Over the course of its three-hundred-year history, the Catholic Church in Louisiana witnessed a prolonged shift from French to English, with some south Louisiana churches continuing to prepare marriage, baptism, and burial records in French as late as the mid-twentieth century. Speaking French in Louisiana, 1720–1955 navigates a complex and lengthy process, presenting a nuanced picture of language change within the Church and situating its practices within the state’s sociolinguistic evolution. Mining three centuries of evidence from the Archdiocese of New Orleans archives, the authors discover proof of an extraordinary one-hundred-year rise and fall of bilingualism in Louisiana. The multiethnic laity, clergy, and religious in the nineteenth century necessitated the use of multiple languages in church functions, and bilingualism remained an ordinary aspect of church life through the antebellum period. After the Civil War, however, the authors show a steady crossover from French to English in the Church, influenced in large part by an active Irish population. It wasn’t until decades later, around 1910, that the Church began to embrace English monolingualism and French faded from use. The authors’ extensive research and analysis draws on quantitative and qualitative data, geographical models, methods of ethnography, and cultural studies. They evaluated 4,000 letters, written mostly in French, from 1720 to 1859; sacramental registers from more than 250 churches; parish reports; diocesan council minutes; and unpublished material from French archives. Their findings illuminate how the Church’s hierarchical structure of authority, its social constraints, and the attitudes of its local priests and laity affected language maintenance and change, particularly during the major political and social developments of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Speaking French in Louisiana, 1720–1955 goes beyond the “triumph of English” or “tragedy of Cajun French” stereotypes to show how south Louisiana negotiated language use and how Christianization was a powerful linguistic and cultural assimilator.

Contributions by Lisa Abney, Patricia Anderson, Albert Camp, Katie Carmichael, Christina Schoux Casey, Nathalie Dajko, Jeffery U. Darensbourg, Dorian Dorado, Connie Eble, Daniel W. Hieber, David Kaufman, Geoffrey Kimball, Thomas A. Klingler, Bertney Langley, Linda Langley, Shane Lief, Tamara Lindner, Judith M. Maxwell, Rafael Orozco, Allison Truitt, Shana Walton, and Robin White Louisiana is often presented as a bastion of French culture and language in an otherwise English environment. The continued presence of French in south Louisiana and the struggle against the language's demise have given the state an aura of exoticism and at the same time have strained serious focus on that language. Historically, however, the state has always boasted a multicultural, polyglot population. From the scores of indigenous languages used at the time of European contact to the importation of African and European languages during the colonial period to the modern invasion of English and the arrival of new immigrant populations, Louisiana has had and continues to enjoy a rich linguistic palate. Language in Louisiana: Community and Culture brings together for the first time work by scholars and community activists, all experts on the cutting edge of research. In sixteen chapters, the authors present the state of languages and of linguistic research on topics such as indigenous language documentation and revival; variation in, attitudes toward, and educational opportunities in Louisiana’s French varieties; current research on rural and urban dialects of English, both in south Louisiana and in the long-neglected northern parishes; and the struggles more recent immigrants face to use their heritage languages and deal with language-based regulations in public venues. This volume will be of value to both scholars and general readers interested in a comprehensive view of Louisiana’s linguistic landscape.

In Folklore Figures of French and Creole Louisiana, Nathan J. Rabalais examines the impact of Louisiana’s remarkably diverse cultural and ethnic groups on folklore characters and motifs during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Establishing connections between Louisiana and France, West Africa, Canada, and the Antilles, Rabalais explores how folk characters, motifs, and morals adapted to their new contexts in Louisiana. By viewing the state’s folklore in the light of its immigration history, he demonstrates how folktales can serve as indicators of sociocultural adaptation as well as contact among cultural communities. In particular, he examines the ways in which collective traumas experienced by Louisiana’s major ethnic groups—slavery, the grand dérangement, linguistic discrimination—resulted in fundamental changes in these folktales in relation to their European and African counterparts. Rabalais points to the development of an altered moral economy in Cajun and Creole folktales. Conventional heroic qualities, such as physical strength, are subverted in Louisiana folklore in favor of wit and cunning. Analyses of Black Creole animal tales like those of Bouki et Lapin and Tortie demonstrate the trickster hero’s ability to overcome both literal and symbolic entrapment through cleverness. Some elements of Louisiana’s folklore tradition, such as the rougarou and cauchemar, remain an integral presence in the state’s cultural landscape, apparent in humor, popular culture, regional branding, and children’s books. Through its adaptive use of folklore, French and Creole Louisiana will continue to retell old stories in innovative ways as well as create new stories for future generations.

