N.Durbach@utah.edu

Curriculum Vitae

801/581-7605

CTIHB 223

About

Nadja Durbach is Professor of History at the University of Utah and co-editor of the Journal of British Studies. A cultural and social historian of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain, her research focuses on the history of the body and its relationship to the state, the nation, and the empire. She is currently working on a book entitled Registration Nation: Identity, Privacy, and the Recording of Persons in Modern Britain. This project explores how the British state’s attempts to register different populations opened up a range of contentious questions about race, sex, class, legal status, personhood, health, ability, freedom, citizenship, and ultimately the relationship among the individual, the family, the state, the nation, and the empire.

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Education

• BA (Honours), History, University of British Columbia
• MA, History, Johns Hopkins University
• PhD, History, Johns Hopkins University

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Research Focus

History of the body in nineteenth- and twentieth-century Britain and its empire.

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Key Publications

 Many Mouths: The Politics of Food in Britain From the Workhouse to the Welfare State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).

Spectacle of Deformity: Freak Shows and Modern British Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).

Bodily Matters: The Anti-Vaccination Movement in England, 1853-1907 (Durham:  Duke University Press, 2005).

“Feeding ‘Growing Boys’ and Nourishing ‘Handy English Lads’: British Prison Diets and the Reclamation of the Male Juvenile Offender, 1895-1908,” Gender & History Special Issue on Food, Gender, and Sovereignty, 34(3) 2022.

“’Why cant 2 brothers?’: World War I and Britain’s Deceased Brother’s Widow Act of 1921,” Journal of Family History, 47(1) 2022.

“Keeping Kosher in the Camp: Feeding Interned British Jews During the First World War,” Immigrants & Minorities, 38(1-2) 2020.

“Dead or Alive?: Stillbirth Registration, Premature Babies, and the Definition of Life in England and Wales, 1836-1960,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 94(1) 2020.

“One British Thing: A Bottle of Welfare Orange Juice, c. 1961-71,” Journal of British Studies 57(3) 2018.

“The Parcel is Political: The British Government and the Regulation of Food Parcels for Prisoners of War, 1914-1918,” First World War Studies 9(1) 2018.

“The Politics of Provisioning: Feeding South Asian Prisoners During the First World War,” War & Society 37 (2) 2018.

“Private Lives, Public Records: Illegitimacy and the Birth Certificate in Twentieth-Century Britain,” Twentieth Century British History 25(2) 2014.

“Skinless Wonders: Body Worlds and the Victorian Freak Show,” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 69(1) 2014.

“Smallpox, Vaccination, and the Marked Body,” in Stephen Rice and Michael Sappol, eds., A Cultural History of the Body: The Age of Empire (Oxford: Berg, 2010).

“Incubator Babies and the Prosthetic Womb,” Victorian Review 35(2) 2009.

“London, Capital of Exotic Exhibitions From 1830 to 1860,” in Nicolas Bancel, et.al., eds., Human Zoos, trans. Teresa Bridgeman (Liverpool:  Liverpool University Press, 2009).

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Teaching

History 1110: European History Since 1300
History 3100: The Historian’s Craft
History 3140: Victorian Britain
History 3240: Twentieth-Century Britain
History 4080: History of Medicine
History 4095/6095: Governing Bodies

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Awards

Fellow, Tanner Humanities Center, University of Utah (2004, 2024)

Gourmand Award, Best in the World (Food Security Category) for Many Mouths (2020)

College of Humanities Distinguished Scholar (2018)

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship (2016-7)

Franklin Research Grant, American Philosophical Society (2016)

Transformative Research in the Humanities Grant (2015)

Associated Students of the University of Utah Student Choice Teaching Award (2007)

Early Career Teaching Award, University of Utah (2005)

Ramona Cannon Award for Teaching Excellence in the Humanities, University of Utah (2005)

Virgil Award for outstanding mentoring of graduate students in History, University of Utah (2003)