Image: Congratulations to doctoral candidate Alex Bowen, who has been selected to receive the Jane Mulkey and Rufus King Green Graduate Fellowship for the 2025-26 academic year. Recipients are selected for criteria based on character, academic achievement, and talent. This award was made possible through the philanthropic generosity of the Green family. As a native Floridian and Southerner, Alexander Bowen is interested in the correlations between class, race, and memory as Florida’s and the South’s economy evolved after the American Civil War. In his research, Bowen is learning what influence developments in Florida’s postbellum economy had on Middle Florida’s planter class, how and why the planters participated in the construction of Lost Cause myth, and how this ideology and the planters’ actions impacted Black Floridians, particularly in connection to racial violence in the early 20th century.
