Published in July 2012, Rebels and Runaways analyzes the various degrees of slave resistance—from the perspectives of both slave and master—and how they differed in various regions of antebellum Florida. In particular, the book demonstrates how the Atlantic world view of some enslaved blacks successfully aided their escape to freedom, a path that did not always lead North but sometimes farther South to the Bahama Islands and Caribbean.

A banquet was held for all Florida Book Awards winners on March 19^th at the Mission San Luis in Tallahassee, FL.

Congratulations Dr. Rivers!

The award will be presented formally at the Business Meeting of the RSAP, May 23-26, 2013, in Boston at the annual conference of the American Literature Association.

Congratulations, Professor Gardner!

From the Smithsonian Folkways site:
Innovative and often surprising, Banjo Diary: Lessons from Tradition explores knowledge older musicians have bequeathed to younger players. Inspired by past banjo masters of frailing and of two- and three-finger styles, Stephen Wade, accompanied by Mike Craver, Russ Hooper, Danny Knicely, James Leva, and Zan McLeod, mines new creative possibilities with pump organ, piano, mandolin, fiddle, guitar, Dobro, rhumba box, washboard, and bass.

(Photo by: MaryE Yeomans)

Using a variety of sources such as slaveholders’ wills and probate records, ledgers, account books, court records, oral histories, and numerous newspaper accounts, Dr. Rivers illuminates the historical significance of Florida as a runaway slave haven dating back to the seventeenth century and explains Florida’s unique history of slave resistance and protest.

The award will be presented at the annual FHS Meeting and Symposium, May 23-26.

Congratulations, Dr. Rivers!

Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890–1930 demonstrates that popular lynching plays were mechanisms through which African American communities survived actual and photographic mob violence. Mitchell posits that lynching violence was a reaction to black success.

“[Mitchell] shows how performing lynching plays in community spaces allowed African Americans to actualize the various subjectivities . . . that lynchings sought to expunge. This book is required reading for understanding the ways in which narrative and performance have been central to challenging white oppression as well as (re)imagining black identity in America. Highly recommended.”–Choice

“An emphatic push to change how we understand, write about, and teach the phenomenon of lynching.”–H-SHGAPE

Koritha Mitchell is an associate professor of English at The Ohio State University, and is an active blogger and public speaker. Her work was highlighted last month on The Ohio State University English Department’s blog. Congratulations, Professor Mitchell!

Focusing particularly on the work of radio luminaries such as Edward R. Murrow, Fred Friendly, Norman Corwin, and Erik Barnouw, Radio Utopia examines the production of audio documentaries disseminated by major American commercial broadcast networks CBS, NBC, and ABC from 1945 to 1951.

Matthew C. Ehrlich is a professor of journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.  Congratulations Dr. Ehrlich!

Living with Lynching: African American Lynching Plays, Performance, and Citizenship, 1890–1930,  demonstrates that popular lynching plays were mechanisms through which African American communities survived actual and photographic mob violence.

Koritha Mitchell is an associate professor of English at The Ohio State University, and is an active blogger and public speaker. Her most recent post details her lecture and book signing at the Atlanta Cyclorama & Civil War Museum.

Archie Green celebrates one of the most revered folklorists and labor historians of the twentieth century and captures the many dimensions of Green’s remarkably influential life and work.

Sean Burns is a teacher, musician, and gardener. His research and teaching interests center on the history, culture, and politics of progressive social movements. His band, Professor Burns and the Lilac Field, is rooted in Berkeley, California.

Christopher Robert Reed received a Superior Achievement Award for his book, The Rise of Chicago’s Black Metropolis, 1920-1929, as did Gerald A. Danzer for his book, Illinois: A History in Pictures.

Congratulations to all.

Ferguson, a retired lawyer who currently resides in Naperville, served for twenty-five years as an Assistant United States Attorney in Chicago. He was presented with the award at the Illinois State Historical Society’s Illinois History Symposium and Awards Banquet, April 27, 2012, in East Peoria.

In Illinois in the War of 1812, Ferguson explores the lives of the civilian soldiers, military leaders, Native-American warriors, and heroes, villains, and opportunists who were drawn into the war, how their actions defined the conflict in the west, shaped the identity and boundaries of the Midwest, and propelled the nation toward its role as an imperialist power in the mid-nineteenth century.

Congratulations, Gillum!