La Florida
December 10, 2023 @ 7:00PM — 8:30PM Eastern Time (US & Canada) Add to Calendar
Matheson History Museum: 513 E University Ave Gainesville, FL 32601 Get Directions
.png)
Learn about America's Spanish heritage
The Matheson History Museum will host author and historian Dr. Kevin Kokomoor on Sunday, December 10. He will discuss his book "La Florida: Catholics, Conquistadores, and Other American Origin Stories," followed by a Q&A and book signing. La Florida explores a Spanish thread to early American history that is unfamiliar or even unknown to most Americans. As this book uncovers, 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 author Kevin Kokomoor refers to as “the country’s founding mythology.”
Kevin Kokomoor is a fourth generation Floridian who grew up in the Tampa Bay area. He earned his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in history at the University of South Florida and his Doctorate in Early American History at Florida State University. His first academic position after graduate school was at Coastal Carolina University in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, where he is currently employed.
Kokomoor recently published Of One Mind and of One Government: The Rise and Fall of the Creek Nation in the Early Republic with the University of Nebraska Press. He has also authored several articles in academic journals, including Journal of Southern History, Georgia Historical Quarterly, Florida Historical Quarterly, Journal of Sport History, and Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era. He won the Thompson Award for the best article published in Florida Historical Quarterly in 2009 and the E. Merton Coulter Award for the best article published in Georgia Historical Quarterly in 2013. In 2017 he was a Howard H. Peckham Fellow of Revolutionary America at the Clements Library at the University of Michigan. Other sources of support include the American Philosophical Society, the David Library of the American Revolution, Emory University, and the University of Florida.