recent
State of the field
A comment on the place of national (British) history in the historical discipline for Modern British History.
“Urbanism after the Victorian City”
On the intersection of urban history and intellectual history in The Modern British City, eds. Simon Gunn, Peter Mandler, & Otto Saumarez Smith (Lund Humphries, 2025).
“Peter Mandler and the Special Relationship”
A short essay, co-written with Deborah Cohen and Susan Pedersen, on Peter Mandler’s career mediating between British historians in the US and UK. This piece was published in a festschrift upon Mandler’s retirement, Democratising History: Modern British History Inside and Out (2025).
Teaching
This fall I am teaching an experimental first-year seminar for NYU’s Core Curriculum. This pilot version of “Complexities: Oceans,” which will roll out college-wide in 2027, introduces new students to NYU faculty in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences, as they each apply their expertise to shed light on some aspect of the oceans that (increasingly) dominate our planet.
Thatcher’s Progress is now available in paperback . . .
. . . and, using this flyer, 20% off.
Teaching award
NYU awarded a Teaching Innovation Award to this low-tech approach to assessing learning in large humanities classes.
Public writing
“The Queen is dead. England is not.” On the state-of-the-nation upon the Queen’s death for the Washington Post. This piece got picked up in a number of places, from the Bangladesh Post to Stars and Stripes.
“Yet despite the tried-and-true Tory tactic of sacrificing wounded leaders to reset their public standing, this time could be different.” On Boris Johnson’s resignation for the Washington Post.
Reviews (originally in Cercles)
Peter Stansky, Twenty Year On: Views and Reviews of Modern Britain.
Stefan Collini, The Nostalgic Imagination: History in English Criticism.
Unpublished paper
“Welfare State Modernism and the Politics of Aesthetic Change,” a standalone version of Chapter 3 of Thatcher’s Progress.