AML 4213 Spring 2018 Kilgore

How does Tallahassee choose to preserve, narrate, and commemorate its early history through museums, memorials, monuments, and other historical sites? What does Mission San Luis say—or not say—about Spanish colonization of the area, the Goodwood Museum about plantation slavery, the Historic Capitol and Natural Bridge Historic Park about the Civil War? What kind of unofficial histories are buried in the Florida State Archives, and how is the indigenous history of Florida packaged at the Museum of Florida History? This course will tackle questions such as these by surveying the early literature of Florida from colonization to the Civil War, and then putting our reading into conversation with sites of public memory in and around Tallahassee. That means we will visit said sites, analyze the material rhetorics of history and place, and discuss the political and cultural ideologies of Florida, yesterday and today.