HAMMOND – Southeastern Louisiana University, in conjunction with the Center for Southeast Louisiana Studies and the College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences, will host a symposium titled “Louisiana in Continuity and Change: Challenges Past and Present Confronting the Bayou State.” Scheduled Sept. 27 and 28 in the Student Union Theatre on Southeastern’s campus, the program will feature Gov. John Bel Edwards and 10 scholars giving presentations over two days.
Leon Ford Endowed Chair, Professor of History and Director of the Center for Southeast Louisiana Studies at Southeastern Sam Hyde said the symposium promises to provide ground breaking studies of challenges common to the wider Gulf South that prove acute in Louisiana.
“The project will focus on enduring challenges, ones that are seminal to understanding how the people in Louisiana behave and how they are perceived by others,” Hyde explained. “The purpose is to provide an enduring guide for how such trials emerged and how they were overcome or managed in the past to offer direction for how they may best be addressed in the future.”
The lectures begin at noon on Sept. 27 and conclude at 3:30 p.m. on Sept. 28. Gov. Edwards will speak at 6 p.m. on Sept. 27 with a reception in his honor to immediately follow his presentation.
In conjunction with the symposium, a new interpretative exhibit will be opening in the Center for Southeast Louisiana Studies on the third floor of Southeastern’s Sims Memorial Library. The new exhibit will highlight historical challenges confronting the Bayou State through the course of Louisiana’s development. The exhibit will remain open through March 2023.
All aspects of the symposium are free and open to the public, as well as school groups.
For more information about the symposium and the exhibit, contact the Center for Southeast Louisiana Studies at 985-549-2151 or at [email protected].
