Une promenade à travers l'histoire - My French Capstone Event

So, as many of you know, I have a French major. A big part of this program, and the major itself, is the French Capstone, a large research course taken by all French students as the last class before they finish the program. The capstone may be different in other universities, but for mine, it's this.

You, as a student, can chose any topic or subject to base your capstone on. You can do a paper, a presentation, and video project (almost did one of these but didn't have a good enough topic in mind), or even make an event. This is what I decided to do.

Making a public event is not something that I've ever done before as well, so I thought it would be a great experience to attempt this as well during my capstone. Really testing my skills and knowledge of how to plan events and create something many people can enjoy.

For my topic, I wanted to focus on Franco-Americans and their history. I have always been interested in this topic since I took a diversity of Franco-Communities class my sophomore year of college. I was so interested in the different aspects of the history and culture of Franco-Americans/French-Canadians and I wanted to know more.

So I looked for books, my advisor sent me the same articles that I read in that class, and I started to do my research and event planning. I read a mix of six different books, and about five articles, all which gave me great information and facts about the history and culture (and even the discrimination) of Franco-Americans. Then, when it got time to create the posters and chose my topics, I had a lot of work to do. There were so many aspects and facts that I wanted to feature. But I couldn't have them all.

I decided on having three large posters on Acadia and the Great Upheaval, Franco-American press and other writings, and lastly Franco-American names and their changes. For me, these were the most interesting topics surrounding them that I wanted to showcase. I did have a small paper about the discrimination of Franco-Americans, but I feel that so many parts of history mostly touch upon that aspect of history and I wanted to more show the better areas of their history. I was present at the event as well, for anyone who had any questions that I could answer, whether about the posters or another question off the top of their head. (I can answer some of these questions in the comments as well if you'd like). Here are my posters.

Franco-American names

Discrimination of Franco-Americans

Acadia and Acadian history

Franco-American press and writings

I also wanted to have two different aspects of Franco-Americans at the event. So I made a playlist of music by Franco-Americans (and some Quebecois songs because they are similar and connected in my opinion) and traditional food. For food I has Mulled Cider, Tourtière (pork pie), and Grand-Père dans le sirop (maple syrup dumplings) with ice cream. It was all so good! I think I'm going to make those dumplings when I get home over the summer because it was one of the best things I've ever tasted, if I'm being honest.

The Event

I held the event on the 29th of April, and I was surprised by actually how many people came and were interested in the subject and asked me questions! I felt so good to have my information and research pay off with people asking me so many questions and want more information on Franco-Americans. It was worth it, to myself and my education.

I had two different classes come by and take notes on my information, and most of the food was gone by the end when it was time to pack up the posters. I had so many people who came up to me and asked so many questions, and wanted to know even more than the information that I had hanging up. There was so much planning and research that went into this event, and then it was all over after three hours. It's jarring.

Presentations

me at student showcase

I presented about my Capstone event two separate times, and it was great to talk even more about my event and the outcome of it as well.

Student Showcase of Research & Engagement: This is an event that students can submit their projects and research reports and showcase them to members of the community. It was required for me to also have my capstone there and I thought it was fun to do it!

Celebration of French Achievement: This was a mix of awarding the students who won the Euclide Gilbert French Video award from the Franco-American Center of NH, and for all the French majors to show and their capstone research. I hadn't seen my classmates projects before this and I was excited to see them! They all did really great jobs.

You can watch the video that I made talking about the event (in similar and different detail) and see some of the event in video here on my YouTube channel. And don't be afraid to ask me any questions about my project and research! I'm very willing to answer questions and more of this topic.

À bientôt!

Photo/GIF creds: posters by me, Jordan's photo of me at SSR&E,