UPF Books and Authors Win Seven Awards

We’re proud to announce recent award-winning books and authors from the University Press of Florida.

Henry Knight’s Tropic of Hopes: California, Florida, and the Selling of American Paradise, 1869-1929, winner of a gold medal in the Florida Book Awards, is now also co-winner of the British Association for American Studies Arthur Miller Centre First Book Prize. The Arthur Miller Centre First Book Prize is awarded annually to the best first book on any American Studies topic by a United Kingdom citizen or a non-UK citizen who is a member of the BAAS. In Tropic of Hopes, Henry Knight shows how California and Florida were promoted and popularized as the American Paradise after the Civil War.

 

 

 

 

The Florida Folk Heritage Awards are given annually by the Florida Folklife Council and the Secretary of State to outstanding folk artists and folk culture advocates who have made long-standing contributions to the folk cultural resources of the state. This year’s award was given to artist Guy LaBree, whose oil paintings have given color and shape to sacred Seminole legends, life, and history for over 30 years. Forty-two stunning selections by this self-taught artist can be found in Guy LaBree: Barefoot Artist of the Florida Seminoles, by Carol Mahler.

 

 

 

 

Indiana University’s College of Arts and Sciences awarded this year’s prestigious Distinguished Alumni Award to photographer Jerry Uelsmann. Pioneer and master innovator of photomontage, Uelsmann has relied exclusively on analog tools for over 50 years, crafting images by integrating multiple negatives and processing effects. His explorations of “the alchemy of the darkroom” have resulted in a unique, transformational style that continues to influence, inspire, and fascinate artists, photographers, and museum audiences across the world.
Uelsmann received his MFA from Indiana University in 1960 and is professor emeritus of photography at the University of Florida. His latest book is Uelsmann Untitled: A Retrospective, which features the largest number of Uelsmann images ever collected in a single volume, and some never-before reproduced.

 

Maxine Margolis will be receiving the Brazilian Studies Association Lifetime Contribution Award at the meeting of BRASA in London in August 2014. The award committee says, “Dr. Margolis stands out for her more than forty years of extraordinary and unflagging commitment to the mission of our organization: the promotion of Brazilian Studies in the United States. . . . Virtually single-handedly, Professor Margolis invented the study of the Brazilian Diaspora, and she began research on this topic a full decade before others had even identified the relevant trends.” Margolis is professor emerita of anthropology at the University of Florida and is the author of An Invisible Minority: Brazilians in New York City.

 

 

 

Landscaping with Conifers and Ginkgo for the Southeast was a finalist in the Specialty Book Category of the 50th Annual Georgia Author of the Year Awards. Coauthors Tom Cox and John Ruter were recognized by the Georgia Writers Association at a special banquet in Kennesaw, Georgia. Their book presents a variety of conifers and ginkgo that grow from Virginia to Florida to Texas, providing tips on growing, pruning, preventing disease and pest problems, and on proper selection and cultivation requirements—all unique to the Southeast. The authors compile years of research and horticulture experience that will aid anyone, whether novice or professional, in creating beautiful year-round landscapes.

 

 

Historian and UPF author Canter Brown Jr. was recently awarded the Chengzhong Focus Foundation Award for Scholarly Excellence. The award recognizes Brown as “the preeminent living Florida historian” and provides Brown with a grant of $10,000 for developing new works of creative excellence. Brown has written and edited several UPF books, including The Supreme Court of Florida, 1917-1972, Florida’s Peace River Frontier, and The Varieties of Women’s Experiences: Portraits of Southern Women in the Post–Civil War Century.

 

 

 

 

Two UPF books received honorable mentions in the Second Biennial Deep South Book Prize, awarded by the Summersell Center for the Study of the South at the University of Alabama. The Deep South Book Prize is given to the best book on the history or culture of the Deep South. We’re pleased to share the news that Gregory Smithers’ Slave Breeding: Sex, Violence, and Memory in African American History and Steven Hahn’s The Life and Times of Mary Musgrove are both recipients of honorable mentions.