Faculty and Staff

Biography

Scot A. French is a digital public historian specializing in the study of cultural landscapes and sites of memory associated with 19th- and 20th-century African American and Southern history. He is author of The Rebellious Slave: Nat Turner in American Memory (Houghton Mifflin, 2004) and lead author (with Craig Barton and Peter Flora) of Booker T. Washington Elementary School and Segregated Education in Virginia (National Park Service, 2007). 

He has contributed essays to several edited volumes, including Jeffersonian Legacies, ed. Peter S. Onuf (University of Virginia Press, 1993); Media, Culture, and the Modern African American Freedom Struggle, ed. Brian Ward (University Press of Florida, 2001); Pride Overcomes Prejudice: A History of Charlottesville’s African American School (JSAAHC, 2013); and Marked, Unmarked, Remembered: A Geography of American Memory, eds. Andrew Lichtenstein and Alex Lichtenstein (West Virginia University Press, 2017).  

A film based on his research, "That World is Gone: Race and Displacement in a Southern Town," won Audience Favorite, Best Short Documentary, at the Virginia Film Festival (2010). That same year, he received the University of Virginia's Black Community Advocate Award from the Black Student Alliance, Black Leadership Institute, and the U.Va. chapter of the NAACP. 

French received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Virginia in 2000. As associate director of UVA’s Carter G. Woodson Institute (1997-2006), he co-directed the Ford Foundation-funded Center for the Study of Local Knowledge and continued its work as director of the Virginia Center for Digital History (2006-2010). 

Today, at the University of Central Florida, he is an Associate Professor of History, Director of Public History, and Associate Director of the Center for Humanities and Digital Research. He is a core faculty member in UCF's Texts and Technology Ph.D. program and a founding member and past chair of the Florida Digital Humanities Consortium (fldh.org).

French is a member of the UCF Faculty Senate, and serves on its Research Council Policy Committee (chair), Admissions and Standards Committee, and Strategic Planning Council. He also serves on a number of academic advisory boards, including:

• The Papers of William Short (2022-present)
• American Archive of Public Broadcasting Scholar Advisory Committee (2018-present)
• The Florida Historic Marker Council (Chair, 2021-2022)
• The Zora Neale Hurston Festival of Arts & Culture Academics Committee (Chair, 2020-2024)
• The University of Virginia's President's Commission on the University in the Age of Segregation
  

Education

• Ph.D. in History from University of Virginia (2000)

Research Interests

• Digital and Public History
• Community Studies/Local Knowledge
• Sites of Memory
• Southern History
• African American History
• Atlantic World/African Diaspora
  

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Selected Publications

Books

• Scot A. French, The Rebellious Slave: Nat Turner in American Memory (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2004)

Films

• Scot A. French, Hannah Brown Ayers, and Lance Warren, That World is Gone: Race & Displacement in a Southern Town (Field Studio, 2010). Winner, Audience Favorite Award for Best Short Documentary, Virginia Film Festival, Nov. 4-7, 2010.

Edited Collections

• Scot A. French, "'An Imperfect Sketch' Revisited: Burkley Bullock's Life and Legacy at UVA and Beyond" in After Emancipation: Racism and Resistance at the University of Virginia," eds. Kirt von Daacke and Andrea Douglass (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2024): 49-60.
  
• Scot A. French, "VisualEyes This: Using Visualization Tools to Engage Students in Historical Research and Digital Humanities R&D," in Quick Hits for Teaching with Digital Humanities: Successful Strategies from Award-Winning Teachers, eds. Christopher J. Young, Michael Morrone, Thomas C. Wilson, and Emma Annette Wilson (Indiana University Press, October 2020).
  
• Scot A. French, "Cabin Pond," in Marked, Unmarked, Remembered: A Geography of American Memory, eds, Andrew Lichtenstein and Alex Lichtenstein (West Virginia University, 2017): 114-117.
• Scot A. French, “African American Civic Activism and the Making of Jefferson High School, 1865-1926,” in Pride Overcomes Prejudice: A History of Charlottesville’s African American School (Charlottesville, Va.: Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, 2013): 31-72.
• Scot A. French, “Mau-Mauing the Filmmakers: Should Black Power Take the Rap for Killing ‘Nat Turner,’ the Movie?” in Media, Culture, and the Modern African American Freedom Struggle, ed. Brian Ward (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001): 233-254.
• Scot A. French and Edward L. Ayers, “The Strange Career of Thomas Jefferson: Race and Slavery in American Memory, 1943-1993,” in Peter S. Onuf, ed., Jeffersonian Legacies (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1993): 418-45.

Articles/Essays

• Julian C. Chambliss and Scot A. French, "A Generative Praxis: Curation, Creation, and Black Counterpublics," Scholarly Editing: The Annual of the Association for Documentary Editing," Vol. 39 (2022).
  
