 |
Assistant Professor
O'Connor Hall 12
Phone: (408) 554-6847
Fax: (408) 554-2181
Email: MNewsomKerr@scu.edu
Spring 2012 Office Hours:
Tuesdays & Thursdays
1:00-2:30pm
and by appointment
|
Dr. Newsom Kerr began at SCU on a tenure-track assignment in the fall of 2009. He teaches courses fulfilling Core requirements in Science, Technology and Society as well as courses in modern European History, particularly British History. His research focuses on Victorian London society and culture, the history of Medicine/Public Health, and a range of thematic concerns, including representations of disease and the body, urbanism, social class, visual culture, and sensory perception. These emphases can be found in the dissertation he is currently revising into a manuscript: “Fevered Metropolis: Epidemic Disease and Isolation in Victorian London.”
Education
PhD, History, University of Southern California (2007)
Dissertation: Fevered Metropolis: Epidemic Disease and Isolation in Victorian London.
Sponsors: Philippa Levine, James Kincaid, and Paul Lerner
MA, History, University of North Carolina at Wilmington (1998)
Thesis: A Power Over Bodies: Preventive Medicine and Discourses of Personal Hygiene in Edwardian Britain
Sponsors: Bruce Kinzer, Susan McCaffray, and Michael Seidman
BA, Oklahoma Baptist University (1996) Major: History
Minor: Political Science
Teaching Positions
- Assistant Professor of History, Santa Clara University (2009-present)
- Visiting Assistant Professor, Creighton University (2008-09)
- Lecturer, San Francisco State University (2007-08)
- Academic Year Lecturer, Santa Clara University (2006-07)
- Instructor, University of California at Irvine (Fall 2004)
- Graduate Teaching Assistant, University of Southern California (2001-05)
Publications
“‘Perambulating fever nests of our London streets’: Cabs, Omnibuses, Ambulances, and Other ‘Pest-Vehicles’ of the Victorian Metropolis” Journal of British Studies (forthcoming, April 2010)
Review of Michelle Allen, Cleansing the City: Sanitary Geographies in Victorian London. Athens: Ohio University Press, 2008, in Bulletin of the History of Medicine v. 83, no. 2 (Summer 2009), 405-06.
Papers & Presentations
“‘An alteration in the human countenance’: Inoculation, Vaccination, and the Visual Culture of Smallpox in early Nineteenth-Century Britain.” The Epidemic in Modern History, University College Cork, Ireland, November 8-9, 2009
“‘Scandalised by the Spectacle of Peripatetic Infection’: Sight, Fright and Smallpox.” North American Conference on British Studies, San Francisco, November 9-11, 2007 (panel organizer)
“‘A Suburban Play(gue) Ground’: Contagion and the Construction of Suburban Identity in Hampstead.” North American Victorian Studies Association, University of Victoria, British Columbia, October 10-13, 2007
“‘Perambulating fever nests of our London streets’: Cabs, Omnibuses, Ambulances and the circulation of infection in Victorian London.” Society for the Social History of Medicine & European Association for the History of Medicine and Health, London, September 12-15, 2007
“The Spectacle of Infection: Sight, Fright and Smallpox in Victorian London,” Rutgers University Department of History, New Brunswick, New Jersey, January 31, 2006
“Mapping and Imagining the Centres of Disease: London Smallpox Hospitals, Epidemic Visuality, and the Politics of Urban Space, 1870-1885,” invited to be delivered before the international conference, “Medicalisation of Spaces, Spaces of Medicalisation: New Debates in the History of Medicine and Science,” University of Kent, Canterbury, United Kingdom, November 12, 2005 (invited but declined)
“Public Health and the Public’s Fear: Infectious Disease Isolation in London, 1870-1900,” invited to be delivered before the international conference, “Invisible Enemies: The Cultural Meaning of Infection and the Politics of Plague,” University of Zurich, Switzerland, September 22, 2005 (invited but declined)
“A Culture of Contagion: Suburbanization and Disease Isolation in Victorian London,” European Association for the History of Medicine and Health and the Society for the Social History of Medicine, Ministère de la Recherche, Paris, September 9, 2005 (invited but declined)
“An Invisible Barrier of Separation: The Social World of Edwardian Infectious Disease Hospitals,” American Historical Association, Pacific Coast Branch, Oregon State University, August 5, 2005
“Play(gue)grounds of London: Hampstead, the Heath, and the Hospital,” American Association for the History of Medicine, Birmingham, