VSU professor selected for summer institute

Dr. Charles Johnson, an assistant professor of History at Valdosta State University, was recently awarded a grant to attend the Dar al Islam Teachers Institute this summer.

The Dar al Islam Institute is a non-profit organization founded in 1979 to facilitate the growth of accurate information of Islam among American people. Johnson will attend the workshop July 9-22, in Abiquiu, N.M., along with 15 other teachers and professors from the United States and Canada.

"This seminar will help me with my course in Islamic history and culture that I teach as a senior seminar," Johnson said. "The program also ties into my study of ethnicity, conflict and ethnic stereotypes."

Johnson has traveled to Northern Ireland, Palestine and Israel to study the conflict and peace process.

Johnson has taught at Valdosta State since 1997 and in the fall will begin his new position as the director of Graduate Studies in the History Department. He was recently named to the executive board of the Society for German-American Studies as the membership director. In 1999 Johnson publish his first book Culture at Twilight: The National German-American Alliance, 1901-1918.