About the Instructor:


Dr. Don Zeigler

Don is professor of geography at the Virginia Beach campus of Old Dominion University, where he has been on the faculty since 1980. He teaches courses on the Middle East, plus cultural and political geography. Don received his degrees, all in geography, from Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania (B.S.), the University of Rhode Island (M.A.), and Michigan State University (Ph.D.). He has participated in a Fulbright Group Project to Morocco and has had a USIA Fellowship to Syria, a Malone Fellowship to the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, and a post-doctoral fellowship in Jordan from the American Center for Oriental Research. In 1997, he served as president of the National Council for Geographic Education. In 2006, he received an Outstanding Faculty Award from the State Council for Higher Education in Virginia (SCHEV). He is an avid traveler, photographer, and map enthusiast.


Foreword by Michael Wood

Michael Wood is a British documentary film maker and a historian who blends history and geography in his interpretations of the past and present. Mr. Wood trained as a medievalist at Oxford University and worked as a journalist before moving to television as a writer and director of films on history, travel, and culture. He was born in Manchester, England, and today lives in London with his wife and their two children. We are privileged to have him provide a foreword to the course and to introduce each of the five parts of "Contemporary Regions."

Mr. Wood has created more than 60 television documentaries that have been broadcast around the world. His recent series include The Story of India, In Search of Myths and Heroes, In Search of Shakespeare, Conquistadors, and In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great. His documentary on Saddam's Killing Fields won multiple prizes including a Silver Nymph (critics prize for Best Documentary on ITV at the Monte Carlo Television Festival) and a BAFTA award nomination for Best Documentary.

To accompany his television series, Mr. Wood has written a number of best-selling books, some of which are still in print after 20 years. He is also editor of The World Atlas of Archaeology and his now working on Travels in Time, stories about British history.