Colonial studies are often conducted within the “bubble” of academia and in isolation from the descendants of the communities most dramatically impacted by the ravages of colonialism. In this talk, Kimberly C. Borchard (Randolph-Macon College) will discuss how her first monograph, Appalachia as Contested Borderland of the Early Modern Atlantic, 1528-1715, in chronicling two centuries of atrocities committed against the Apalachee people and other Native societies of the American southeast, led to a new project documenting Apalachee history since 1763. Through contact with living descendants of the people that first encountered Spanish gold-seekers in the Florida peninsula in the early sixteenth century, Borchard has transitioned from purely historical research to contemporary advocacy for living members of the Apalachee tribe, whose land claims and sovereignty continue to be systematically ignored by the U.S. government.

Kim Borchard earned her B.A. and M.A. from Ohio University and her Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. She teaches courses in Spanish, Latin American colonial literature, the social issues surrounding Latin American immigration to the U.S., and humor in Spanish at Randolph-Macon College in Ashland, Virginia. Her first book, Appalachia as Contested Borderland of the Early Modern Atlantic, 1528-1715 explores the European obsession with Appalachian mineral resources from 1528 to 1715, reframing Appalachian history within the fields of Latin American, early American, and Atlantic history. Her next book, tentatively titled The Talimali Band the Apalachee Indians of Louisiana: The Struggle for Survival and Federal Reinstatement of One of America's Oldest Tribes, 1763-2024, will document the history of the Apalachee diaspora in Louisiana after the tribe's expulsion from Florida in 1704.