(Dr.)
May Gwin Waggoner is Laborde-Neuner Professor of French and Francophone
Studies at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. She
received
her Ph.D. from Tulane. Her specialty is Louisiana Francophone language
and literature and Louisiana Acadian music. Publications include a
critical edition of Sidonie de la Houssaye’s Pouponne et Balthazar
(University of Southwestern Louisiana: Center for Louisiana Studies,
l983) Une fantaisie collective: Anthologie du drame louisianais cadien
(University of Louisiana: Center for Louisiana Studies, 1999), a
critical co-edition of Les Vagabondes by Camille Thierry, New Orleans
Creole of Color (Centenary College Press: Les Editions du Tintamarre,
2005, and Le plus beau païs du monde: Myth and reality in colonial
Louisiana (Lafayette, Louisiana, Center for Louisiana Studies,
University of Louisiana at Lafayette, 2005, and a critical
edition of a Louisiana Acadian nun’s memoirs, Les
Veillées
d’une sœur (les Editions Tintamarre, 2009). An edition of
Louisiana novelist
Alfred Mercier’s Hénoch Jédésias is
in press. Her article on the development of Cajun
and
Creole dance, “Louisiana Gumbo: Retention, Creolization and
Innovation in Contemporary Louisiana,” appears in Ballroom,
Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake: A Social and Popular Dance reader, (ed.
Julie Malnig: University of Illinois Press 2008).
She has
published poetry and short stories in French, Belgian and American
journals and has won numerous awards, including the Jasmin d’Argent
awarded by the city of Agen (France). La mer attendra was
published in l989 by the Centre de Création Littéraire in
Grenoble. Her most recent short story appeared in
The
World’s Muse (University of Washington) in 2006.
Current
literary projects include an anthology of Louisiana French literature
and a critical edition of short stories of Louisiana judge
Felix
Voorhies.
As director from 1995 to 2007 of the Louisiana Acadian
folkloric troupe Renaissance Cadienne, she produced three CDs
and
arranged and choreographed over fifty traditional songs and old
dances. The troupe toured in the United States, France,
Belgium,
and Canada.
Renaissance Cadienne
Other Links
http://www.centenary.edu/editions/aboutus.html
http://cls.louisiana.edu/
www. Renaissance cadienne.org
http://apfd.louisiana.edu/endowed/Waggoner-May.shtml
http://www.espacefrancophone.org/expert/waggoner_may.html
http://www.centenary.edu/french/textes/maypoesies.htm
http://www.centenary.edu/french/textes/maystory.htm
Selection from Ballroom Boogie, Shimmy Sham, Shake
http://www.francomix.com/breve-Etudes_Francophones_20_2_(Fall_2005)-189.html
Modern Languages Home Page
University of Louisiana at Lafayette Home Page
Last updated 18 May 2009.
© 2009 May Waggoner