Fall 2026 Events

Connexion |Concert at LSU

La Compagnie Tilawcis will be on LSU campus Wednesday, September 23 at 7 P.M. for a Connexion  in the Faculty Club!

More information below

A musical journey between Réunion Island, New Orleans, and Puerto Rico 
"CONNEXION draws inspiration from each performer’s musical roots to nourish a new flamboyant 
tree, planted at the intersection where the African diaspora reigns.” 

CONNEXION is not just a simple musical encounter; it’s the celebration of a continuum of 
resiliency and the organic fusion between Creole territories that share a common history of 
resistance and maroons: Réunion Island, Louisiana, and Puerto Rico. 
On stage, the project combines the New Orleans Mardi Gras Indians’ passion with the power of 
Reunionese maloya and Puerto Rican bomba. These performers represent a golden triangle of 
Black musical resistance between the Americas and the Indian Ocean. 
Performed by renowned figures in their respective cultures, CONNEXION speaks an unprecedented 
sonic language, in which funk, Cuban rhythms, Mandinka sounds, and bomba beats intertwine to 
create a new sound, anchored in ancestral traditions while resolutely facing the future. 

CREOLE IN ACTION: INTERWEAVING CULTURES

The project incarnates Creole identity as a perpetual movement rather than a simple mixture. It’s a 
creative conversation between: 
● New Orleans with its sacred songs, tambourines, and funk energy from the Mardi 
Gras Indians tribes.  
● Réunion Island’s authentic maloya, supplemented with djembe, kamele ngoni, and a 
multitude of flutes from around the world. 
● Africa & the Caribbean, from Mandinka roots to Cuban influences, the project 
explores the depths of the diaspora’s heritage. 
● Puerto Rico’s bomba, born on the sugar cane plantations, creating exceptional 
rhythmic and vocal shockwaves.   This music is earthly and organic, spanning energetic, up-tempo numbers (Sew, sew, sew, Run) to 
purely mystical ones (Alon rakont listwar). 

THE ARTISTS 
● Big Chief Jwan Boudreaux (New Orleans): Leader of the Golden Eagles tribe. An 
international artist, he brings the spirit of New Orleans with his powerful voice and 
shimmering, hand-sewn suits.  
● Jean-Frédéric Madia (Réunion): The nephew of the formidable Granmoun Lélé, Madia 
developed his style with the Lindigo group before adding Mandinka sounds to traditional 
maloya songs. 
● Zélito Déliron (Réunion): A virtuosic multi-instrumentalist (roulèr, kayanm, world 
flutes, Ocean Drum), he is the master of textures and melodic landscapes for the 
project. 
● Florient Jousse (Réunion): An actor/singer and director, he supports the group’s 
artistic connections and offers back-up vocals.  
● Ivelisse Diaz (Puerto Rico/Chicago): An influential figure in bomba and la Plena, 
and the founder of La Escuelita Bombera de Corazón, she is known for her community 
leadership and vocal power. 
● Marién Torres López (Puerto Rico): A choreographer, percussionist, and founder of 
Taller Tambuyé, she devotes herself to researching and promoting bomba as a tool of 
cultural resilience. 
CONTACT & PRODUCTION 
Compagnie Tilawcis 
tilawcis@gmail.com

Public Lecture: Deep Listening and Listening to the Deep with Homo Sargassum

Martin Munro ( Eminent Scholar, Winthrop-King Professor of French, Director of the Winthrop-King Institute)

Tuesday, October 20th, 2026 | 4:30 PM | HSS Humanities Center,  W151 Howe Russell

This presentation engages with sound, vision, and art in the Caribbean. Arguing first that sound is foundational to all Caribbean art, it engages with representations of the sea by some of the key authors and critics of the region. These ideas are extended and applied to selected artists involved in the Homo Sargassum project, a travelling exhibition and experimental documentary art film project involving over thirty painters, sculptors, photographers, poets, and performers from the Caribbean, West Africa, and Latin America, who collaborate with scientists, researchers, and tech companies on a major ecological and public health challenge that impacts the three regions: the sargassum algae. Drawing on ideas of Boaventura de Sousa Santos, he argues that the works—principally the sound art of Caecilia Tripp and Jose Bertogal, and the photography of Nadia Huggins—perform acts of deep seeing and deep listening, “postabyssal” engagements with the sea and the environment that contrast with and challenge directly extractive, colonial uses of the seascape. The analysis focuses on works of underwater sound art and photography to argue that the submarine is a realm that is reclaimed and reinhabited, seen and listened to deeply by the artists in ways that also reconfigure their relationship with history and time, so that these concepts are also experienced deeply, immersively, in the shadows and sounds of the subaquatic world.