Over the course of more than three centuries, the diverse communities of Louisiana have engaged in creative living practices to forge a vibrant, multifaceted, and fully developed Creole culture. Against the backdrop of ongoing anti-Blackness and Indigenous erasure that has sought to undermine this rich culture, Louisiana Creoles have found transformative ways to uphold solidarity, kinship, and continuity, retaking Louisiana Creole agency as a post-contact Afro-Indigenous culture. Engaging themes as varied as foodways, queer identity, health, historical trauma, language revitalization, and diaspora, Louisiana Creole Peoplehood explores vital ways a specific Afro-Indigenous community asserts agency while promoting cultural sustainability, communal dialogue, and community reciprocity. With interviews, essays, and autobiographic contributions from community members and scholars, Louisiana Creole Peoplehood tracks the sacred interweaving of land and identity alongside the legacies and genealogies of Creole resistance to bring into focus the Afro-Indigenous people written out of settler governmental policy. In doing so, this collection intervenes against the erasure of Creole Indigeneity to foreground Black/Indian cultural sustainability, agency, and self-determination.

Traces the development of Catholic cultures in the South, the Midwest, the West, and the Northeast, and their contribution to larger patterns of Catholicism in the United States Most histories of American Catholicism take a national focus, leading to a homogenization of American Catholicism that misses much of the local complexity that has marked how Catholicism developed differently in different parts of the country. Such histories often treat northeastern Catholicism, such as the Irish Catholicism of Boston, as if it reflects the full history and experience of Catholicism across the United States. The Making of American Catholicism argues that regional and transnational relationships have been central to the development of American Catholicism. The American Catholic experience has diverged significantly among regions; if we do not examine how it has taken shape in local cultures, we miss a lot. Exploring the history of Catholic cultures in New Orleans, Iowa, Wisconsin, Los Angeles, and New York City, the volume assesses the role of region in American Catholic history, carefully exploring the development of American Catholic cultures across the continental United States. Drawing on extensive archival research, The Making of American Catholicism argues that American Catholicism developed as transnational Catholics creatively adapted their devotional and ideological practices in particular American regional contexts. They emphasized notions of republicanism, individualistic capitalism, race, ethnicity, and gender, resulting in a unique form of Catholicism that dominates the United States today. The book offers close attention to race and racism in American Catholicism, including the historical experiences of African American and Latinx Catholics as well as Catholics of European descent.

Bringing together scholars from a range of disciplines to assess the use and meaning of language in the South, a region rich in dialects and variants, this comprehensive edited collection reflects the cutting-edge research presented at the fourth decennial meeting of Language Variety in the South in 2014. Focusing on the ongoing changes and surprising continuities associated with the contemporary South, the contributors use innovative methodologies to pave new pathways for understanding the social dynamics that shape the language in the South today. Along with the editors, contributors to the volume include Agnes Bolonyai, Katie Carmichael, Phillip M. Carter, Becky Childs, Danica Cullinan, Nathalie Dajko, Catherine Evans Davies, Robin Dodsworth, Hartwell S. Francis, Kirk Hazen, Anne H. Charity Hudley, Neal Hutcheson, Alex Hyler, Mary Kohn, Christian Koops, William A. Kretzschmar Jr., Sonja L. Lanehart, Andrew Lynch, Ayesha M. Malik, Christine Mallinson, Jim Michnowicz, Caroline Myrick, Michael D. Picone, Dennis R. Preston, Paul E. Reed, Joel Schneier, James Shepherd, Erik R. Thomas, Sonya Trawick, and Tracey L. Weldon.

