Department of General History
Subject: Technology and Emotions: The Case of the British Empire Mail, 1840-1898
Supervisor: Prof. Dror Wahrman and Prof. Moshe Slohovsky
Abstract: I am a historian of modern Britain and its empire, and I question the intersection between technology and emotions. My dissertation examines the ways in which changing communication technology, most prominently the rise of steam engines in the 1830s and the reorganization of mail delivery from 1840 onwards, impacted the emotional connections between British family members dispersed throughout the nineteenth century empire. It likewise analyses the ways these emotional economies in turn reflected the inherent difficulties of empire. My current project questions whether imperial encounters contributed to changing cleanliness and soaping practices in the modern West. It probes the ways these redrew lines of social and gendered distinction, reconstructed racial relations, altered emotional lives, and reconfigured the body itself.
Rotenstreich Stipend 2016/17
Presidential Stipend 2014/15