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Florida History Lecture Series
2001-2002 Florida Lecture Series Schedule
September 27*
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"Conversation with Janet Reno"
Janet Reno
Attorney, Public Servant, Floridian |
The daughter of eclectic, journalist parents, Janet Reno was born in Miami in 1938. Growing up in a remote, 21 acre family homestead not far from the Florida Everglades, Reno attended Coral Gables High School where she starred as a state high school debating champion. After earning a degree in Chemistry
from Cornell University in 1960, she enrolled at Harvard Law School, graduating in 1963. In 1971 Reno was named staff director of the Judiciary Committee of the Florida court system. In 1978 she was elected Dade County District Attorney. Gaining the reputation as a tough, no-nonsense prosecutor, Reno was
reelected to four consecutive terms. The Miami Herald wrote of her in 1988, "Of the qualities most important I the prosecutor of a community awash in drug profits, none ranks higher that integrity. Reno is…beyond suspicion." In 1993 Janet Reno made history when President Bill Clinton appointed her the first woman U.S. Attorney General. Retiring from that post in 2001, Reno returned to South Florida and continues to take an active part in the affairs of her native state. She enjoys canoeing and other outdoor activities. |
October 18*
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Florida Sheriffs: A History, 1821-1945
William W. Rogers
Professor of History Emeritus, Florida State University
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| William Rogers is a distinguished teaching professor of History, Emeritus, at Florida Sate University. A native Alabamian, Dr. Rogers holds degrees form Auburn University (M.A.) and the University of North Carolina (Ph.D.). A specialist in southern history, he is the author of numerous books and articles. He is the co-author of Alabama: A History of A Deep South State and the recently reprinted The One-Gallused Rebellion: Agrarianism in Alabama, 1865-1896 (Tuscaloosa, 2000). Dr. Rogers resides in Tallahassee and is the proprietor of the Sentry Press. |
James M. Denham
Professor of History, Florida Southern College |
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James M. Denham is a specialist in Southern and Florida history and is director of FSC's Center for Florida History. Denham taught at Limestone College, Georgia Southern University, and Florida State University
where he earned his Ph. D. in 1988 before joining the FSC faculty in 1991. His articles and reviews have appeared in many popular and scholarly journals. He is the author of "A Rogue's Paradise: Crime and Punishment in Antebellum Florida," 1821-1861 (Tuscaloosa, 1997) and Cracker Times and Pioneer Lives: the Florida Reminiscences of George Gillette Keen and Sarah Pamela Williams (Columbia, 2000), with Canter Brown, Jr. |
November 15
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Cracker: The Cracker Culture in Florida History (Daytona Beach: Museum of Arts and Sciences, 1998), book talk and signing.
Dana Ste. Claire
Public Historian, St. Augustine
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Dana Ste. Claire is the Director of Museum Services for HTA, a national corporation specializing in heritage tourism services in markets across the United States. He resides in St. Augustine and consults in the areas of heritage tourism, historic preservation, and cultural resource management. Ste. Claire holds degrees in public anthropology from the University of South Florida, and is a member of the Secretary of State's Heritage Tourism Committee. He also sits on many other historical preservation, governmental and advisory boards and councils, including the Board of Trustees of the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation.
Ste. Claire is the author of three books, including, Cracker: The Cracker Culture in Florida History (Daytona Beach, 1998), Borders of Paradise: A History of Florida Through New World Maps (Gainesville, 1997). He was featured columnist for the Orlando Sentinel and his "Florida Crackerbarrel" episodes continue to run on PBS channels throughout the state. |
January 31
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Black Society in Spanish Florida
Jane Landers
Associate Professor of History, Vanderbilt University
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| Jane Landers is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Center for Latin American and Iberian Studies at Vanderbilt University. She holds degrees from the University of Miami (B.A. and M.A.) and in 1988 earned a Ph. D. in Latin American Colonial History from the University of Florida. One of America's most distinguished Latin American scholars, Dr. Landers is the author, editor and contributor of many books including her own, Black Society in Spanish Florida, which is the subject of her talk. Dr. Landers also edited Colonial Plantations and Economy of Florida (Gainesville, 2000), Against the Odds: Free Blacks in the Slave Societies of the Americas (London, 1996), and was co-editor of The African American Heritage of Florida (Gainesville, 1995). She has published essays on the African history of the Hispanic Southeast and of the circum-Caribbean in the American Historical Review, Slavery and Abolition, The Americas, and the Colonial Latin American Historical Review. Her work also appears in anthologies and edited volumes. Dr. Landers also has a strong commitment to enriching the history curriculums in public schools. She directed the National History Teaching Alliance, and has written the 4th grade Florida history text currently in use in many Florida public schools. |
February 21
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An Honorable Defeat: The Last Days of the Confederate Government
William C. Davis
Professor of History, Virginia Tech University
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Born in Missouri but raised in California, William C. Davis is one of America's most well-known Civil War historians. The co-director of the Virginia Center of Civil War Studies at Virginia Tech University,
Davis has authored over thirty books, including full-length or dual biographies of Jefferson Davis, John C. Breckinridge, Alexander Stephens, Robert Toombs, and Robert Barnwell Rhett. He has also authored full-length studies of several Civil War battles, including Bull Run, Chancellorsville, and New Market. One of his latest books, and subject of his program, is The Honorable Defeat, a narrative history of the Confederate Cabinet's flight through Florida in the final days of the Civil War.
His other books have covered such varied topics as the Natchez Trace, the Alamo, and various aspects of America's frontier heritage. Mr. Davis is a frequent commentator on the History Channel and has appeared on numerous documentaries. He was formerly editor of the Civil War Times Illustrated. |
March 14
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Bay of Pigs: An Oral History of Brigade 2506
Victor Andres Triay
Assistant Professor of History, Middlesex Community College
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Born in Miami in 1966, Victor Triay's parents and grandparents left Cuba for the United States in 1960. Raised in the heart of South Florida's Cuban exile community, Dr. Triay attended Catholic Schools and Miami-Dade Community College before earning degrees at the University of Florida (B.A.) and Florida State University (M.A. and Ph. D.). Triay joined the faculty of Middlesex Community College in Middletown, Connecticut.
Dr. Triay is the author of Fleeing Castro: Operation Pedro Pan and the Cuban Children's Program (Gainesville, 1999), a book which explores the complete spectrum of the refugee/ immigration experience: persecution at home, flight into exile, family separation and estrangement,
alienation, cultural assimilation, and family reunion. Triay's most recent work is Bay of Pigs: An Oral History of Brigade 2506 (Gainesville, 2001), the winner of the Florida Historical Society's Samuel Proctor Oral History Award.
Both books will be available at his program. |
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