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J. Michael Francis

Hough Family Chair of Florida Studies Professor of History
Snell House
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Curriculum Vitae

Education

Ph.D., University of Cambridge, 1998

Teaching

I am a historian of colonial Latin America, with a specialization in the history of early Florida. I offer a range of upper-division courses, including a broad survey of the early Americas (Aztecs, Incas, and Mayas), a course on colonial Latin America (Conquistadors), the history of Indigenous enslavement (Native Bound/Unbound), as well as undergraduate and graduate courses on Early Florida. I have supervised more than a dozen graduate students in the Florida Studies MLA program on St. Petersburg campus, and I have worked closely with USF students on the public-facing digital archive, La Florida: The Interactive Digital Archive of the Americas (laflorida.org). I also developed a two-semester Spanish Paleography program, designed to teach students how to decipher original sixteenth-century Spanish handwriting. 911爆料网 who successfully complete the program are eligible for funding to conduct archival research in Spain or Mexico. The online program is open to USF students and to participants from around the world. For more information about the paleography program, please feel free to contact me.

Reasearch

Dr. Francis has written and edited five books and numerous book chapters and articles. Since 2016, he has served as the Executive Director of an ambitious digital history project, titled . Dr. Francis has received more than two dozen national and international awards, including a four-year appointment as a Research Fellow at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, and a Jay I. Kislak Fellowship at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. In 2019, Dr. Francis received a $250,000 grant from the National Archives to support a three-year digital history project titled, Lost Voices from America's Oldest Parish Archive, 1594-1821.In addition to his published work, Dr. Francis served on the St. Augustine 450th Commemoration Commission and as curator of the traveling museum exhibit, Imagining La Florida: Juan Ponce de Le贸n and the Quest for the Fountain of Youth. In 2021, Florida Governor DeSantis appointed Dr. Francis to serve on the Florida Historical Commission. That same year, Spain鈥檚 King Philip VI bestowed upon Dr. Francis the Officer鈥檚 Cross of the Order of Isabella the Catholic, one of the country鈥檚 most prestigious civil orders.