Julian Pleasants Travel Award
On a bi-yearly basis, the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program grants a researcher with the Julian Pleasants Travel Award, designed to promote cutting edge oral history research at the University of Florida and recognize innovative scholarship. The award was created in honor of Dr. Julian Pleasants, Director Emeritus of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program and longtime Professor of History at the University of Florida.
The award includes a stipend of $1,000. Competition is open to graduate students, faculty, and independent scholars at UF and throughout the United States.
Application: Interested applicants for the 2017 cycle should contact Dr. Paul Ortiz for more information.
2015 Pleasants Travel Award: Jody Noll
Jody Noll is a Ph.D. student at Georgia State University in Athens, Georgia. He received his BA in History at the University of South Florida, and his MA in History from Auburn University.
In Summer 2015, the Pleasants Award supported Noll’s work on his doctoral dissertation, where he explored dynamic interplay between public sector unionism, American race relations, and the rise of new conservatism. Noll conducted research in archival collections related to the strike at the P.K. Yonge Library of Florida History in the University of Florida’s George A. Smather Libraries. He also conducted oral history interviews with teachers who worked in the state of Florida during the strike.
2013 Pleasants Travel Award: Dr. Regennia Williams
Dr. Regennia Williams is an associate professor of History at Cleveland State University in Cleveland, Ohio. She received her B.A.s in Liberal Studies and Urban Studies, as well as her M.P.A. in Public Administration, from Cleveland State University. She earned her Ph.D. in Social History and Policy from Case Western Reserve University.
In 2013, Dr. Williams conducted research in the Zora Neale Hurston papers at the University of Florida. This research supported her work on articles for a special Zora Neale Hurston issue of The Journal of Traditions and Beliefs, a scholarly publication she launched in the 2009 – 2010 academic year. This publication is a follow-up activity for the September 2012 “Watching God and Reading Hurston” International Academic Conference, which commemorated the 75th publication anniversary of Their Eyes Were Watching God in 2012 – 2013.
Dr. Williams plans to develop new curriculum materials based on University of Florida manuscripts related to the life, art, and legacy of Zora Neale Hurston at the University of Florida, including Hurston’s work with Stetson Kennedy on the Florida Writers Project. The new curriculum materials will encourage history students and pre-service and in-service teachers to use maps, books, letters, etc. to explore the African roots of American cultures and contribute to “An Atlas of the Cultural History of the African Diaspora as Documented by Zora Neale Hurston,” a forthcoming online publication that will consider the writer’s work throughout the American South and in Harlem, Haiti, Jamaica, Honduras, and other places in the African Diaspora.
For information on Williams’ previous online publications, please visit her website at Cleveland Memory and the Cleveland Chautauqua Blog. For more information, see the full SPOHP press release, “Dr. Regennia N. Williams is SPOHP’s 2013 Julian Pleasants Travel Award Scholar.”
2012 Pleasants Travel Award: Sarah McNamara
Sarah McNamara is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, where she studies United States history with a focus on immigration, civil rights, and women and gender. Sarah received her M.A. in History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2012, and her B.A. in History from the University of Florida in 2009, where she graduated with honors. Sarah is also a former SPOHP intern.
In 2012, McNamara’s Pleasants Award research focused on Latina women’s history in Florida. As a historian, Sarah is dedicated to connecting research to community in a pursuit for social justice. She currently as a member of the research team at UNC’s Southern Oral History Program.
- Ms. McNamara is currently coordinating a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities/American Library Association for ‘Latino Americans: 500 Years of History’ to conduct history programming across the state of Florida, in partnership with SPOHP’s Latina/o Diaspora in the Americas Project.
2010 Pleasants Travel Award: Raymond A. Eberling
Ray Eberling is a PhD candidate at the University of Heidelberg, Germany. Eberling received his M.A. in American Studies from the University of Heidelberg in 2006. He is a retired U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel and has taught for the American Studies program at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida. He also holds B.A.s in education from University of Florida and creative writing from Eckerd College, and an M.S. in systems management from the University of Southern California. Eberling recently appeared in the Florida PBS documentary, Governor Farris Bryant: The Age of the Mind, and has presented topics related to his dissertation twice in recent years at the annual meeting of the Florida Historical Society. He has also volunteered with the SPOHP, conducting oral histories with Vietnam veterans and surviving members of the 1973 “Gainesville 8” conspiracy trial.
Eberling’s research interests examine the intersection of politics, growth, race, the environment, and media in Postwar Florida, using SPOHP’s archives and the university’s special collections to garner research for his dissertation, entitled, “Come on Down! The Selling of the Florida Dream, 1945-1965.”
2008 Pleasants Travel Award: Derrick E. White
Dr. Derrick White is an associate professor of history at Florida Atlantic University. Dr. White earned his Ph.D. in history from The Ohio State University and was also a dissertation fellow at the University of California-Santa Barbara Black Studies Department.
In 2008, Dr. White used the SPOHP collection to examine the integration of sports in the Southeastern Conference, and at the University of Florida in particular. His research interests focus on African American and African Studies, the Civil Rights Movement, Colonial and Post Colonial Africa, Early American History, Slavery in the Americas, 20th Century American History, and the Post-Emancipation Caribbean.
Dr. White was also interviewed by the Florida Historical Quarterly about the research he conducted with Julian Pleasants Award. The interview is available for free in a downloadable online podcast, FHQ Volume 88, No. 4 for Spring 2010.
Dr. White is the author of The Challenge of Blackness: The Institute of the Black World and Political Acitivism in the 1970s. He is co-editor of Winning While Losing: Civil Rights, The Conservative Movement and the Presidency from Nixon to Obama and is currently working on Blood, Sweat, and Tears: The Rise and Fall of Florida A.&M, Black College Football Dynasty, which would be among the first scholarly analyses of Black college football. He has published articles in the Journal of African American History, the C.L.R. James Journal, the Journal of African American Studies, and the Florida Historical Quarterly.