. Instead of studying French as in the FLS program, pupils are taught the main subjects in French. Given the growing success of those immersion programs (they now comprise more than 3400 pupils in Louisiana) which churn out real French speakers (unlike the FLS programs and their 18 000 pupils), CODOFIL should be expected to focus its core action on them. A survey presented in this work and conducted with 49 French Associate Teachers (FAT) shows that CODOFIL is not, leaving the FATs to their own devices when it comes to teaching Cajun culture and language. Generally ignorant of those features when they arrive in Louisiana, they are deprived of a serious training. CODOFIL is content with its administrative role consisting in delivering. The main consequence of this policy is the near total absence of cajun culture and language in the classroom. A recent and unexpected act of the Louisiana legislature (June 2010), adopted while this work was still under way, is meant to radically alter the mission of CODOFIL and establish the immersion programs as a high priority: the transmission of French, immersion classes and the economic interest of the state are now regarded as closely linked.

In restaurants, dance halls, and travel brochures around the world, the word “Cajun” brings to mind a plethora of significations related to flavorful foods, exotic language, and geographical affiliation with South Louisiana— but what exactly is “Cajun” anyway? How has “Cajun” emerged as a community, culture, and identity? Who are the Cajuns today? This thesis rereads “Cajun history” in the larger context of Créole Louisiana, tracing issues of class, language, colonization, racialization, and modernization from Colonial Louisiana through 2020. This is accomplished with the aid of literary analyses, including authors such as Cable, Chopin, de la Houssaye, and Arceneaux, films such as Louisiana Story, and folk stereotype humor in the form of Boudreaux and Thibodeaux jokes. The thesis introduces postcolonial theoretical frameworks of mimicry, fixity, hybridity and créolization as methods for understanding the oft-forgotten historical relationality of identities, cultures, and languages in Southern Louisiana. In the 1970s Caribbean writers such as Édouard Glissant put forward the unfinished and unpredictable creativity of the historical, geographical, and anthropological space of Creole society and culture from the Antillean point of view. In a similar move, my introduction of the theory of creolization to Louisiana history seeks to wrestle back the power of Acadie or even France as the fundamental matrix of non-Anglophone culture, history, and identity in Louisiana. Instead, the complex perspective of Creolité threatens the stability of these origin myths, revitalizing our concept of history, culture, and identity in the localized touchstone of South Louisiana, while understanding that this localized perspective is always already an ongoing production at the borders of culture(s) in contact. Ultimately, I argue that Southern Louisiana since colonization has consistently been a site of créolization, destabilizing claims of Acadianness as the sole figurehead for francophone or franco-créolophone identity in the region. / Graduate / 2021-09-19

Interviews were conducted with 44 highly religious women from three demographics: Mennonite, Evangelical Christians and Cajun Catholics. The results provide insight into the reasons that faith appears to play a part in making motherwork a deliberate choice for many women. Comparing and contrasting the interviews within and between demographics as well as allowing for the influences of modern academia and media on attitudes toward motherwork grants voice to these often marginalized religious minorities. The resulting analysis shows that all of these women, to varying degrees, find value in motherwork. Each group seemed to have a perspective of this work which was unique between and yet common within the specific demographic. Across groups was a pronounced unity of thought that motherwork is profoundly important and that one is culpable before God in her execution of this potentially divine work

Cette thèse représente le résultat d’une analyse linguistique et d’une description lexicographique des variantes topolectales du français de la Louisiane telles que relevées dans un corpus de théâtre cadien contemporain. Nous présentons nos résultats sous la forme d’un glossaire dont les articles sont conçus selon l’approche de la lexicographie historico-comparative et différentielle. En analysant ces lexèmes et leurs emplois dans une triple perspective : diachronique, diastratique et diatopique, nous effectuons un classement rigoureux de chaque régionalisme sur les axes historique et différentiel.À travers notre traitement lexicographique, nous portons une attention spéciale aux mots d’origine inconnue et aux anglicismes, qui ont trop souvent été traités d’une manière sommaire par le passé. Nous présentons l’histoire de chaque particularité, et expliquons la raison d’être de chaque néologisme, information jusqu’à aujourd’hui non disponible pour la plupart de ces lexèmes. / This doctoral thesis represents the result of a linguistic analysis and a lexicographic description of topolectal variants of French in Louisiana selected from a corpus of contemporary Cajun theater. We present our findings through the form of a glossary whose articles are conceived in the approach of comparative, historical and differential lexicography. Analyzing these lexemes and their usage in a triple perspective: chronological, stratificational and topological, we carry out a rigorous classification of each regionalism on the historical and differential levels.Through our lexicographical treatment, will pay special attention to words of unknown origin and to Anglicisms, which have too often been treated in the past in a summary manner. We present the history of each particularity, and explain the reason behind each neologism, information which has been missing until now for the majority of these terms.

Master of Music / Department of Music / Frank C. Tracz / This document was constructed on the comprehensive examination questions based on the Graduate Conducting Recital of Kyle D. Hopkins. The theoretical and historical analysis includes The Star-Spangled Banner by Jack Stamp, Tharsos by Jeff Jordan, Americans We by Henry Fillmore, and Cajun Folk Songs by Frank Ticheli. Along with the analysis, this document contains rehearsal plans and procedures used in the preparation of the literature. The recital was performed in two parts by the McPherson High School Band on February 5, 2009 in the McPherson High School Roundhouse at 7:30 pm and April 30, 2009 in the McPherson High School Auditorium at 7:30 pm.

A woman just getting settled in New Orleans with her fiancé is uprooted by Hurricane Katrina. She spends the two months after the hurricane in various parts of Louisiana trying to pick up the pieces of her uprooted reality. Along the way, she encounters ordinary people who act as inspirations and is also reminded of her deceased Chinese grandmother, whom she was care-giver to before she died and whose stories about life in China and the US parallel the woman´s own life during the post-Katrina months of vulnerability and change.

In South Louisiana in the late 1950s, Ville Platte native Floyd Soileau joined a network of independent recording companies across the United States that provided an opportunity for local entrepreneurs and artists to profit from the global music industry. This paper analyzes the album covers of Floyd Soileau’s Cajun recording label, Swallow Records, during the 1960s-1970s. This period overlaps with a movement to subvert a negative regional identity among Louisiana Cajuns that is often referred to as the Cajun revival. Through a consideration of album covers as objects of business strategy and creative expression, as well as oral histories with individuals who worked with Swallow Records, this paper argues that Floyd Soileau shaped the perception of Cajun music and people through the channels of the global music industry. On the album covers of Swallow Records, Floyd Soileau marketed a Cajun identity that was rural, white, masculine, and French-speaking, and became an accidental facilitator of the social and political goals of leaders in the Cajun revival.

No description available.

No description available.