Dardeau Snags Simpson Award

Congratulations to Anna Dardeau (BA in History, 2023; MA in History, 2025), winner of the 2025 Amos E Simpson Award for best graduate research paper award. The award, decided upon by the department’s Graduate Committee, is given to a paper that is exemplary in its use of primary sources and displays originality in research. Dardeau’s paper, “An Imperial World Turned Upside Down: How the Cawnpore Massacre Challenged Victorian Gender and Racial Constructs,” met—and surpassed—those eligibility requirements.

The award honors the late Dr. Amos Simpson. After serving as a naval radio reconnaissance operator in the Marshall Islands during World War II, Simpson earned a Ph.D. in Modern German History from UC Berkeley. He taught at San Francisco State University and the University of Arkansas before joining the Department of History in 1956 at what was then SLI. He chaired the department from 1966-1971, served as assistant to the dean of the College of Liberal Arts, was a co-founder of the Center for Louisiana Studies, and was the Frank A. Godchaux Honor Professor of History until his retirement in 1995. He authored several books and historical articles and served as president of the Louisiana Historical Association, the Southwestern Historical Association, the Southwest Social Science Association, and the European History Section of the Southern Historical Association. Simpson taught abroad with the University of New Orleans Summer Program in Innsbruck, Austria, and co-founded the UL-France Study Abroad Program. He was a Fulbright Scholar in India and in China and was an honored mentor and friend to many students at both the graduate and undergraduate levels.