Diane M. Boucher
Independent Researcher,
History Consultant, & Educator
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​Diane is a 2014 History Ph.D. graduate of Clark University specializing in U.S., African American, and Atlantic World history.  

Her dissertation "Networks and Empires in the Maritime Borderlands: East Florida 1763-1811" required research in numerous English, Spanish, and French colonial records and state and federal government documents of the early U.S. national period.   

In addition to the dissertation, Diane has researched and presented papers at conferences and workshops about transatlantic slavery, Africans in the Americas, and African American life during the Civil War, Reconstruction, and Civil Rights eras.

Diane provides independent services for scholarly, family, and legal research.  

Diane currently teaches U.S. history at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.  Before that she taught U.S. history at  Fitchburg State University.  In a previous life, Diane worked as a daily news columnist, a legal assistant, and a title examiner.    





Publications:

“Impact of Black Population Density on the Desegregation of Southern U.S. Public Universities 1948-1963” Journal of Negro Education  (Winter, 2016)

“Murder and Mayhem on the East Florida Frontier” The Florida Historical Quarterly, (Winter, 2015).

“Late Eighteenth-Century Mapping of Amelia Island Florida”  American Historical Print Collectors Society Newsletter 38:1 (Summer 2013).

Conferences and Research Papers
“Balancing Community, Opportunity and Authority: Negotiating Power in Late Eighteenth-Century Colonial East Florida” – Early European and American Studies Association, 2016, Paris, France.

“The Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands: Securing Freedom in the Age of Reconstruction” – Boston Public Library Lecture Series, April, 2016

Webinar: “The Freedmen’s Bureau – A Treasury of African American life in the Civil War and Reconstruction” Workshop for National Archives Administration Archivists, Feb. 2015.

“Tracing African American Heritage in the Freedmen’s Bureau” African American Historical and Genealogical Society, June, 2014.

“Under the King’s Protection” A Comparative Analysis of British and Spanish Sovereignty of Amelia Island, East Florida” Conference of Florida Historians, Jan. 2014.

“Observers of Unchartered Territories: Late Eighteenth-Century Accounts of East Florida Geography, Nature, and Inhabitants” John Carter Brown Library Brown Bag Lunch Talk, April 2013.

"Confronting Liberty on the Spanish East Florida Border" Southeast American Studies Association Conference, Charleston, S.C., Feb. 2013.

"Networking in Amelia Island Frontier Society" Amelia Island Museum, Sept. 2011.

“The Howard Industrial School for Colored Women and Children: Examining the Freedmen’s Bureau Migration Experiment in Cambridge port, Mass.”  New England Historical Association Conference, April 2009.

"Researching African Americans in the Freedmen's Bureau Records: Teaching with Documents from the National Archives" National Archives and Records Administration Teacher Workshop, Feb. 2010.

“Africans as Agents of Change in U.S. Racial Discrimination: The Fight to End Discrimination Along Route 40” Clark University Grad Student Conference, 2008“.

"Analyzing a Key Event in the Civil Rights Movement – Emmett Till Jr.”  Teaching American History Conference, March 2008. 

“A Sequential Analysis of the Desegregation of State Universities in the Southern U.S., 1948-1963” New England Political Science Conference, April 2005.

“A Brief Review of the Purposes and Circumstances Surrounding Branding in the English Slave Trade and West Indies.”

“The Role and Depiction of Women in the Maroon Societies of Dutch Surinam and Jamaica in the Early American Period.”

“A Comparative Analysis of Native American Slavery in Early Colonial Carolinas and Brazil.”

“African American Enterprise in the Emancipation of Slaves in the District of Columbia, July 12, 1862 to January 14, 1863.”