NJIT Professor Wins Prized Fellowship to Explore Newark's Environmental Justice History
Neil Maher, NJIT master teacher and professor of history, has been named fellow for The New York Public Library’s Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers.
The fellowship traditionally attracts outstanding scholars, writers and visual artists from around the world. Fellows collaborate and develop scholarly work over a nine-month term with access to the vast research collections at the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building at Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street.
The fellowship is regarded as one of the most sought-after in the humanities, with past fellows having won National Book Awards, MacArthur Genius Awards and Pulitzer Prizes. Maher is one of just 15 others selected to the center’s 2022-23 class of fellows out of a pool of 506 applicants from 48 countries.
“I’m thrilled … this is one of the most competitive fellowships I’ve received during my career,” said Maher. “I grew up going to the New York Public Library’s main branch on 42nd Street as a kid, and the thought of having an office, doing research and writing inside that amazing building for an entire year is a dream come true.”
Maher, who teaches courses on U.S. environmental and political history, will spend his fellowship working on his new project, titled Wasted: An Environmental Justice History of Newark, New Jersey. The monograph analyzes the connections between racial and environmental discrimination in Newark during the post-World War II period.
Maher’s fellowship term runs from September 2022 to May 2023.
“I’ve been teaching my undergraduate and graduate students about environmental justice history in general, and the environmental justice history of Newark in particular, for several years now,” said Maher. “The more my students taught me about this history, the more I became interested in it myself. Finally, it just seemed natural that this important history of discrimination and activism in Newark should be my next book project.”
Maher’s writing in the field of environmental history has previously received acclaim with works such as Nature’s New Deal, which examines the rise of modern environmentalism and the Civilian Conservation Corps in the aftermath of The Great Depression. The book earned the Charles A. Weyerhaeuser Book Award for the best monograph in conservation history.
Maher has authored and edited numerous other books that have achieved mainstream notoriety, recently including Apollo in the Age of Aquarius, which was named a Choice Outstanding Title, a Bloomberg View Must Read Book and a Smithsonian Best Book. His essay and op-ed writing have appeared in publications such as The New York Times, the Washington Post, and many others.
