Dr Victoria Harris

 

Birmingham Fellow

Department of History

Contact details

About

My area of research is modern European history, especially the social and cultural history of Germany from the 19th century onwards. I am particularly interested in exploring the concepts of deviance and marginality, as well as the relationships between gender, class, and social status.

Qualifications

  • PhD University of Cambridge
  • MPhil University of Cambridge
  • BA Hons Magna cum Laude, Brown University 

Biography

I completed my undergraduate honours degree in modern European history at Brown University and my MPhil and PhD degrees at Selwyn College, Cambridge, under the supervision of Regius Professor Sir Richard J Evans. I spent a year as a Research Fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge from 2007-2008, and was then elected to a four year Research Fellowship at King's College, Cambridge from 2008-2012. I have held grants from the AHRC, British Academy, and DAAD. My first book, Selling Sex in the Reich, was awarded the Women’s History Network Book Prize 2011, and was a finalist for the Longman/History Today book prize.

Research

Currently I am writing a book on the social history of intoxication in modern Germany. Other current research includes a DAAD-funded collaborative project called Germany and the World in the Age of Globalisation convened together with the Universities of Konstanz, Freiburg and Berlin; and an interdisciplinary collaborative project entitled 'Intoxication of the Senses: Pleasure Poison, and Perception in Europe, 1600 to the present’.

Publications

Books

  • The Intemperate Reich: A Social History of Intoxication in Germany (OUP: 2013/14)
  • Letters to Hitler (Polity Press: 2011). English editor of the original German Briefe an Hitler (ed. Henrik Eberle)
  • Selling Sex in the Reich: Prostitutes in German Society, 1914-1945 (Oxford University Press: 2010)

 

Articles

  • ‘Beasts in Human Clothing: The Pimp Milieu, Moral Panics, and the German Underworld’, part of a Festschrift for Professor Sir Richard Evans (2014)
  • ‘Migration, Mobility and Movement in Germany’s Age of Globalisation, Editor of a special journal issue’, Journal of Contemporary History (forthcoming)
  • Virtual Roundtable on Dagmar Herzog’s Sexuality in Europe: A Twentieth Century History, Contemporary European History (forthcoming)
  • ‘Rereading Versailles: Human Rights, and the Protection of Marginalised Peoples’, contributor to and editor of a special issue of the Journal of Contemporary History (forthcoming)
  • ‘Sex on the Margins: New Directions in the Historiography of Sexuality and Gender’ Historical Journal, Vol. 53, No. 4 (Dec. 2010)
  • ‘The Role of the Concentration Camps in the Nazi Repression of Prostitutes, 1933- 1939’ Journal of Contemporary History, Vol. 45 No. 3 (Jul. 2010)
  • ‘In the absence of Empire: feminism, abolitionism and social work in Hamburg c. 1900-1933’ Women’s History Review, Vol. 17 No. 2 (Apr. 2008)

 

Book Reviews

  • K Sutton, The Masculine Woman in Weimar Germany; E.N. Jensen, Body by Weimar: Athletes, Gender, and German Modernity, American Historical Review (forthcoming: 2012)
  • P.Fritzsche, The Turbulent World of Franz Göll, European History Quarterly (forthcoming 2012)
  • J. Roos, Weimar Through the Lens of Gender, German History (forthcoming: 2011)
  • C. L. Dollard, The Surplus Woman, Journalof Modern History (forthcoming: 2011)
  • W. Bramke and S. Reisinger, Leipzig in der Revolution von 1918/1919, Urban History, Vol. 38 (2011)
  • R. Beachy, The Soul of Commerce, Economic History Review, Vol. 60 No. 1 (Feb. 2007)

Back to top