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A Brief History of Florida's Landscape

Jevgenij Voronov
/
Unsplash
A swamp-like landscape

This month, a Miami University of Ohio professor, Michele Navakas, released a book called, "Liquid Landscape: Geography and Settlement at the Edge of Early America."

That "liquid landscape" she refers to is Florida — where she says "land and water frequently change places with little warning, dissolving homes and communities along with the very concepts of boundaries themselves."

That imagery is all too real for many Southwest Floridians after Hurricane Irma made landfall four weeks ago.

Navakas joins Gulf Coast Live to talk about the cycle of settlement and destruction in Florida — and whether or not she feels that history will only continue to repeat itself.

Rachel Iacovone is a reporter and associate producer of Gulf Coast Live for WGCU News. Rachel came to WGCU as an intern in 2016, during the presidential race. She went on to cover Florida Gulf Coast University students at President Donald Trump's inauguration on Capitol Hill and Southwest Floridians in attendance at the following day's Women's March on Washington.Rachel was first contacted by WGCU when she was managing editor of FGCU's student-run media group, Eagle News. She helped take Eagle News from a weekly newspaper to a daily online publication with TV and radio branches within two years, winning the 2016 Society of Professional Journalists Mark of Excellence Award for Best Use of Multimedia in a cross-platform series she led for National Coming Out Day. She also won the Mark of Excellence Award for Feature Writing for her five-month coverage of an FGCU student's transition from male to female.As a WGCU reporter, she produced the first radio story in WGCU's Curious Gulf Coast project, which answered the question: Does SWFL Have More Cases of Pediatric Cancer?Rachel graduated from Florida Gulf Coast University with a bachelor's degree in journalism.