Spring 2026 Events

Nuit des Idées  • "L'AIL - Languages of AI in/and Louisiana"

April 15th • 6:00-8:00pm (Doors open 5:30) • LSU Museum of Art

Pre-Registration is recommened.

The CFFS is excited to co-sponsor our 2nd annual Nuit des Idées in partnership with the LSU Museum of Art (LSUMOA), the Consulate General of France in Louisiana, Villa Albertine, and the French Institute for Culture and Education. This program, L’AIL: Languages of AI in/and Louisiana, considers the evolving relationship between language, culture, and artificial intelligence.

This event will include a panel discussion featuring Olivain Porry (2026 Villa Albertine Arts in the Age of AI resident and artist) and Jonathan Mayers (Creole scholar, artist, and former Baton Rouge Poet Laureate). Together, they will examine how AI models are reshaping how we speak, write, read, and think—often privileging a dominant, standardized English. This conversaiton will explore how Louisiana’s diverse vernacular traditions offer playful and critical ways to disrupt these systems, challenging assumptions embedded in artificial intelligence and reclaiming linguistic humanity.

Following the discussion, guests are invited to a reception featuring a collaborative student project developed during Porry’s residency with Professor Brendan Harmon, Emerson Womack Professor of Landscape Architecture in LSU’s College of Art & Design. Titled Creolization of Large Language Model Workshop, the project engages directly with the themes of language, technology, and cultural hybridity, and complements Porry’s installation currently on view at LSUMOA, Lies Language Models.

**The CFFS will be providing FREE SHUTTLE SERVICE TO AND FROM THIS EVENT through LSU Tiger Trails. Pickup will be at 5:35 in front of Hodges Hall, and the return will leave at 8:05 from the Museum, back to Hodges Hall.**

This event is free and open to the public. Registration is recommended.

4th Annual CFFS Caribbean Digital Humanities Lecture 

Preserving Ingenuity: Editing the Revue des Colonies (1834–1842)
Maria Beliaeva Solomon (University of Maryland College Park)

Virtual Event | Friday, March 20th, 2026 | 11:00 AM -12:00 PM CST 

9:00 -10:00 AM PST   |    12:00 -1:00 PM EST    |   6:00-7:00 PM CET

This talk offers a glimpse into The Revue des Colonies: A Digital Scholarly Edition and Translation, an open-access project providing a complete transcription, critical annotation, and English translation of the first French periodical directed by people of color. Founded by Martinican abolitionist Cyrille Bissette, the Revue circulated antislavery arguments across the French colonial empire and beyond, confronting both surveillance and censorship. The project’s editorial and technical choices are guided by the commitment to remain faithful, as a matter of method, to the journal’s own innovations in form. This lecture will showcase how this ambition shapes our collaborative workflow across transcription, TEI encoding, translation, and bilingual annotation, including protocols attentive to historically charged vocabulary and archival silences.

Please RSVP for this virtual lecture here. You will receive a reminder in the days before and the zoom link on the morning of the presentation

Department of French Studies Graduate Student Conference

March 5th-6th, 2026

The CFFS is excited to co-sponoste the Department of French Studies Graduate Student Association (DFSGSA) graduate student conference. This year's conference, "Literature, What For?", will allowo researchers to share their work on the role and impact of literature upon others with colleagues in the fields of French and Francophone Studies. This conference will include graduate student presentations and a keynote address entitled "For what Literature?" by Dr. Annabel Kim (Harvard University, Department of Romance Languages and Literatures).

See the full program here. 

Fall 2025 Events