Helen A. Regis
Richard J. Russell Louisiana Studies Professor Louisiana State University
- Baton Rouge LA
Dr. Regis has been involved in urban, public, collaborative, and applied anthropology for over two decades.
Biography
Areas of Expertise
Media
Media Appearances
LSU professor’s research reinforces sharing food is a part of Louisiana’s unique culture
LSU Reveille online
2024-08-30
And the term isn’t just reserved for living-off-the-land. Eating tomatoes grown from a neighbor’s backyard counts as subsistence. In fact, Regis concluded that subsistence food practices in Louisiana are both ordinary and pervasive – and they are rooted deeply into Louisianian culture and identity.
The idea that harvesting is connected to family and community in complex ways kept cropping up throughout the whole project, Regis said.
“Subsistence is practiced by people who are first, second or third generation immigrants and people whose ancestors have lived in the state for generations,” Regis said.
LSU Global Ambassadors program allows students to travel to Ghana for first time in LSU history
WBRZ 2 tv
2024-03-02
Helen Regis, the faculty leader for the trip, explained why the trip matters and what students can gain from the experience.
"I think the purpose of a program like this is to help to foster questions about the world and bringing an interest in the larger world," Regis said.
New HNOC exhibit tells the story of Black women fighting for the right to vote in New Orleans
WWNO radio
2023-05-02
Eight years ago, LSU’s Dr. Helen Regis, Professor of Geography and Anthropology, and Jennifer Cramer, the director of the T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History, led their students through a Jazz Fest research project Now, Cramer joins us for more on what her students unveiled years ago. Plus, we listen back to some of the interviews her students conducted to hear memories of past Jazz Fests.
Research Focus
Black Performance & Heritage Politics
Dr. Regis’s research focuses on cultural and public anthropology—Black performance, heritage politics, and how urban and coastal communities in New Orleans, Cameroon, and other diaspora sites craft identity in contested spaces. She pairs collaborative ethnography, oral history, and community-based exhibits to preserve traditions, advance cultural activism, and guide equitable urban and coastal policy.
Education
Tulane University
Ph.D.
1977
Affiliations
- Neighborhood Story Project
- House of Dance & Feathers
- The Porch Seventh Ward Cultural Organization
- CubaNOLA Arts Collective
Articles
Ships on the Wall: Retracing African Trade Routes from Marseille, France
Genealogy2021
With this essay on decolonizing ways of knowing, I seek to understand the phantom histories of my father’s French family. Filling in silences in written family accounts with scholarship on Marseille’s maritime commerce, African history, African Diaspora studies, and my own archival research, I seek to reconnect European, African, and Caribbean threads of my family story. Travelling from New Orleans to Marseille, Zanzibar, Ouidah, Porto-Novo, Martinique and Guadeloupe, this research at the intersections of personal and collective heritage links critical genealogies to colonial processes that structured the Atlantic world. Through an exploration of family documents, literature, and art, I travel the trade routes of la Maison Régis.
