Date of Award

2012

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Social Sciences

First Advisor

Goff, Brendan

Keywords

New College, Town-Down, Sarasota-Bradenton

Area of Concentration

History

Abstract

This thesis serves as an interpretive framework surrounding the foundation of New College of Florida until 1975. The college is framed as developing within the Sarasota-Bradenton Sunbelt community, noted for its conservative ideals and yet exhibiting a status-driven approach to modernization at the outset of the second half of the twentieth century. Specific facets of the community's identity are noted for influencing the approach to development and modernization of the area. Key community boosters along with the Chamber of Commerce sparked the initiative for a college within the Sarasota-Bradenton community. Aspects of New College's development indicate that these figures attempted to found the college in order to create an innovative, prestigious, and culturally affluent image for Sarasota and Bradenton. The evolution of the college, however, was significantly different from that imagined by the surrounding community. Parallel to this was the recruitment of a student body onto the campus that largely stood at odds with the community in terms of ideology and life styles. Town-gown relations are a major focus of this thesis and are demonstrated through the presence of social movements on campus that were prominent throughout the country during the mid-twentieth century. New College of Florida�when it was founded as a private, independent institution in 1960�serves as an interesting case study that both follows and challenges the larger phenomena of expanding higher education and the rise of the Sunbelt during the same time period.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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