(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


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University of Louisiana at Lafayette Home Page

Last updated 18 May 2009.
© 2009 May Waggoner