Institute for Louisiana Culture and History Workshop Explores 17th and 18th Century History
On Saturday, September 26, thirty-one teachers from across North Louisiana gathered at the Noel Memorial Library on LSU-Shreveport’s campus to explore French Colonial Louisiana history and learn new strategies to bring this content alive for their middle school students.
The day began with a lecture by Dr. Alexander Mikaberidze, LSU Systems Boyd Professor of European History and Ruth Herring Noel Endowed Chair at LSU-Shreveport. A nationally renowned scholar, Mikaberidze is an expert in Napoleonic history and recently published The Louisiana Purchase: The Grand Bargain and the Making of America (Oxford, 2026). He walked teachers through the century preceding the Louisiana purchase, deepening their knowledge of the content that they are responsible for teaching their students. Curriculum and Instructional Specialist Lindsay Bardes then guided teachers through the related instructional materials available at 64Parishes.org that they can use in their classrooms.
One of the hallmarks of Institute workshops is experiential learning opportunities, especially sharing primary sources with teachers and showing them how they can use them in their lessons. The Noel Memorial Library is home to the James S. Noel Collection, one of the largest private collections of antiquarian books, prints, and maps in the US. After a lunch break, Mikaberidze gave teachers a private tour of the collection, focusing on the Gayle K. Hamilton subcollection, which explores the history and culture of Louisiana with a particular concentration on exploration and cross-cultural interactions prior to the Louisiana Purchase in 1803. One of the highlights of the tour was when Mikaberidze showcased an original paper peepshow that depicted the 1804 coronation of Napoleon Bonaparte at the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris in full 3D. Clare Shelburne, Institute for Louisiana Culture and History Program Manager, said, “Tours like these open doors for our state’s educators, empowering them to dig a little deeper and to take advantage of the resources accessible to us across Louisiana.”
The Institute for Louisiana Culture and History provides Louisiana K–12 educators and students with high-quality, reliable, and accessible content that brings social studies and civics to life in the classroom with a free online encyclopedia and professional development workshops. The Shreveport regional workshop was made possible by a grant from the James S. Noel Foundation.