UNF professor receives award for contributions to ‘Indigenous Florida’ edition of Florida Historical Quarterly
Dr. Denise Bossy, associate professor of history, has been awarded the Arthur W. Thompson Award from the Florida Historical Society (FHS) for her contributions to the special issue of the Florida Historical Quarterly (FHQ) journal titled, “Indigenous Florida.” The award will be presented to Bossy and this year’s other winners at the Florida Historical Society 2022 Public History Forum and the 33rd Annual Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society Conference in Gainesville, Florida, on Thursday, May 19.
Named in honor of the late Arthur W. Thompson, longtime University of Florida history professor and former editor of the Florida Historical Quarterly, this award recognizes the most outstanding article appearing in FHQ during the preceding publication year. However, due to the high-quality articles and contributions to the “Indigenous Florida” edition of the journal, the FHS panel decided that the entire issue and all its contributors were deserving of this special recognition.
The award recognizes Dr. Bossy’s role in editing the special issue and in authoring its introductory essay with Dr. Andrew K. Frank (FSU). In “Charting a Path toward an Indigenous History of Florida,” Bossy and Frank examine the enduring importance of Native people to Florida’s history. They first conceptualized the special issue several years ago and recruited the other historians involved—among them James Hill, one of Bossy’s former MA students at UNF.