BIOGRAPHY

Carl A. Brasseaux, Professor of History and Director of the Center for Cultural and Eco-Tourism, is one of the world's leading authorities on French North America, with extensive expertise in the areas of Acadian/Cajun and Creole history and culture. He holds a doctorate from the Université de Paris, from which he was graduated with highest distinction. Brasseaux has published thirty-three volumes of material on Louisiana and French North America. His latest work, which was released on CD-ROM in 2000, is a 1,850-page biographical dictionary including sketches of all persons known to have served the French monarchy in the Mississippi Valley and Gulf Coast regions during the eighteenth century. In addition, Brasseaux has published 101 chapters in books or articles in scholarly journals throughout North America and Europe.

His current research project consists of the establishment of a database that will serve as the foundation for a book on Louisiana's environmental history. The database currently includes over 5,000 entries drawn from eyewitness descriptions of the area's native flora and fauna, including such extinct species as the Carolina parakeet, the wood bison, and the prairie hen.

Brasseaux's articles and books have served as a major wellspring of information for the Pelican State's cultural tourism industry. His published histories of the Acadian/Cajun and Creole communities, for example, are used to train interpreters at all of the major museums and interpretive centers in Louisiana.

Brasseaux's contributions have by no means been confined to the arena of research and writing. Since 1975, he has been an editor and associate manager of the Center for Louisiana Studies publications program, which has published approximately 200 book-length works on the Pelican State's history and culture. Started with $200 in seed money, this operation now generates six figures in gross annual income. The Center's publications have been the driving force behind Louisiana's cultural tourism programs, because they constitute the main corpus of modern research on Louisiana's most colorful and exceedingly complex communities.

In addition to his involvement with the Center publications program, Brasseaux is managing editor of Louisiana History, the state historical journal. This journal has consistently ranked among the nation's top ten state historical magazines.

He has been a pioneer in the area of public history, breaking down the walls of academe and interpreting cutting edge research in the Humanities for the general community. In 1976, he helped organize the Louisiane Bien-Aimée exhibit that occupied an entire floor of the Radio France building in Paris. This exhibit was awarded a gold medal by the United States Department of Commerce as the best United States exhibit sent abroad during the bicentennial year. He also helped produce the Green Fields: Two Hundred Years of Louisiana Sugar exhibit that was displayed at the United States Agricultural Library in Washington, D.C., in 1981. Brasseaux has also served as a guest speaker and interpreter for numerous other exhibits dealing with topics as varied as the Great Depression in Louisiana, the state's coastal wetlands, Louisiana women of the early twentieth century, and Louis XIV and his North American legacy.

Brasseaux's oral presentations have not been confined to exhibitions. Over the course of his career, he has read sixty-two papers at professional meetings throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe to such learned groups as the Organization of American Historians, the American Society for Ethnohistory, the American Culture Association, the Society of American Archivists, American Association for the Advancement of Science, the French Colonial Historical Society, the Louisiana Historical Society, and the Mississippi Historical Society. He has, moreover, presented perhaps three times as many informal talks to civic, cultural, and educational groups. He has also appeared with Center for Louisiana staff and associates in presenting dramatic readings on historical topics.

Carl Brasseaux's public history work has taken many forms. He has worked extensively as a consultant with the national park system, the state museum, the state parks system, and numerous other historical agencies operating museums and interpretive centers, including Vermilionville and Acadian Village. He was a member of the committee that compiled the content and established the interpretive program for the Jean Lafitte National Park interpretive centers, the first national park programs designed to interpret culture rather than landmarks or pristine landscapes. This program is now a model national park system.

Brasseaux has also worked closely with civic, cultural and historical groups from communities throughout Louisiana in establishing small municipal museums, cultural centers, and publishing programs to mark notable local historical anniversaries. He has also served as a member of the Advisory Board of the Southwest Louisiana Zydeco Music Festival.

Over the past three years, Brasseaux has worked closely with the City of St. Martinville to design and produce two major interactive multimedia databases for local museums. The Ensemble Encore database, established for the Acadian Memorial Museum, formally opened during the Congr²s Mondial Acadien. This database contains biographical sketches of all known Acadian exiles and includes more than 4,500 pages of material. He is currently working on a similar database for South Louisiana's African American population.

Carl Brasseaux is also active in producing other small-screen presentations. Over the past twenty-five years he has served as a consultant to more than a dozen major documentaries produced in Louisiana and Canada. He was one of three executive producers of a documentary on Acadian/Cajun history, a project whose combined budget and production materials values exceeded $1,500,000.

Finally, Brasseaux has been actively involved with governmental and private agencies in promoting Louisiana tourism. In 1988, Brasseaux was a photographer and writer for a multi-media presentation produced for the St. Martin Parish Tourism Bureau. He has given numerous informal talks to persons employed in the local tourism industry, and he helped to organize, and was a speaker at, a major tourism symposium held at the Cajundome in 1992.

Brasseaux's activities have attracted national and international notoriety. He has been quoted in such national publications as the Wall Street Journal, the Montreal Le Presse, U.S.A. Today, the Atlantic Monthly, and National Geographic. He is listed in the Dictionary of International Biography, Who's Who in the South and Southwest, Contemporary Writers, International Authors, Personalities of the South, and International Authors and Writers Who's Who. He is listed in the 2000 edition of Who's Who in the World.