Scholars from across the country and Canada will gather at Washington University in St. Louis Nov. 6 and 7 for the inaugural International Creole Corridor Symposium.
The public is invited to attend the symposium, sponsored by the University and Les Amis (The Friends), the region’s Creole cultural heritage preservationist organization located in St. Louis.
The Creole Corridor, located on both sides of the Mississippi River from St. Louis to Ste. Genevieve, Mo. and from Cahokia to Chester, Ill. is in the nomination process to become a UNESCO world heritage site. The corridor provides the best introduction to French colonial life available anywhere in the United States.
Colonial America was not exclusively defined by the 13 colonies and historic cities like New York, Boston and Philadelphia. In the same year that Williamsburg, Virginia was founded, 1699, French Jesuit priests founded Cahokia, Illinois, just across the Mississippi River from what would become St. Louis some 65 years later.
Three University faculty members will join scholars from Canada, Yale University, Louisiana State University and the National Park Service to present papers underscoring the historical and cultural importance of the Creole Corridor in colonial America. Baronne Isabelle de Laroullière will represent the French Heritage Society in Paris.
A scholar-guided tour of the corridor will be held from 8:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 6 and will begin at Brookings Hall on the University’s Danforth Campus. Lunch is included in Ste. Genevieve. A reception for registrants follows with the presenters from 6-8 p.m. in a private home in the Central West End.
The symposium will be held from 8:30 a.m.-5:30 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 7 at the Danforth University Center.
Registration is $75 before Oct. 31 and includes the tour, reception and symposium. Registrants for the symposium and reception only may deduct $30 from the fee.
Washington University Students have a discounted registration fee of $5 for the symposium and $12 for the bus tour. Registration form and payment is due by October 31.
For more information, including a reservation form and symposium brochure, e-mail creolecorridor@gmail.com.
Participating scholars and their papers are:
Jay Edwards, Ph.D., professor of anthropology at Louisiana State University and director of the Fred B. Kniffen Cultural Resources Lab, “The Place of Upper Louisiana’s French Vernacular Architecture in the French Colonial World,”
Carl Ekberg, Ph.D., professor of history Emeritus at Illinois State University, “Sui Generis: Landscape, Community and Mentalité in the Illinois Country,”
Jay Gitlin, Ph.D., lecturer in history and associate director of the Howard R. Lamar Center for the Study of Frontiers and Borders at Yale University, “A Place Beyond Words: Using the French Creole Corridor to Redefine the Terms of Early American History,”
Peter Kastor, Ph.D., associate professor of history and American Culture Studies at WUSTL, “Governing Others: Inventing the American Notion of Empire,”
Stamos Metzidakis, Ph.D., professor of French and comparative literature at WUSTL, “From Riverbank to Riverbank: Desperately seeking French America,”
Robert Moore, adjunct professor in University College at WUSTL, “Déterminé l’Effacement: The French Creole Cultural Zone in the American Heartland,”
Christophe Rivet, planner at the Parks Canada Agency and project manager of the World Heritage nomination proposal for Grand Pré “Working Towards a UNESCO Nomination Proposal for Grand Pré: Outstanding Universal Value, Multiple Stakeholders, and the Challenges of Protecting a Living Cultural Landscape,”
Herb Stovel, conference moderator and member of the Heritage Conservation Programme at Carleton University, “Meeting UNESCO requirements for the inclusion of the ‘French Creole Properties of the Mid-Mississippi Valley Corridor’ on the World Heritage List.”