FLASC 

Florida Studies Center and the

Tampa Bay History Center Relaunch Regional History Journal

The Florida Studies Center and its program partners at the Tampa Bay History Center are pleased to announce the launch of a new history journal with a familiar name – Tampa Bay History.

Tampa Bay History was originally published twice a year, beginning in 1979, by the History Department at the University of South Florida, Tampa campus. Longtime editors Robert Ingalls, Ph. D. and Gary Mormino, Ph.D. published the journal largely on their own, with assistance provided by department office staff. In the end, Ingalls and Mormino could not keep up with the journal's demands in the face of their responsibilities as university professors and professional historians, and the journal folded in 1998.

Much has changed during the intervening years. In 2000, USF and the Tampa Bay History Center formed a program partnership to broaden each institution's impact and outreach to the community. The partnership has reached a new level with yet another joint program – the reintroduction of Tampa Bay History, scheduled for publication in November 2007. The annual journal will appear simultaneously in print format and as an open-access electronic publication, hosted by the USF Library System's Digital Collections & Imaging Unit.

Rodney Kite-Powell, the Tampa Bay History Center’s Saunders Foundation Curator of History, will head the journal’s new staff. Florida Studies Center Director Mark I. Greenberg will serve as the book review editor, and Andrew Huse, assistant librarian with USF’s Special Collections and Florida Studies Center, will take on the roll of assistant editor.

Creation of the journal’s editorial board was the first priority, and noted scholars were selected to represent a wide variety of fields. The board currently consists of twelve scholars: Gary Mormino, Paul Dosal, Aaron Smith and Cheryl Rodriguez (USF), James M. Denham (Florida Southern College), Robert Kerstein (University of Tampa), Jack Davis (University of Florida), Jerald Milanich (Florida Museum of Natural History, University of Florida), Maxine Jones (Florida State University), Joe Knetsch and Susan Parker (State of Florida), and Doris Weatherford (University of South Florida and Florida Southern College).

Articles in Tampa Bay History will cover a wide range of topics, including social, political and environmental history, archaeology, anthropology, and geography. The focus will be on the Tampa Bay area, but the journal will also publish articles that extend into “historic” Hillsborough County -- the roughly twenty-county area included within the original boundaries of Hillsborough County when it was created in 1834.

The USF Libraries and Tampa Bay History Center believe that publication of the new Tampa Bay History will allow the History Center and Florida Studies Center to further fulfill their missions and serve their consitituents by providing an outlet to write about and study the region’s history and culture.

The journal's editors seek submissions that appeal to a wide reading audience. They plan to follow the guideline first established in 1979 by Ingalls and Mormino: that “academics write so that nonprofessionals [can] read and enjoy their work and that nonacademic historians [or experts in other fields] meet scholarly standards for documentation.”

Anyone interested in submitting an article for publication should contact Rodney Kite-Powell at (813) 228-0097 or rkp@tampabayhistorycenter.org. To suggest books for review or to offer assistance as a book reviewer, please contact Mark I. Greenberg at mgreenbe@lib.usf.edu or call (813) 974-1198.