Seth Koven

My teaching and research interests include gender, social, economic, and cultural history of Europe, 1750 to the present, with particular focus on Great Britain; Modern European Women's history; comparative urban history (NY, Paris, London); comparative cultural history and historiography (US and Europe); and the history of sexuality. I have published on a variety of topics including the history of gender and welfare states; Slumming: Social and Sexual Politics in Victorian London (Princeton University Press, 2004) explores the relationship between eros and altruism in the shaping of social welfare in modern Britain. My current research project, "Christian Revolutionaries in 20th Century Britain: Peace, Poverty and Global Citizenship" focuses on a group of "Christian revolutionaries," all children of great and good "eminent Victorians," who committed themselves to lives of voluntary poverty in their pursuit of global social justice in the 20th century. This new work has spawned another closely connected book project, “Archival Love Stories: The Match Girl and the Heiress in early 20th Century Britain.” This project explores the remarkable love and intimate friendship between two powerful women divided by an immense social and economic divide: the fiercely observant half-orphaned Cockney matchgirl, Nellie Dowell, who longed to be a lady, and the radical Christian feminist daughter of a wealthy shipbuilder, Muriel Lester, who fled the burdens of her upper class upbringing. This study not only tells their story, but it also analyzes how and why historians love archives and the ways in which archives shape the stories we tell about them and their creators.

• Associate Professor of History, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, 7/2006-
• Associate Professor of History, Villanova University, Villanova, PA 9/94-6/2006
• Visiting Associate Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley, 1996-1997
• Visiting Scholar, Department of History, University of Pennsylvania, 1997-98
• Assistant Professor of History and Women's Studies, Villanova University, Villanova, Pennsylvania, 9/88 to 8/94
• Lecturer on History and on History and Literature, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 9/87 to 8/88

• Mothers of a New World, Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States, co-edited with Sonya Michel, (Routledge, 1993).
• Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London (Princeton University Press, 2004; paperback, 2006)

• "How the Victorians Read Sesame and Lilies," in Deborah Nord, ed., John Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, Rethinking the Western Tradition (Yale University Press, 2002)
• "Cultural Histories Old and New: Rereading the Work of Janet Oppenheim," Victorian Studies (Fall, 1997) with Mandler, Owen, and Pedersen.
• "Dr. Barnardo's 'Artistic Fictions': Photograaphy, Sexuality, and the Ragged Child in Victorian London," Radical History Review (Fall, 1997).
• "Remembering and Dismemberment: Crippled Children, Wounded Soldiers and The Great War in Great Britain," American Historical Review (Oct. 1994), reprt. Journal of Peace and Justice Studies (1994).
• "Womanly Duties: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States in France, Germany, Great Britain and the United States, 1880-1920," American Historical Review, (Oct. 1990) co-authored with Sonya Michel. Reprt. in Vincent and Shoemaker, eds., Gender and History in Western Europe (1998); in Fiona Montgomery and Christine Collette, eds, European Women's History Reader (2002); and in State Economy and Nation in 19th Century Europe, reader published for the Open University.
• "From Rough Lads to Hooligans: Boy Life, National Culture and Social Reform," in Andrew Parker, et. al., eds., Nationalisms and Sexualities (Routledge, 1992).
• "The Whitechapel Picture Exhibitions and the Politics of Seeing," in D. Sherman and I. Rogoff, eds., Museum Culture (University of Minnesota Press, 1994).
• "Henrietta Barnett: The (Auto)biography of a Late-Victorian Marriage," in S. Pedersen and P. Mandler, eds., After the Victorians (Routledge, 1993).
• "Borderlands: Women, Voluntary Action and Child Welfare in Great Britain 1840-1914," in Mothers of a New World.
• "Revisioning Reconstructions" in N. Finzsch and J. Martschakat, eds., Different Restorations: Reconstruction and 'Wiederaufbau' in Germany and United States (Berghan, 1996).
• "The Dangers of Castle Building: Surveying the Social Survey" in Bales, Bulmer and Sklar, editors, The Social Survey in Historical Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 1991).

• "Prisoners of Their Beds: Invalids, Injured Soldiers, and Cultures of Convalescence in Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth Century Britain," Radical History Review (Fall 2005).
• "Transatlantic Exchanges," HNET, HURBAN, October, 1999; reprinted in Historical Social Research 91 (2000) 112-117; and American Studies Journal (Winter 1999/Spring 2000) no.44.
• "The Ambivalence of Agency: Women, Families and Social Policy in France, Britain and the United States," Journal of Women's History (Spring, 1997)
• "Mother Love Among the London Poor," History Workshop Journal (Spring, 1996).

• Sonya Rudikoff Prize for Slumming as best first book in Victorian Studies published in 2004, Northeast Victorian Studies Association (NVSA)
• Fellowship, National Endowment for the Humanities, awarded for 2006-7
• Veritas Award for Research, Office of Mission Effectiveness, Villanova University
• Research Grant, Summer 2004, National Endowment for the Humanities
• Fellowship, National Endowment for the Humanities, 1997-1998.
• Walter Love Article Prize, Honorable Mention, 1995, awarded by North American Conference on British Studies.
• Travel Grant, American Philosophical Society, Summer 1995.
• Spencer Fellow, National Academy of Education, Stanford University, 1991-92.
• Research and Travel Grant, Summer 1990 National Endowment for the Humanities.
• Grant on Gender and the Welfare State, Social Science Research Council, Fall 1989.
• Project Grant, Committee on States and Social Structures, Social Science Research Council. Co-investigator, 9/87-5/88.
• Whiting Fellow in the Humanities, 8/85 - 7/86
• Krupp Foundation, Traveling Fellow, 9/83 - 9/84
• House Arms for Service, Adams House, Harvard College 6/88
• Phi Beta Kappa, Swarthmore College 6/78
• Barnard Music Scholarship, 9/76 - 6/78

• Program Chair, North American Conference on British Studies, 2002-2005
• Member, American Historical Association, Committee on Women Historians, 2001-2004