• Scot A. French, “Notes on the Future of Virginia: Visualizing a 40-Year Conversation on Race and Slavery in the Correspondence of Jefferson and Short,” Current Research in Digital History, Vol. 1, No. 1 (2018). http://crdh.rrchnm.org/essays/v01-15-notes-on-the-future-of-virginia/
  
• Scot A. French, "Social Preservation and Moral Capitalism in the Historic Black Township of Eatonville, Florida: A Case Study of 'Reverse Gentrification,'" Change Over Time, Vol. 8, No. 1 (Spring 2018): 54-72.
• David Staley, Scot French, and Bill Ferster, "Visual Historiography: Visualizing 'The Literature of a Field,'" Journal of Digital Humanities, Vol. 3, No. 1 (Spring 2014).
• Scot A. French, "The Confessions of Nat Turner, 1831” and “The Confessions of Nat Turner, 1967,” Encyclopedia Virginia (Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, 2009).
• Scot A. French, “What is Social Memory?” Southern Cultures 2 (Fall 1995): 9-18.

Book Reviews

• Scot A. Frrench, review of Atlascope Boston (v2 released Jan. 13, 2023), Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library, New England Quarterly 96 (December 2023): 368-371

• Scot A. French, review of Booker T. Washington in American Memory, by Kenneth M. Hamilton (University of Illinois Press, 2017), American Historical Review, Vol. 123, No. 5 (December 2018): 1697–1698.
• Scot A. French, review of The Land Shall Be Deluged in Blood: A New History of the Nat Turner Revolt, by Patrick H. Breen (Oxford University Press, 2016). Journal of American History, Vol. 104, No. 1 (June 2017): 185-186.
• Scot A. French, review of The Birth of a Nation, directed by Nate Parker (Fox Searchlight Pictures, 2016). The Public Historian, Vol. 39, No. 2 (May 2017): 99-103.
• Scot A. French, review of Nat Turner and the Rising in Southampton County, by David F. Allmendinger Jr. (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014). Journal of American History, Vol. 102, No. 2 (Dec. 2015): 555-556.
• Scot A. French, review of Bourbon Street: A History (Louisiana State University Press, 2014), by Richard Campanella. Journal of Southern History, Vol. 81, No. 4 (Nov. 2015): 960-961.
• Scot A. French, review of Sites of Slavery: Citizenship and Racial Democracy in the Post-Civil Rights Imagination, by Salamishah Tillet. Journal of American History, Vol. 100, No. 1 (Mar. 2013): 301-302.
• Scot A. French, review of The Horrible Gift of Freedom: Atlantic Slavery and the Representation of Emancipation, by Marcus Wood. Journal of American History, Vol. 97, No. 4 (Mar. 2011): 1189.
• Scot A. French, review of Defining Moments: African American Commemoration and Political Culture in the South, 1863–1913, by Kathleen Ann Clark.  Journal of American History, Vol. 93, No. 3 (Dec. 2006): 879-880.
• Scot A. French, review of Foul Means: The Formation of a Slave Society in Virginia, 1660-1740, by Anthony S. Parent. Journal of Social History, Vol. 39, No. 2 (Winter 2005): 556-558.

Invited Lectures/Presentations

• "Exploring Black History, Music, & the Arts Through the Cultural Landscape of Eatonville, Florida," Association for the Study of African-American Life and History (ASALH), Dorothy Turner Johnson Branch, Inaugural Black History Month Kickoff Breakfast, Shiloh Baptist Church, Orlando, Feb. 3, 2024.
  

Miscellaneous Publications

• Scot A. French, Craig Barton, and Peter Florida, Booker T. Washington Elementary School and Segregated Education in Virginia (Washington, D.C.: Department of Interior, 2007).

Awards

2017 Winter Park Magazine "Most Influential People" Award for work as Public Historian

2014 Burke Brown Steppe Chapter, Afro-American Historical and Genealogical Society of Virginia, Award for Outstanding Service to the Community

2010 Black Community Advocate Award, presented by the University of Virginia's Black Student Alliance, Black Leadership Institute, and the UVA chapter of the NAACP

2010 Winner, Audience Favorite, Best Short Documentary, Virginia Film Festival, That World is Gone: Race and Displacement in a Southern Town

2005 Honorable Mention, Gustavus Myers Outstanding Book Award, The Rebellious Slave: Nat Turner in American Memory (Houghton Mifflin, 2004). Hosted by the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights at the University of Arkansas, this competition recognizes works of scholarship and literature that "extend our understanding of the root causes of bigotry and the range of options we as humans have in constructing alternative ways to share power."

Courses

• Spring 2025
• Fall 2024
• Summer 2024
• Spring 2024
• Fall 2023
• Summer 2023