Becoming What We Are is a collection of essays and reviews written in the last decade by the late Jude Dougherty, which covey a perspective on contemporary events and literature, written from a classical and Christian perspective. These essays convey a worldview much in need of restating when, according to Dougherty, Western society seems to have lost its bearings, in its legislative assemblies and in its judicial systems as well. Dougherty writes as a philosopher, specifically as one who has devoted most of his life to the study of metaphysics. In these pages Dougherty examines the Jacobians, the empirical world of Hume, Locke and Hobbes, and Kant, the metaphysics of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics and Aquinas that opens one to God and provides one with a moral compass, and critiques the work of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud and John Dewey. Becoming What We Are spends some time inquiring into the character of a few great men viz. George Washington, Charles De Gaulle and Moses Maimonides. Dougherty draws upon and shows respect for numerous contemporary authors who are engaged in research and analysis similar to his. The intent is, with the aid of others to restate some ancient but neglected truths. But more than that to show that true science is possible, that nature and human nature yield to human enquiry, that science is not to be confused with description and prediction.

In the High Atlas Mountains of Morocco, far from the hustle and noise of urban centers, lies a village made of mud and rock, barely discernible from the surrounding landscape. Yet a closer look reveals a carefully planned community of homes nestled above the trees, where rock slides are least frequent, and steep terraces of barley fields situated just above spring flood level. The Berber-speaking Muslims who live and farm on these precipitous mountainsides work together at the arduous task of irrigating the fields during the dry season, continuing a long tradition of managing land, labor, and other essential resources collectively. In Moroccan Households in the World Economy, David Crawford provides a detailed study of the rhythms of highland Berber life, from the daily routines of making a living in such a demanding environment to the relationships between individuals, the community, and the national economy. Demonstrating a remarkably complete understanding of every household and person in the village, Crawford traces the intricacies of cooperation between households over time. Employing a calculus known as "arranging the bones," villagers attempt to balance inequality over the long term by accounting for fluctuations in the needs and capacities of each person, household, and family at different stages in its history. Tradition dictates that children "owe" labor to their parents and grandparents as long as they live, and fathers decide when and where the children in their household work. Some may be asked to work for distant religious lodges or urban relatives they haven't met because of a promise made by long-dead ancestors. Others must migrate to cities to work as wage laborers and send their earnings home to support their rural households. While men and women leave their community to work, Morocco and the wider world come to the village in the form of administrators, development agents, and those representing commercial interests, all with their own agendas and senses of time. Integrating a classic village-level study that nevertheless engages with the realities of contemporary migration, Crawford succinctly summarizes common perceptions and misperceptions about the community while providing a salient critique of the global expansion of capital. In this beautifully observed ethnography, Crawford challenges assumptions about how Western economic processes transfer to other contexts and pulls the reader into an exotic world of smoke-filled kitchens, dirt-floored rooms, and communal rooftop meals -- a world every bit as fascinating as it is instructive.

From a peace ceremony conducted by Chitimacha diplomats before Governor Bienville’s makeshift cabin in 1718 to a stickball match played by Choctaw teams in 1897 in Athletic Park, American Indians greatly influenced the history and culture of the Crescent City during its first two hundred years. In American Indians in Early New Orleans, Daniel H. Usner lays to rest assumptions that American Indian communities vanished long ago from urban south Louisiana and recovers the experiences of Native Americans in Old New Orleans from their perspective. Centuries before the arrival of Europeans, American Indians controlled the narrow strip of land between the Mississippi River and present-day Lake Pontchartrain to transport goods, harvest resources, and perform rituals. The birth and growth of colonial New Orleans depended upon the materials and services provided by Native inhabitants as liaisons, traders, soldiers, and even slaves. Despite losing much of their homeland and political power after the Louisiana Purchase, Lower Mississippi Valley Indians refused to retreat from New Orleans’s streets and markets; throughout the 1800s, Choctaw and other nearby communities improvised ways of expressing their cultural autonomy and economic interests—as peddlers, laborers, and performers—in the face of prejudice and hostility from non-Indian residents. Numerous other American Indian tribes, forcibly removed from the southeastern United States, underwent a painful passage through the city before being transported farther up the Mississippi River. At the dawn of the twentieth century, a few Indian communities on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain continued to maintain their creative relationship with New Orleans by regularly vending crafts and plants in the French Market. In this groundbreaking narrative, Usner explores the array of ways that Native people used this river port city, from its founding to the World War I era, and demonstrates their crucial role in New Orleans’s history.