HIST 4500A: The History of the Body

HIST 4500A: Seminar in British History: The History of the Body
Fall 2025-Winter 2026

Course Description: While this is a course about modern British history (ie/ from about 1750 to the present), the theme for the course is the “History of the Body.” The recent Covid crisis put into sharp relief how central the body is to how we live our lives and how the concepts of health, wellness, disease, and disability are at the heart of political and economic structures — as well as resistance to these structures. In this course, we will explore how the “history of the body” is not just about medical history or, even, topics specifically about the human body but an analytical framework through which we can approach any topic in the past to find out how politics, economy, culture, society, and religion operated in any given historical context.

In the Fall semester, we will explore how scholars working in modern British history have studied the body and/or used the body as an analytical tool to explain transformations and power struggles that occurred in Britain and empire. This may include readings about public health and vaccination history; disability; emotions, embodiment, and the senses; enslavement and the body; racialized thinking and institutional racism; ideas about gender, sex, and sexuality; workers, class, and the body; food, air, and water; imperialism, colonialism, and decolonization; contending religious paradigms; humanism and posthumanism; mobility, movement, and migration; and fashion and adornment. We will also be reading theoretical and philosophical works about the body and how it (and the boundaries ascribed to it) are constructed.

In the Winter semester, as a class we will choose a specific timeframe within modern Britain to focus on (say, the late Victorian period, or the 1950s and 60s) and students will apply one or more of the “history of the body” approaches we discuss in the Fall semester to an original research topic of their own devising in that time period. We will discuss how to: generate topics and research plans, write a proposal, find and analyze primary sources, think about historiographical intervention, write in drafts, and craft arguments and argumentation. We will also engage in peer review. The output format for the research project will probably be a formal written essay but I am open to other modes of presentation.

Class Format: This is a 1.0 credit seminar that will meet in-person once per week for three hours. All students are expected to attend every class. The instructor is looking into making the class a hybrid one (ie/ where people can decide if they want to attend in person or synchronously online via Zoom week-to-week). Details on that will be posted sometime in August along with a full syllabus.

Evaluation: Attendance and participation will be graded in both semesters and is mandatory. There will also be weekly reflective assignments in both semesters. A small group oral presentation will likely be assigned in the first few weeks of the Fall semester. Students will be assigned discuss leads in the Fall as well. The summative paper for the Fall semester will be a historiographical essay based on the readings we do in that semester. The Winter semester will revolve around students producing aspects of their research project in a timely manner and engaging in constructive feedback with their peers.

Prerequisites: Students should complete either HIST 3810 or 3820 before taking this class so that they have been introduced to the concepts and content of historical theory and historiographical analysis.

Required readings: Readings for this course have not yet been set. Having said that, students should be prepared to read and discuss about 120 pages of text per week. This reading load will come in the form of academic journal articles, monograph chapters, and theoretical texts, some of which will be challenging (which is why I want you to have gained an introduction to theoretical discussions already through courses like HIST 3810 and 3820). Of course, we will discuss the ins and outs of each reading so there is no expectation that everyone will come to class with a perfect understanding of all things for the week but do know that some of the readings, especially in the first few weeks, will be challenging.

Email the instructor if you have any questions or concerns.