Application deadline: March 4, 2013

Institute: June 3-June 28 at Saint Louis University, St. Louis, Missouri

The Institute invites applications for twenty-two university teachers and three advanced graduate students to participate as NEH Summer Scholars in a four-week program of lectures, discussions, field trips, and independent research on early modern world history. The Institute aims to help university teachers acquire expertise in the methods, problems, debates, and sources in early modern world history. The emergence of powerful empires across Eurasia set in motion processes of exchange, inaugurating a new era in world history characterized by cross-cultural contact among peoples from around the globe. Early modern empire-building led to the expansion of long-distance commerce, the worldwide spread of disease, animals, and plants, the globalization of Islam, Christianity, and Judaism, and new episodes of intellectual exchange. Three key themes provide the organizational structure for the program: 1) "Empires and Economies of Scale," which focuses on the intersection of state-building and commerce; 2) "Religious and Biological Interactions," which analyzes both missionary encounters and biological exchanges; and 3) "Ideas and Connections," which explores episodes of intellectual engagement. During the course of the four weeks, NEH Summer Scholars will work toward completing a project that will enable them to develop teaching expertise and/or a curriculum from a range of topics within the thematic framework of the Institute. Faculty: Laura Hostetler (University of Illinois in Chicago), Molly Greene (Princeton University), Rudi Matthee (University of Delaware), Carla Rahn Phillips (University of Minnesota), Simon Ditchfield (University of York), W. George Lovell (Queen’s University, Ontario), Richard Bulliet (Columbia University), Ulrike Strasser (University of California-Irvine), Timothy Parsons (Washington University in St. Louis).
For more information see http://sites.slu.edu/empiresandinteractions or send queries to empires.interactions@gmail.com.