Applications Re-Open in May 2024
The 2023 round of applications for Chase travel grants to visiting graduate scholars has now closed. The next application period will be in May 2024.
2023 Recipients
Robert D. Skelton is the first of the Chase Family Grant graduate scholars to visit the P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History in 2023. Robert completed a week of research focusing on Reconstruction. As part of his dissertation work at the University of North Carolina Greensboro, he argues that the Radical Republican vision for fostering Black political power and landownership in Florida collided with post-war business interests that viewed the new Freedmen populace as primarily an inexpensive labor force. In particular, he examined post-war negotiations between Democrats and Republicans to restart and revitalize Florida’s economy that fractured the Republican coalition and led to the demise of both Republican and African American political power in Florida until the Civil Rights Era.
Previous Recipients of the Chase Family Award
Award for 2020
Charlie Fanning is a PhD candidate in history at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he is writing a dissertation titled “Empire of the Everglades: Agribusiness, the Land, and Labor in 20th Century South Florida.” He conducted research in the agricultural collections in support of his topic.
Award for 2019
Rachel Kirby (Boston University) researched her dissertation topic about the role of the orange as an icon of Florida’s identity and economy, and other agricultural iconography of the South. Read more about Rachel here: Rachel Kirby | American & New England Studies Program (bu.edu).
Award for 2018
Aubrey Lauersdorf (University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) conducted research on her dissertation about the Apalachee Indians of Florida, completed in 2020. She is assistant professor in history at Auburn University and is at work on a book project, “Apalachee Coast: Indigenous Power in the Colonial Gulf South.”
Previous Recipients of the Cecilia L. Johnson Award
Awards for 2011
Robert Hutchings (Carnegie Mellon) did research on his dissertation Agriculture, Environment, and the Transformation of the Florida Orange Industry in the Twentieth Century (awarded 2014). He is currently a Program Manager at Cisco Systems
Diane M. Boucher (Clark University) conducted research for her dissertation Networks and Empires in the Maritime Borderlands: East Florida, 1763-1811 (awarded 2014). She teaches U.S. history at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and is an independent consultant in historical research.
Awards for 2010
Cameron Strang (University of Texas, Austin) researched his doctoral thesis on scientific knowledge on the Florida frontier. Strang is associate professor in history at the University of Nevada-Reno. His first book, Frontiers of Science: Imperialism and Natural Knowledge in the Gulf South Borderlands, 1500-1850, based in part on research at the Yonge Library, was published in 2018 and won the Summerlee Book Prize from The Center for History and Culture of Southeast Texas and the Upper Gulf Coast (Lamar University) and the Michael V.R. Thomason Book Award from the Gulf South Historical Association. Listen to a Podcast about his research presented by the Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine.
Clark Barwick (Indiana University, Bloomington) conducted research on Zora Neale Hurston and Florida jukes. Barwick is a senior lecturer in the Kelley School of Business, University of Indiana.
Awards for 2009
Christopher Wilhelm (Florida State University) received a travel grant to conduct research on the creation of Everglades National Park. An article based on this research, “Conservatives in the Everglades: Sun Belt Environmentalism and the Creation of Everglades National Park,” has been published in the Journal of Southern History. (82:4) 2016. Wilhelm is currently associate professor of history at Georgia Coastal College.
Jonathan DeCoster (Brandeis University) received a travel grant for his research into early colonial alliances and rivalries among the native peoples of Florida. DeCoster is currently associate professor of history at Otterbein University, Ohio. His article “Entangled Borderlands: Europeans and Timucuans in Sixteenth-Century Florida” appeared in the Florida Historical Quarterly in 2013.