NEH Postdoctoral Fellow — Jonathan Eacott

Background

Jonathan Eacott earned a joint BA in History and International Development Studies from McGill University, Montreal, followed by an MA in British History from Queen's University, Kingston. In 2008, he completed his PhD at the University of Michigan and is an assistant professor of history at the University of California, Riverside. His research interests focus on the British and their empire from the eighteenth century to the present. Professor Eacott has presented papers in Finland, Britain, Canada, and the United States and his awards include a Library Company of Philadelphia Program in Early American Economy and Society Fellowship, Winterthur Museum Robert Lee Gill Fellowship, North American Conference on British Studies Dissertation Year Fellowship, American Historical Association Bernadotte E. Schmitt Grant, and a Mellon Humanities Dissertation Fellowship with the Institute of Historical Research at the University of London. He is a postdoctoral fellow with the Omohundro Institute in Williamsburg, Virginia, from summer 2009 until 2011, where he will revise his first book manuscript for publication. The book explores the far-reaching economic, industrial, social, and political importance of decisions made by Britons, colonists, and Americans to assimilate the production and consumption of such India goods as cotton cloth and umbrellas into their local economies and societies, while they associated other India goods, such as hookah pipes and palanquins, with the East.