Jeffrey Auerbach

Education

Ph.D., Yale University, 1995
M.A., Yale University, 1988
B.A., Oberlin College, 1987

Research and Interests

Jeffrey Auerbach received his Ph.D. in History from Yale University in 1995 under the supervision of Linda Colley and Peter Gay. His first book, The Great Exhibition of 1851 (Yale University Press, 1999), which was praised by The American Historical Review as “an exemplary piece of cultural history,” unravels the many and varied meanings of the Crystal Palace, the site of the first world’s fair and one of the pre-eminent cultural icons of the nineteenth century. Since then, he has focused his research and writing on the British Empire. He has authored several articles on art and empire, including the historiographical essay on that topic in The Oxford History of the British Empire. His most recent book, Imperial Boredom: Monotony and the British Empire (Oxford University Press, 2018), challenges the long-established view that that the British Empire was about adventure and excitement, with heroic men and intrepid women settling new lands and spreading commerce and civilization around the globe, by demonstrating instead that that boredom was central to the nineteenth-century imperial experience. 

Professor Auerbach has also pursued an interest in world history: He was founding world history editor of History Compass, an e-journal for history, and in 2001-2 he coordinated a world history speaker series funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities. He has held fellowships at the Yale Center for British Art, the Huntington Library, and the National Maritime Museum (London), and has served as an occasional consultant for the History Channel and the BBC. Trained in modern British and European history, Auerbach is also interested in imperial history, cultural history (including music and art), and the history of the British Mandate in Palestine. A complete listing of publications and papers can be found on his curriculum vitae.

Selected Publications and Presentations

Books 

Imperial Boredom: Monotony and the British Empire (Oxford University Press, 2018) 

Britain, the Empire, and the World at the Great Exhibition of 1851, co-editor with Peter Hoffenberg (Ashgate, 2008)  

The Great Exhibition of 1851:  A Nation on Display (Yale University Press, 1999)

Articles

• “Britain’s Bored Imperialists,” BBC History Magazine (March 2019): 58-63
• "Empire Under Glass"  in Exhibiting the Empire, ed.  John McAleer and John M. MacKenzie (Manchester University Press, 2015), 111-141
• “Imperial Boredom and the Administration of Empire,” Common Knowledge 11:2 (2005): 283-205 (.pdf)
• “The Impossibility of Artistic Escape: Thomas Watling, John Glover, and the Australian Picturesque,” Journal of Australian Colonial History 7 (2005): 161-180 (.pdf)
• “The Picturesque and the Homogenization of the British Empire,” British Art Journal 5:1 (2004): 47-54 (.pdf)
• “Art, Advertising, and the Legacy of Empire,” Journal of Popular Culture 35:4 (2002): 1-23 (.pdf)
• “The Great Exhibition and Historical Memory,” Journal of Victorian Culture 6:1 (2001): 89-112 (.pdf)
• “Art and Empire,” The Oxford History of the British Empire, Vol. V, ed. Robin Winks (Oxford University Press, 1999), 571-83 (.pdf)
• “What They Read: Mid-Nineteenth Century English Women's Magazines and the Emergence of Consumer Culture,” Victorian Periodicals Review 30 (1997): 121-40 (.pdf)

Courses Taught 

• HIST 110 (World History to 1500)
• HIST 151 (Western Civilization since 1500)
• HIST 428 (The British Empire)
• HIST 434 (European Colonialism)
• HIST 446 (Nineteenth-Century Europe)
• HIST 453 (Modern Britain) 
• HIST 497 (Proseminar: Henry Stanley and African Exploration)
• HIST 497 (Proseminar: Imperial Crisis)
• HIST 497 (Proseminar: The Empire Writes Back - Indian Travelers to Britain)
• HIST 497 (Proseminar: The British Empire)
• HIST 497 (Proseminar: The Victorian Age)
• HIST 498 (Tutorial: Victorian Women)
• HIST 498 (Tutorial: British Mandate in Palestine)
• HIST 531 (Graduate Colloquium: The Rise of the West in Global Perspective)
• HIST 595 (Graduate Colloquium: The First World War)
• HIST 596 (Graduate Colloquium: Modern Britain)
• HIST 596 (Graduate Colloquium: Ten Years that Shook the World)
• HIST 641 (Graduate Research Seminar: Europe from the Periphery)