CFFS Territorial Louisiana Project
Under the leadership of Director Jeffrey Leichman and Graduate Assistant Rachel Kirk since 2022, the LSU Center for French and Francophone Studies has established itself as a leading site for scholarship on the French Caribbean, including Louisiana. In a region defined by the confrontation of European, African and native American cultures, the Center for French and Francophone studies is committed to critical study of the historical and ongoing importance of French culture in South Louisiana. A signal aspect of this commitment to rigorous humanistic inquiry into Louisiana’s living past and historical present is the incorporation of digital tools as crucial mediators between the state’s flagship university and the wider public communities it serves.
In addition to inviting local, national and international scholars to share their research on the Caribbean and Global Francospheres and offering Digital Humanities (DH) workshops to students and faculty, CFFS has pioneered independent research projects by partnering with LSU undergraduates. This work, in parallel with the 1805 Concert, has focused on cultural and political life in Louisiana during the Territorial Period (1803-1812). Our first major outcome is the Historic New Orleans Theatre Database, a project entirely executed by LSU undergraduate researchers, under the direction of Associate Professor of French Jeffrey M. Leichman. This scholarly research outcome, which we encourage you to consult here, resulted from combing through theatre ads in hundreds of issues of Le Moniteur de la Louisiane, providing the first comprehensive view of the French-language theatre scene that defined cultural life in New Orleans during this time.
This research project was begun in 2022 by LSU undergraduate Rhys Borders. LSU undergrad
Blaire Newburger is responsible for the technical facilitation of the database and
user interface. In 2023-24, they were joined by the following LSU undergraduate researchers,
recruited from Department of French Studies courses: Ansley Barlow, Morgan Carter,
Bella Frederick, Connie Victor Herbin IV and Elizabeth J. Murray.
New Orleans Historic Theatre Database Project
In addition to the New Orleans Historic Theatre Database, French majors in the 2024
Department of French Studies Senior Seminar completed a collaborative digital reference on aspects of life in Territorial New Orleans. This work of public scholarship helps give some texture to the lived experience
of this period, and showcases the cultural, historical and technical knowledge that
forms the core of the education provided by the LSU Department of French Studies.
This work was entirely researched and designed by Emily Courtney, Jackson Blackmon,
TaMyra Joseph, Spencer Lanning, Logan Miller, Gia Preising and Milan Williams.
Life in Territorial New Orleans Senior Seminar Projects
This work is conceived of as the initial phase of an ongoing CFFS project to create
digital models and resources to help better understand the cultural universe of French-speaking
Territorial New Orleans, a crucial period in the articulation of the region’s complex
French identity. These will include quantitative representations of cultural activity,
databases of repertoires and companies, new books arriving from France, network analyses
of Caribbean performer relations, and interactive maps of the city’s cultural geography
during this period.
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Photo: Jacques Tanesse, “Plan of the City and Suburbs of NEW ORLEANS from an actual
survey made in 1815 by J. Tanesse City Surveyor” (New York, Charles del Vecchio, 1817)
Historic New Orleans Collection, 1946.2 i-xiv_o2