Please do copy the details of the other five sessions. Thank you ----- Original Message ----- From: "Penny Tveiten" <pennyt153@yahoo.com> To: <laorlean@rootsweb.com> Sent: Tuesday, March 25, 2008 8:31 PM Subject: [LAORLEAN] The Creole Identity & Experience in LA Literature &History ~RELIC ~ Handout from the library Hello List, I went to the Slidell Library and picked up a packet for the program. All five books mentioned were included in the packet. {as a loan of course} I have copied the introduction and details on the first session here. It seems like a lot to cover in a two hour session. If you are interested, I will copy the details of the other five sessions for the list also. Penny T The Creole Identity and Experience In Louisiana Literature and History The Creole identity in Louisiana life and culture emerged in the eighteenth century and has taken palpable form in several regions of the state. With its aura of fascination and exoticism, it has commanded both the imagination and the curiosity of Americans - readers and tourists. This program will enable readers to examine social class, race and culture in the shaping and transference of the designation--assumed or imposed--on groups in Louisiana’s history. The establishment of a permanent Louisiana Creole Heritage Center at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches as well as recent scholarly and popular presentations on Creole history, literature, folk life, and culture at regional and national Creole conferences in New Orleans, Chicago, Houston, and even California all testify to the enduring interest in the Creole experience in Louisiana. Literary texts for this reading series include several depicting Creoles in New Orleans. George Washington Cable, a New Orleans native, portrayed them in his novel The Grandissimes. Grace King and Alice Dunbar-Nelson presented early sympathetic and illuminating writing on the group. Anne Rice represents a more recent historical novel/romance in The Feast of all Saints. But other literary works present Creole life and experience in other parts of Louisiana. Northwestern Louisiana is the setting for Lalita Tademy’s Cane River, and rural south Louisiana is featured in Ernest J Gaines’ Catherine Carmier, which dramatizes the clash between African American, black Creole, and white Cajun agrarians, Historical texts include Alice Dunbar-Nelson’s 1917 essay, “People of Color in Louisiana” and selected chapters from Creole New Orleans: Race and Americanization, edited by Arnold Hirsch and Joseph Logsdon. This reading list will be supplemented with handouts and suggestions for further reading. “Discussion” items are supplementary readings that provide interesting contexts and background. They will be summarized where appropriate by the discussion leader and copies will be available to participants. Wednesday, April 23 Session I: Colonial Foundations of Creole Culture and Identity The introductory session begins with an exercise in which the participants articulate their understandings of the term “Creole” and how those understandings shape their sense of Creole identity. Beginning with “people of Color in Louisiana,” by Creole intellectual Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson, discussion focuses on the origins of Creole elements and how they forged a culture and identity. Dunbar-Nelson laid the ground work for the study of gens de couleur in the early twentieth century, defining the caste system which evolved in Louisiana and describing how the subtle distinctions of various racial groups made complexion a crucial marker of social and political status. Readings: LEH Handout: Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson, “People of Color in Louisiana.” Sybil Klein ED., Creole: The History and Legacy of Louisiana’s Free People of Color. Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 2000, pp. 3-41. Other Handouts: Alice Dunbar-Nelson, “The Stones of the Village”; Sybil Klein, La Chaudriene pele la gregue…./The Pot Calls the Coffee Pot”; short sketches by Lafcadio Hearn, “The Creole Character” {distributed at the session}. Discussion: Calvin Trillin, “American Chronicles: Black or White?”; Virgina Dominguez: White by Definition: Social Classification in Creole Louisiana. ____________________________________________________________________________________ Never miss a thing. Make Yahoo your home page. http://www.yahoo.com/r/hs ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to LAORLEAN-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message