Ryan Brasseaux
Ryan André Brasseaux is a lecturer in American Studies who teaches courses in public humanities, cultural history, and vernacular American music. He holds an M.A. in anthropology from Louisiana State University and a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University. He is the author of Cajun Breakdown: The Emergence of an American-Made Music, co-author of Stir the Pot: The History of Cajun Cuisine, and co-editor of Accordions, Fiddles, Two Step and Swing: A Cajun Music Reader.
His most recent interdisciplinary book, French North America in the Shadows of Conquest (2020), is a post-colonial and continental history emphasizing the alliances forged between Acadians in the Canadian Maritimes, Cajuns in French Louisiana, and les Québécois to stave off linguistic extinction across the long twentieth century. Brasseaux is currently at work on a manuscript exploring Cajun music’s national and international footprint after the Second World War.
Brasseaux is one of the original co-organizers of Public Humanities at Yale. For nearly a decade, he has helped graduate and undergraduate students creatively translate theory into praxis for a broader public through the seminar “Introduction to Public Humanities.” Before transitioning exclusively into the classroom, he served for 12 years as the dean of Davenport College, then Associate Director of Advising, on behalf of the Yale College Dean’s Office.
Selected publications:
“Introduction, Créolité: Identity, History, Culture/Kreyòl: métissage, hybridité, bricolage.” Guest dossier editor with Jay Gitlin for Québec Studies 71. Spring/Summer 2021.
“Foreword: Many Shades, Usages, and Temporalities of “Créole.” Guest dossier editor with Jay Gitlin for Québec Studies 71. Spring/Summer 2021.
“Chasing La Chasse-Galerie: Honoré Beaugrand and the life of a Journalistic Voyageur.” With Jay Gitlin. Ed. Robert Englebert and Andrew N. Wegmann, 2020.
“Six Degrees of Alan Lomax: A Review and Multimedia Excerpts,” Southern Spaces. November 2015.
“Accordion Dreams in a Postmodern World: Writing about Cajun Music and Zydeco in the Age of Multiculturalism,” Louisiana History Vol. 53, 2 (Spring 2012): 227-235.
