05/04/2026
Congratulations to all the students who participated in last week's History and English symposium! In addition to those pictured, Landry Allison and online students Chad Laurila, Hesen Awawdeh, and Jerri Brunson also contributed.
Thank you also to Dr. Roger Carpenter and Dr. Meredith McKinnie for helping to organize the event!
04/20/2026
Congratulations, Professor Chris Blackburn and graduate student and adjunct instructor Ewa Blackburn, for being awarded scholarships by the Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange!
04/16/2026
Congratulations to our History Program Annual Award Winners! While we were only able to round up three for the photo below, the full list of awardees is as follows:
Outstanding Seniors:
Michael Anderson
Katelyn Hunt
Antoine Iles
Outstanding Students:
Lilyanna Browning
Lauragrace Rader
Brian Gregory Outstanding Graduate Student:
Ireland Aaron
Well done, all of you!
03/27/2026
ULM Students are invited to submit proposals to the English and History Symposium, which will take place on April 29, 2026. If you would like to present either a poster or paper, please send a one-paragraph proposal and one-paragraph bibliographic note to either Dr. Jeffrey Anderson at [email protected] or Dr. Meredith McKinnie at [email protected] by April 17. Completed presentations are due by April 24. You need not be a History or English major to participate.
03/26/2026
Excellent job Lauragrace Rader, Ireland Aaron, and Anna Batten on your talk to the Monroe Rotary Club last week! These three top-notch students spoke about the new ULM chapter of Rotary and about their work on a joint Rotary-ULM History Program project on gumbo in North Louisiana.
03/16/2026
We are grateful for Dr. Jones' family who always take part. For the past several years, they have even brought tee shirts for those who read poems!
01/14/2026
Judge Henry Bry was born on this day (Jan 9, 1781) in Geneva Switzerland, the son of a watchmaker, Ami Bry. Pictured is his baptism certificate, dated Brumaire 21, Year 8. What kind of a date is that you might ask!
Former ULM Graduate School History intern Kristin Batten transcribed and translated this document in 2021 and in doing so we learned about the French revolutionaries changing the name of the months from the Gregorian calendar (January - February - March, etc) to the “Republican” calendar: so months were called Vendémiaire (grape harvest) - Brumaire (mist) - Frimaire (frost), etc.
This naming change lasted from 1793–1805 until Napoleon returned it back to the Gregorian calendar. So you’ll see in the document that “le vingt un brumaire an 8” was the twenty-first of Brumaire year eight, which converted to the Gregorian calendar was November 12th, 1799.
But then I wondered why a Swiss baptism certificate would follow this French system and in looking it up, turns out Geneva was annexed by France in 1798 for about 15 years.