Talk: Camille Moreddu on French-American Folklore in the Midwest

Vestiges of a Vanquished Frontier: Approaches of French-American Folklore in the Midwest from 1847 to 1953
Dr. Camille Moreddu
Free and Open to the Public
Thursday, April 21, 2022
3:30-5:00pm
Memorial Library, Room 126, 728 State St

We are pleased to be joining our colleagues at Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures in presenting this talk by Dr. Camille Moreddu, a French cultural historian from Paris-Nanterre University who is currently the Jon B. Lovelace Fellow for the Study of the Alan Lomax Collection at the Library of Congress.

Dr. Moreddu’s abstract: The French-American cultural minorities in the Midwest, whether they descend from the Upper Louisiana colonial establishments or from the 19th century Quebec immigrants, differ from other ethnic minorities, having settled and traveled in America before the Revolutionary War and often beyond the Anglo Frontier. Assigning them a place in the US national culture and in the Frontier epic offered both a specific difficulty and a specific motivation to the collectors and scholars that have studied their folk music and culture. We will review a century worth of the resultant collections and discourses.

Dr. Moreddu will be spending time at Mills Music Library ahead of her talk doing research in our collections, such as Ethnic Music of Northern Wisconsin and Michigan and our Wisconsin Folksong Collection, 1937-1946. We look forward to hosting her and to hearing her talk!