Florida Press Podcast

In this interview, we discuss Andrew Frank‘s most recent book, Before the Pioneers: Indians, Settlers, Slaves, and the Founding of Miami (University Press of Florida, 2017). The book is a concise and authoritative history of the region where modern-day Miami is located. Before the Pioneers, begins thousands of years in the past and places great emphasis on understanding the role that native people played in the history of south Florida. Borrowing extensively from archaeology, Before the Pioneers is a timely re-imaging of Miami’s history that places the native experience at the center of its narrative.

Andrew Frank is the Allen Morris Professor of History at Florida State University. His primary research interest is the Native Southeast.

In a perceptive challenge to longstanding assumptions about Dominican anti-Haitianism, April J. Mayes finds fresh ways to think about the production of race in late 19th and 20th century Dominican Republic. Combining intellectual history with fine-grained social history, The Mulatto Republic: Class, Race and Dominican National Identity (University Press of...

Mary E. Adkins has written Making Modern Florida: How the Spirit of Reform Shaped a New State Constitution (University Press of Florida, 2016), an account of the reformation of the Florida state constitution in the 1960s. Adkins reviews the history of the state’s constitutions since it was first incorporated into the United States in the 1840s. Yet, she concentrates on the reform efforts begun during World War II and culminating in a new constitution in 1968. Adkins reviews the political interests that pushed for a new constitution, from the League of Women Voters to the new residents in the emergent southern coasts of Florida in the 1960s. Adkins reviews the process of reforming a constitution that was rooted in the traditional rotten borough politics of 19th-century Florida. She analyzes the impact of U.S. Supreme Court decisions in the early 1960s that forced states to reapportion their legislatures, contending that Florida’s districts were so malapportioned that without the Court’s decisions there might not have been any constitutional revision. Adkins also discusses today’s constitutional revision process, which is ongoing every 20 years and is occurring in 2017.

Florida’s political context has always been an amalgam of traditional Southern politics and the emergent commercial and tourism-based economy of a coastal state. Adkin’s book illuminates how these conditions produced political conflict and constitutional change.

Ian J. Drake is an Associate Professor of Political Science and Law at Montclair State University. His scholarly interests include American legal and constitutional history and political theory.

In Islam’s Jesus (University of Florida Press, 2015), Zeki Saritoprak explores an old topic from a fresh perspective. The status of Jesus in Islam has been of interest for centuries, and relates to both Christianity and Islam, but the level of synthesis that Professor Saritoprak’s monograph offers is remarkable. He draws on a variety of Islamic literature, including commentaries on the Qur’an, works of theology, and collections of prophetic sayings. Moreover, he surveys not only the vast Arabic sources on his topic but also Turkish sources, and his research covers multiple schools of thought and time periods. Another hallmark of the monograph is the attention it gives to Jesus’ role in Islamic eschatology. Notably, Saritoprak demonstrates how mainstream as well as lesser known Islamic discourses on eschatology encompass numerous hermeneutical strategies; some, for example, understand the descent of Jesus as a physical phenomenon while others understand it as a non-material, spiritual phenomenon. The book highlights a number of other competing discourses as well, which are likely to challenge and even surprise the reader. The author’s clear writing style, combined with meticulous attention to scholarly rigor and textual engagement, makes the text accessible to a range of readers, which should render it useful to general audiences, as well as scholars of eschatology, Christian-Muslim relations, and Qur’anic studies.

In her wonderful new book Polygyny: What it Means When African American Muslim Women Share Their Husbands (University Press of Florida, 2015), Debra Majeed, Professor of Religious Studies at Beloit College, provides an analytically robust and moving account of the aspirations, paradoxes, and problems attached to polygyny in the African American Muslim community. By combining ethnography, history, and performance studies, Majeed seamlessly weaves together the theological, legal, and sociological dynamics of living polygyny. Readers of this book are treated to a riveting and incredibly lucid portrayal of a complicated phenomenon that brings together intimate individual stories and the broader historical and societal conditions that generate those stories in a remarkably effective fashion. In our conversation, we talked about the idea of Muslim Womanism, the methodology of dialogical performance, the Qur’an and polygyny, the paradoxes of polygyny, Imam W.D Mohammed’s teachings on polygyny, and the emotional and psychological impact of polygyny n children and women. This is among those rare books that are at once methodologically exciting and complex and yet astonishingly accessible and well written. Polygyny should also make an excellent reading in courses on gender and Islam, Islamic law, American Islam, and American Religion more broadly.

