Vandal, Gilles

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Vandal, Gilles

PERSONAL:

Education: St. John Vianney College, D.E.C., 1969; University of Ottawa, B.A., 1974, M.A., 1975; College of William and Mary, Ph.D., 1978.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of History and Political Science, University of Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Quebec J1K 2R1, Canada. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

University of Sherbrooke, Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada, professor in the department of political science and history.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Fulbright Exchange Program, 1992-93.

WRITINGS:

The New Orleans Riot of 1866: Anatomy of a Tragedy, Center for Louisiana Studies (Lafayette, LA), 1983.

Rethinking Southern Violence: Homicides in Post-Civil War Louisiana, 1866-1884, Ohio State University Press (Columbus, OH), 2000.

Contributor to books, including Guide to the Study of United States History outside the U.S., 1945-1980, edited by Lewis Hanke, Kraus International Publications (White Plains, NY), 1985; and A Helluvah Country, American Studies as a Cross-Cultural Experience, edited by Swend E. Larsen, Odense University Press (Odense, Denmark), 1991.

Contributor to academic journals, including Louisiana History, Canadian Review of American Studies, Mid-America, Journal of Social History, Journal of Urban History, and Journal of Interdisciplinary History.

SIDELIGHTS:

Gilles Vandal began his education at St. John Vianney College, earning a D.E.C. in 1969. From there he entered the University of Ottawa, graduating with his bachelor's degree in 1974 and a master's degree in 1975. He then completed his education at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, where he earned his doctorate in 1978. A writer and educator, he serves on the faculty of the University of Sherbrooke in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Canada, where he is a member of the department of history and political science. His primary areas of interest include the history of the United States, with an emphasis on the nineteenth century and the history of the state of Louisiana; Latin American history; and the history of criminality. He spent the 1992-93 academic year in a Fulbright exchange program between the United States and Canada.

With Rethinking Southern Violence: Homicides in Post-Civil War Louisiana, 1866-1884, Vandal addresses the history of violence in Louisiana during the period following the Civil War, analyzing what is known about the issues during the era and providing readers with a comprehensive overview of the situation. He uses a variety of sources from the time period, including newspaper and police records, as well as information held by both state and federal agencies regarding the rate of murders and how the crimes were distributed regionally during the twenty years after the war ended. He pays particular attention to the city of New Orleans, Louisiana, and offers a comparison of crime rates in urban areas with those of more rural parts of the state. Greta de Jong, in a review for the Journal of Social History, commented that "the collection and processing of information concerning thousands of homicides, and the distillation of that information into a tightly organized book of just over 300 pages, is an impressive achievement." Samuel C. Hyde, Jr., writing for the Journal of Southern History, concluded that "many aspects of Vandal's study serve to complexify our understanding of violence in the Bayou State. His book therefore deserves consideration from serious scholars of Louisiana and those interested in the sources of southern violence."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Criminal Justice Review, September 22, 2001, Martha A. Myers, review of Rethinking Southern Violence: Homicides in Post-Civil War Louisiana, 1866-1884, p. 288.

Historical Geography, January 1, 2001, Liz Hines, review of Rethinking Southern Violence, p. 169.

Journal of American History, June 1, 1984, Joe Gray Taylor, review of The New Orleans Riot of 1866: Anatomy of a Tragedy, p. 136; September 1, 2001, Christopher Waldrep, review of Rethinking Southern Violence, p. 655.

Journal of Interdisciplinary History, September 22, 2001, Sheldon Hackney, review of Rethinking Southern Violence, p. 324.

Journal of Social History, September 22, 2001, Greta de Jong, review of Rethinking Southern Violence, p. 233.

Journal of Southern History, February 1, 2002, Samuel C. Hyde, Jr., review of Rethinking Southern Violence, p. 195.

Southwestern Historical Quarterly, April 1, 2002, Barry A. Crouch, review of Rethinking Southern Violence, p. 710.