Lancon Wins Rankin Prize

Congratulations to our M.A. candidate Luca Lancon, who won the 2026 Hugh F. Rankin Prize at last week's Louisiana Historical Association annual meeting. The Rankin Prize is awarded annually for the best previously unpublished, graduate-level paper submitted on any aspect of Louisiana history. 

Lancon's winning paper is "Building and Crossing the Cultural Divide: Negotiation, Assimilation, and Acculturation of French and Indigenous Gender Norms in Early Colonial Louisiana." Lancon wrote it for Dr. Jordan Kellman's HIST 505: Research and Writing Seminar, and it forms the beginnings of their thesis project.

The prize honors Dr. Hugh F. Rankin (1913-1989), longtime LHA member and mentor to many current LHA members. Rankin, a WWII veteran, was a member of the History Department of Tulane University from 1957 until 1983. He was especially noted for his work with graduate students and for his service to the Southern Historical Association.