Vive La Francophonie Culture Classes
Presenters’ Biographies:
Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes is a New Orleans musician, Big Chief of the Northside Skull and Bone Gang, former park ranger with the National Park Service (31 years), actor, photographer, author, and educator. He has traveled to over 50 countries playing his own style of what he calls Afro-Louisiana music incorporating blues, zydeco, gospel, Caribbean and African influenced rhythms and melodies. He is a multi-instrumentalist, master accordion and harmonica player, and avid performer on the piano, rubboard, talking drum, and djembe.
Bruce is deeply involved in New Orleans parade culture and co-authored the 2015 critically acclaimed book Talk That Music Talk: Passing On Brass Band Music In New Orleans the Traditional Way. Over 300 of Sunpie’s photographs are featured in his work Le Kèr Créole, an ethnography that dives deeply into Louisiana’s Créole music and language. Currently, Barnes is the Big Chief of the North Side Skull and Bone Gang, one of the oldest existing Black Carnival groups in New Orleans. Sunpie is also an active, 22-year member of the second-line parading organization, The Black Men of Labor Social Aid and Pleasure Club.
Bruce “Sunpie” Barnes
Kendall Medford is a linguist and scholar of the Haitian Creole language. Her research explores language contact in situations of migration and diaspora, seeking to understand how language shapes the experience of migrating. She has conducted extensive fieldwork with Haitian communities in both Cuba and the Dominican Republic. She is currently a PhD Candidate in Linguistics at Tulane University, where she has taught courses in Haitian Creole, linguistics, and Latin American studies.
Kendall Medford
Chelsea Stieber
Chelsea Stieber is Associate Professor and the Kathryn B. Gore Chair in French Studies at Tulane University. She is the author of Haiti’s Paper War: Post-Independence Writing, Civil War, and the Making of the Republic, 1804–1954 (New York University Press, 2020) and co-editor with Brandon R. Byrd of the critical translation of Louis-Joseph Janvier’s Haiti for the Haitians (Liverpool University Press, 2023). She also serves as associate editor for the journal Nineteenth-Century French Studies.
Marc, a francophone and spirits educator, started his wine career in retail in Chicago in 2002 and wine tastings and education in 2005. He has toured multiple wine regions in France, Germany, Spain, Italy, and the US. Witham has conducted training seminars for wine retailers to teach them about various wine regions. Presently, Witham works for Adventure Wine, conducting wine research and instruction. In addition to being a Certified Bordeaux Educator, Marc boasts certifications in Georgian and Portuguese wines, although his liquor expertise doesn’t stop there. Marc’s globe-trotting studies and acumen for the provenance of all things fermented will offer the perfect historical foundation for his presentation on the Caribbean rum trade.
Marc Witham
Wine Curator’s Biography:
Marc is a long-time student of history and cuisine. He worked as a chef in Chicago. Marc also is an 18-year veteran of wine education and a Certified Bordeaux Educator. He currentlyworking as a market research consultant.
Marc Witham
As a retired educator and financial lending analyst, Margene Minor is determined to continue to educate herself (and others when allowed), by completing and having satisfied Examiners and thus being awarded the WSET (Wine and Spirit Education Trust), Level 2 Award in Wine and Spirits with Merit near Distinction under the authority of the Trustees, by Ian Harris International Wine and Spirit Center 39-45 Bermondsey Street, London. Margene has completed level 3 WSET in wine studies this past spring.
Margene Minor
If you would like more information, please email Karen Walk at kawalk@me.com