That privacy in the digital age is an important concept to be discussed is axiomatic. Cameras in mobile phones make it easy to record events and post them on the web. Consumers post an enormous amount of information on social media sites. And much of this information is made publicly available. A common question, then, is what can people truly expect to be be private when so much information is accessible. In his new book Privacy in the New Media Age (University Press of Florida 2015), Jon L. Mills (University of Florida, Levin College of Law), discusses another issue related to privacy in the digital environment: the conflict between privacy and freedom of expression. In so doing, Mills examines how the law, particularly in the United States, is always chasing advances in technology, and discusses how countries in the European Union have attempted to tackle this matter. Throughout the book he discusses famous court cases that illustrate the issues with privacy and new media in an attempt to come to a resolution for the dispute.

Just listen.

Contested and complicated histories create the best books. This is true for many volumes and is certainly so for Jazz Dance: A History of the Roots and Branches (University Press of Florida, 2014), a recent work edited by Wendy Oliver and Lindsay Guarino. Picking up where Marshall and Jean Stearns left off over two decades ago, Oliver and Guarino bring to the field a book that culls together some of the best contemporary scholarship on the history, progenitors, and cultural forces that shape the uniquely American art form known as jazz dance. Created in part as a resource for students, the book is unique in its accessibility, diversity of authorship and willingness to engage the complicated racial and social history of jazz dance. Wendy Oliver has been teaching and choreographing at Providence College since 1985, and is the director of the PC Dance Company. Dr. Oliver is Chair of the Department of Theatre, Dance and Film, and also runs the Children’s Dance program on the Providence College campus. An Active dancer and choreographer, Lindsay Guarino is Assistant professor of Music Theatre and Dance at Salve Regina University and artistic director of Extensions Dance Company.

Matthew T. Corrigan is the author of Conservative Hurricane: How Jeb Bush Remade Florida (University Press of Florida, 2014). Corrigan is chair and professor of political science at the University of North Florida.

With an election just 700 odd days away, it is not too early to start talking about the candidates. Corrigan takes up this challenge with his examination of the political and policy legacy of former-Florida Governor Jeb Bush. He describes Bush as a “culture warrior” who completely changed Florida politics. Bush ushered in a host of policy reforms, particularly on education, that are likely to animate a presidential campaign, if he chooses to run.

Glenn Feldman is the editor of Nation within a Nation: The American South and the Federal Government (University Press of Florida, 2014). Feldman is professor of history at the University of Alabama, Birmingham. He is the author or editor of numerous books, including Painting Dixie Red: When, Where, Why, and How the South Became Republican and Before Brown: Civil Rights and White Backlash in the Modern South. Some of political scientists included in the volume are: Thomas Schaller, Allan McBride, and Natalie Motise Davis.

In the introduction, Feldman writes “No other region has been more important than the South in determining the course of U.S. politics and history. This was so in 1776, and 1865, and is still true today, although in vastly different ways.” Nation within a Nation sets out to explore this history. The book is an interesting read for those concerned with the history of the South, but also for those interested in how newer issues such as the US-Mexican border and criminal justice policies fit within the region’s history. The chapters by Allan McBride and Natalie Motise Davis, in particular, provide new information on the relationship between the South and the Tea Party.

Passion. Flair. Instinct. Improvisation. As the World Cup advances to the knockout stage, you’ll hear these terms associated with the football styles of Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico rather than those of Belgium and Germany. As historians Roger Kittleson and Joshua Nadel explain, the soccer cultures of Brazil and other countries...