Our Crowdfunding Groups
The project for which we are seeking funding is part of the course “From Cocodrie to CODOFIL: A Francophone Louisiana Immersion Program,” an exciting immersive study-away experience aimed in particular at students who do not have the financial means for study at NYU Paris or who cannot make the time commitment to a full semester away from New York.
After seven weeks of course study in New York focused on the history, culture, language, and literature of Francophone Louisiana, we will be spending a week dedicated to experiential learning and academic community service in south-west Louisiana. At the heart of our trip to this region of Louisiana is our interview project. We will have carefully prepared interview questions and practiced interview techniques in New York to make sure that we are well prepared for this project once we are on site.
Our goal is to conduct and record interviews with as many native speakers of Louisiana French as possible. Once we return to New York, we will work on transcribing and analyzing these interviews. We will then share our work on an interactive website that is currently under construction. Once our interview data has been shared, it can serve to benefit researchers interested in Louisiana French, language variation, and other domains within sociolinguistics. Of course, our hope is that it will also serve as a resource to French teachers that hope to show their students that the US has its own indigenous variety of French. Finally, it is our sincere hope that through the promotion and publicizing of this endangered language variety and the community cultures for which it is a vehicle, we will be able to give back to the very communities we will have been working in through helping them achieve wider recognition as representative of the rich cultural tapestry that makes Louisiana one of our most fascinating regions.
Your gift will help sponsor one student’s stay in Arnaudville, which will be our center of operations during our time in Francophone Louisiana.
Your gift will the filming and editing of an interview with a Louisiana French speaker that will be shared online with other researchers and the general public. As a thank you for your help, you will receive a personalized postcard from one of the program participants from Louisiana in French or English.
Your gift will help sponsor one student’s trip to Louisiana to do the important work of promoting and preserving this endangered language variety. As a thank you for your help, you will receive a personalized video from a group of program participants from Louisiana in French or English.
