James P. Jones Distinguished Lecture Series

The Florida State University Department of History is pleased to announce that Dr. Sarah McNamara will deliver the 2025 James P. Jones Distinguished Lecture. Originally from Tampa, Dr. McNamara is Associate Professor of History and Latino and Mexican American Studies at Texas A&M. Her talk, entitled "The Historical Is Personal: Researching, Remembering, and Writing Ybor City: Crucible of the Latina South," will be held in Bellamy 404 from 2:00-3:30 PM on April 11, 2025.

Dr. McNamara is the author of Ybor City: Crucible of the Latina South, published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2023. The book received several awards, including the H.L. Mitchell Award from the Southern Historical Association the Willie Lee Rose Prize from the Southern Association of Women Historians, and the Bronze Medal for Florida Nonfiction from the Florida Book Awards. She has also worked to commemorate the 1937 Antifascist Women's March in Tampa, a project that received the Preserving Place Award from the Florida Historic Trust. Her family is from Ybor City.

The James P. Jones Distinguished Lecture Series honors the memory of Professor Jim Jones, beloved teacher and scholar in the FSU History Department for 57 years. The series brings a prominent historian of the United States to campus each year to lecture and work with students and faculty. The lectures are open to the public, and those interested are invited to email Dr. Katherine Mooney at as-history@fsu.edu to be put on our mailing list.

Previous lecturers include:

• 2024 Historian Tara Dudley “Building the Nation: Enslaved and Free Architects, Builders, and Artisans"
• 2023 Historian Brandy Clay Brimmer “Black Women’s Battles for Survivors’ Benefits in Post-Civil War America”
• 2022 Historian and author Pamela Grundy “Strong and Fearless: the WNBA and the Fight for Racial Justice”
• 2021 Professor Ryan André Brasseaux (Yale) “Louisiana Saturday Night: Representing Cajun Music in America after World War II”
• 2020 Professor Kathryn Olivarius (Stanford) “Necropolis: Disease, Power, and Capitalism in the Cotton Kingdom”
• 2019 Professor Ari Kelman (University of California Davis) “From Manassas to Mankato: How the Civil War Bled into the Indian Wars”
• 2018 Professor Elizabeth R. Varon (University of Virginia) “Joseph T. Wilson’s The Black Phalanx: African American Soldiers and Civil War Memory”
• 2017 Professor David W. Blight (Yale) “Writing Frederick Douglass’s Life: Why and Why Now?”
• 2016 Professor Jane Kamensky (Harvard) “John Singleton Copley and the Art of War”
• 2015 Professor Brian DeLay (University of California Berkeley) "Dam Breaking: Mercantilism, Armaments, and the Demolition of Europe's America"
• 2014 Professor Philip D. Morgan (Johns Hopkins) "Caribbean Slavery"

We are honored to archive the memories of some of Jim's thousands of students, colleagues, and friends. Please visit our memorial page to enjoy these pictures, videos, and stories and to submit your own.