Dr. Alex Zukas, a professor of history at National University, has been selected to participate in a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Institute, “Beyond East and West: the Early Modern World, 1400-1800.” His admission into the NEH Summer Institutes constitutes national scholarly recognition for his academic contributions, which includes his current project developing a book on the 18th-century Anglo-German cartographer Herman Moll.
This is the fourth time that Dr. Zukas has been selected to participate in the National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Institutes, which provides opportunities for academics to engage with others in their related fields and share their breadth of knowledge. In the case of Dr. Zukas, he is writing the first comprehensive analysis of Herman Moll’s map-making in relation to the global expansion of British Empire in the 18th century, a book that has the working title “Herman Moll and the Entangled Cartography of the British Empire.” The book has been accepted for publication by Lexington Books, with expected date of release to be 2019.
Dr. Zukas is one of 25 university faculty nationwide selected to participate in the three-week NEH Summer Institute on “Beyond East and West: the Early Modern World, 1400-1800” at Indiana University and directed by Dr. Kaya Sahin and Dr. Julia Schleck. It is one of a number of NEH Summer Institutes being attended by 537 participating scholars who will teach over 93,975 American students the following year. The Endowment is a federal agency that, each summer, supports these enrichment opportunities at colleges, universities, and cultural institutions, so that faculty can work in collaboration and study with experts in humanities disciplines.
As part of the National University College of Letters and Sciences, Dr. Zukas’ research is interdisciplinary. He he has published articles and book chapters on working-class and environmental history, European imperialism and colonialism, the history of cartography, and the teaching of history. Some of his recent publications include: “Making the Geographic Turn: Researching and Teaching Early-Modern British and World History,” The Middle Ground Journal (Spring-Summer 2017); “Port Cities in the Maps of Herman Moll, 1700-1730,” World History Connected 13, 1 (February 2016); and “The Cartography of Herman Moll and European Views of Muslim South Asia, 1700-1730.” Special Double Issue: European Encounters with Islam in Asia, Journal of World History 25, nos. 2-3 (June/September 2014).