A book signing for Dr. Andrew Wegmann's book, "French Connections," will be held at 2 p.m. Nov. 4 in the Jutta Ferretti Special Collections Room of Delta State’s Roberts-LaForge Library. CLEVELAND, Miss.—A Delta State University faculty member will be featured in a book signing set for Thursday, Nov. 4.
Dr. Andrew Wegmann, an associate professor of history at Delta State, is the author of “French Connections,” which explores cultural mobility in North America and the Atlantic World. The book is the winner of the 2021 Wilson Prize for Canadian History from McMaster University.
Sponsored by the DSU Office of Academic Affairs, the book signing will be held at 2 p.m. Nov. 4 in the Jutta Ferretti Special Collections Room of Delta State’s Roberts-LaForge Library. The campus community and the general public are invited to attend.
“We are proud of Dr. Wegmann for his scholarship that led to the publication of ‘French Connections’ and excited to host a book signing in his honor,” said Delta State Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Dr. Andy Novobilski. “This is just one of the many ways Dr. Wegmann mentors his students to share their discoveries with others.”
Wegmann received his Bachelor of Arts degree from Spring Hill College and both a Master of Arts and Ph.D. from Louisiana State University. His research and teaching interests include African American history, the history of ideas, global colonialism as well as race and freedom in the Atlantic World.
His book, “French Connections,” examines how the movement of people, ideas and social practices contributed to the complex processes and negotiations involved in being and becoming French in North America and the Atlantic World between the years 1600 and 1875.
Engaging a wide range of topics, from religious and diplomatic performance to labor migration, racialization, and both imagined and real conceptualizations of “Frenchness” and “Frenchification,” the volume argues that cultural mobility was fundamental to the development of French colonial societies and the collective identities they housed.
“Cases of cultural formation and dislocation in places as diverse as Quebec, the Illinois Country, Detroit, Haiti, Acadia, New England and France itself demonstrate the broad variability of French cultural mobility that took place throughout this massive geographical space,” said Wegmann.
“Nevertheless, these communities shared the same cultural root in the midst of socially and politically fluid landscapes, where cultural mobility came to define, and indeed sustain, communal and individual identities in French North America and the Atlantic World.”
For questions or more information, contact the Office of Academic Affairs at (662) 846-4010 or academicaffairs@deltastate.edu.
