Christian Koot, Ph.D.

Biography

Christian J. Koot joined the History Department in 2007 after receiving his PhD from the University of Delaware. He is the author of two books, Empire at the Periphery: British Colonists, Anglo-Dutch Trade, and the Development of the British Atlantic, 1621-1713 (NYU Press, 2011) and A Biography of a Map in Motion: Augustine Herrman’s Chesapeake (NYU Press, 2018). A Biography of a Map in Motion focuses on the production and consumption of one extraordinary and now rare transatlantic object, a map of the seventeenth-century Chesapeake, and the colonial merchant, planter, and diplomat who created it, Augustine Herrman.

Professor Koot’s research interests focus on the United States in the Colonial and Early Modern periods, the history of the Atlantic world and the Caribbean, economic and commercial history, imperial history, and the History of Cartography. At Towson University he teaches courses in these areas as well as a TSEM focused on the History of Towson University in the 1960s and 1970s. Dr. Koot is also the Chair of the History Department.

Selected Publications

• A Biography of a Map in Motion: Augustine Herrman’s Chesapeake (New York University Press, 2018)
• Empire at the Periphery: British Colonists, Anglo-Dutch Trade, and the Development of the British Atlantic, 1621-1713 (New York University Press, Early American Places Book Series, July 2011).
• “Imagining the West Indies: An Early English Map of Montserrat,” Winterthur Portfolio, 53, 1 (Spring, 2019), 3-39.
• "Anglo-Dutch Trade in the Chesapeake and the British Caribbean, 1621-1733,” in Gert Oostindie & Jessica Roitman, ed., Dutch Atlantic Connections,1680-1800: Networks and Nodal Points (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 72-102.
• “The Merchant, the Map, and Empire: Augustine Herrman’s Chesapeake and Interimperial Trade, 1644-1673,” William and Mary Quarterly, 62, 4 (October 2010), 603-44.

Recent Lectures and Presentations

2023
“Unearthing Towson’s History,” Universities Studying Slavery at Maryland Colleges and Universities, The 1856 Project Inaugural Symposium, College Park, Maryland

2022
“Fashioning an Ornament to the Colony: Imperial Belonging and Crisis in the Governor’s Palace at New Bern,” The David Center for the American Revolution at the American Philosophical Society Seminar Series, Philadelphia, Penn. 

“A Biography of a Map: Augustine Herrman’s Virginia and Maryland (1673),” Cartography & Culture Mapping the Early American South, Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA), Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

“Students as agents of change and memory keeping: Unearthing TU’s history,” (with Dr. Ashley Todd-Diaz and Dr. Brian Jara) Towson University Educators Summit, Towson, Maryland

2021
“Mapping the Colonial Chesapeake,” Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts (MESDA) Summer Program, Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

2019
“Malleable Lines: Borders on Early Modern Maps,” Lines on a Map, British Library, London, England

“Things to Think With: The Use of Borders on Early Modern Maps of the British Atlantic,” The Power of Maps and the Politics of Borders,” American Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia, Penn.

Recent Book Reviews

Alida C. Metcalf, Mapping An Atlantic World, circa 1500 in Journal of Latin American Geography, 20, 3 (2021), 208-210.

Jonathan Scott, How the Old World Ended: The Anglo-Dutch-American Revolution, 1500-1800 in The Journal of British Studies, 49, 4 (2020), 914-16.

“More than Just illustrations: the Cartographic Turn in Early American History,” review essay of S. Max Edelson, The New Map of Empire: How Britain Imagined America Before Independence and Martin Brückner, The Social Life of Maps in America, 1750-1860 in Reviews in American History, 47, 1 (March 2019), 17-23.

Awards and Honors

• NEH Research Fellowship, Winterthur Museum and Library, Winterthur, Delaware, 2011
  Jeannette D. Black Memorial Research Fellowship, John Carter Brown Library, Providence, 2011
• Faculty Development and Research Committee Summer Research Fellowship, Towson University, 2009
• Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, Theta Beta Chapter, Phi Alpha Theta, Towson University, 2009
• Towson Academy of Scholars, Towson University, 2008-09
• American Historical Association Kraus Research Grant, 2007
• International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, Harvard University, Short-Term Research Grant, 2007

Teaching, Fall 2024

• HIST 147: Honors History of the United States to the Civil War
• TSEM 102: Towson University in the Upheaval of the 20th Century