Philip Smith

Research Interests

Philip Smith received a Ph.D. from Texas A&M University in 2007. His dissertation “Persistent Borderland: Freedom and Citizenship in Territorial Florida” claims that Florida’s borderland status between natives and Europeans, between rival Europeans, between slaveholders and enslaved Black and native people, and where Indian removal was successfully resisted, created options for people who lacked overwhelming power that were not available in most other American places. His continuing research interests are Spanish borderlands, race, racism, and lynching in America, restorative justice, and American identity in the writings of James Weldon Johnson, the plays of Horton Foote, and compositions of Frederick Delius. Past research has been on Kurt Tucholsky and Weimar German culture and politics, and World War II writings of common soldiers.