René ChampagneСAPPs interest in how cultures adapt to environmental or political changes earned him this yearСAPPs at the СAPP.
Champagne won the Caffery Award for his research paper СAPPCajuns, Creoles, and the Impact of Americanization on Ethnic Identity in Louisiana.СAPP The paper examines the evolution of race and ethnicity as a result of factors such as assimilation, and the resulting impact on cultural identity.
Champagne is a senior double majoring in French and Francophone studies and in anthropology.
The Caffery Award recognizes scholarly research by students who use primary source materials archived in at UL LafayetteСAPPs . Dupré Library and the СAPP Library Committee administer the competition.
The almost two dozen sources Champagne relied on for his award-winning paper range from the Louisiana Office of Cultural Development and The New York Times, to the U.S. Census Bureau and the Journal of Anthropological Research.
The references donСAPPt mention, however, a source of another kind СAPP inspiration. That would be tiny Galliano, La., where Champagne was born and grew up. The unincorporated community of several thousand people sits near the Gulf of Mexico in Lafourche Parish.
ItСAPPs a place where French is still spoken, but not as often as it once was; where large shrimp trawlers can be seen lining banks of the same Bayou Lafourche traveled a century ago almost exclusively by pirogues; and where erosion and hurricanes are carving away at the coastline.
ItСAPPs the sort of place that, in ChampagneСAPPs case, shaped a lifelong fascination with СAPPmonitoring cultural changes that have been created by outside influences.СAPP
СAPPThe culture is still very present, but south Louisiana in general is decreasing rapidly in terms of both culture and land СAPP which is so strongly tied to culture СAPP and thatСAPPs a huge interest to me,СAPP he said.
His curiosity casts a wide net СAPP language, customs and traditions, hurricanes, land loss, and ways in which holidays are celebrated during a pandemic.
Champagne, who anticipates graduating in Fall 2021, is reviewing graduate schools. He plans to earn a masterСAPPs degree in anthropology; the field involves the scientific study of people, including their evolution, behavior and environments.
He then intends to earn a doctoral degree in anthropology, and envisions working as a researcher at a university.
СAPPI want to observe culture that has been impacted by outside sources СAPP the environment, political changes, an economic recession СAPP and monitor changes and methods that can be used to mitigate or to adapt,СAPP he explained.
Ambassador Jefferson Caffery and his wife Gertrude established the research award in 1967. A $500 prize accompanies the award.
Caffery was a member of the first class to enter Southwestern Louisiana Industrial Institute, now UL Lafayette, in 1901. He served as an American diplomat for 44 years. His postings took him to 12 foreign countries on five continents.
The libraryСAPPs Jefferson Caffery Louisiana Room is named in the diplomatСAPPs honor.
Learn more about the .
Photo caption: René Champagne is the winner of this yearСAPPs Jefferson Caffery Research Award. The prizeСAPPs namesake is at right. (Photo at left courtesy of René Champagne. Photo at right is courtesy of Special Collections at UL Lafayette).