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Florida Southern College’s Center for Florida History welcomes Coastal Carolina University’s Kevin Kokomoor to the Florida Lecture Series. On October 3rd Kokomoor will discuss “La Florida: Catholics, Conquistadors, and Other American Origin Stories.” The lecture will start at 7 p.m. in Branscomb Auditorium on the FSC campus. The event is free and open to the public.
In La Florida, Kevin Kokomoor explores a Spanish thread to early American history that is unfamiliar or even unknown to most Americans. He argues that it was Spanish influence, and not English, which drove America’s early history. By focusing on America’s Spanish heritage, this collection of stories complicates and sometimes challenges how Americans view their past, which Kokomoor refers to as “the country’s founding mythology.” This program will dig deeper into Hispanic and Caribbean history, and how important happenings elsewhere in the Spanish colonial world influenced the discovery and colonization of the American Southeast.
“We are excited to host Kevin Kokomoor for our October program. Kevin’s exploration of the Spanish thread to early American history will be interesting and provocative. Like all good history it complicates and sometimes challenges how Americans view their past. And as usual Florida is at the center of that process,” noted James M. Denham, Professor of History and Director of the Lawton Chiles Center for Florida History.
A Florida native, Kokomoor holds degrees from USF (M.A.) and Florida State University (Ph.D). He teaches early American history at Coastal Carolina University in Conway, South Carolina, and will be the second lecturer in the 2024 Florida Lecture Series. For more information, please contact Isabelle Cyr at (863) 680-3001.
About the Florida Lecture Series
The Florida Lecture Series is produced by the Center for Florida History under the direction of Dr. James M. Denham. The program brings speakers to the Lakeland campus who approach the issue of “Florida Life and Culture” from a wide range of disciplines, including history, public affairs, law, sociology, criminology, anthropology, literature, music and art. Its overall objective is to create an opportunity for members of the community, faculty, and student body to listen to, interact with and learn from leading scholars and specialists of the state’s history and culture.
Lawton M. Chiles Center for Florida History Link