Thomas Howard

Armstrong Faculty Member Selected for NEH Institute

(May 2, 2011) Thomas Howard, Armstrong Atlantic State University professor of geography in the Department of History, has been selected as a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Scholar for an NEH institute titled “The Cultural and Historical Development of Modern India.” The program will run from July 4-29 in Delhi, Agra, and Varanasi, India. A group of 24 participants, from colleges and universities around the United States, has been selected for the institute, which is one of 21 summer study opportunities supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The program features a series of presentations by scholars, from India and other countries, on subjects ranging in time from the Indus Valley civilization of 2000 B.C., the age of the Mahabharata, the Mughal Empire, the independence movement led by Nehru and Gandhi, to the establishment of India in world popular culture through Bollywood movies. The lectures will be interspersed with site visits and field trips relevant to the topics of presentations.

Howard teaches a Geography and History of South Asia course and expects the NEH program to yield new material for use in that course as well as for his courses in world regional and cultural geography. He holds a Ph.D. in geography from the University of California at Berkeley and earned a master’s in anthropology and a bachelor’s in history from the University of Chicago.