Christopher Lukasik
- Associate Professor // English
- Affiliated Faculty // American Studies // SIS
Research Focus
American literature and art history before 1900; Early American Studies; visual studies and visual theory; illustration studies; history and theory of the novel; American cultural and intellectual history
Office and Contact
Room: SC 261
Email: clukasik@purdue.edu
Director, Faculty Fulbright Awards, Provost's Fellow
Ph.D., English, Johns Hopkins University, 2002
Biography
Christopher Lukasik specializes in the literary and visual cultural history of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Atlantic world. He has received over twenty-five fellowships and has presented over 100 papers on three continents and his work has been published in over 20 journals and edited collections. He is the author of Discerning Characters: The Culture of Appearance in Early America and is currently finishing a second monograph entitled The Image in the Text: Literature, Illustration, and the Rise of a Mass Visual Culture in Nineteenth-Century America.
Selected Publications: “‘The Instructed Eye’: What Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Drawing Books Can Tell Us About How We See,” Modelwork: Material Culture and Modeling in the Humanities (University of Minnesota P, 2021); “Race and the Rise of A Mass Visual Culture: The Case of David Hunter Strother’s Virginia Illustrated,” American Literary History (2020); “The Meaning of ‘Illustration’ in Early Nineteenth-Century America,” in Blackwell’s A Companion Guide to Illustration (2019): “Looking at the Overexposed: Visuality and Race in Harnett’s Attention Company,” Callaloo (2014): Discerning Characters: The Culture of Appearance in Early America (U Pennsylvania P, 2011).
Selected Grants and Fellowships: Rockwell Center Society of Fellows, Rockwell Center for American Visual Studies (2017-2019); Fulbright Specialist Grant, University of Graz, Austria (2018); NEH Summer Stipend Research Grant (2016); Lillian Gary Taylor Fellowship, Harrison Institute for American History, Literature, and Culture, University of Virginia (2013-14); Fulbright Scholar Grant to the University of the Philippines, Diliman (2009-2010); NEH Long-Term Research Grant, American Antiquarian Society (2004-05).
Teaching and Engagement Awards: Outstanding Leadership in Globalization Award, Office of Global Partnerships and Programs, Purdue University (2024), Kenneth T. Kofmehl Undergraduate Teaching Award, College of Liberal Arts, Purdue University (2014); Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award, Department of English (2019, 2016, 2015, 2014, 2012, 2011, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006); Excellence in Graduate Teaching Award, Department of English, Purdue University (2022, 2020, 2017, 2015, 2014, 2012, 2008, 2007).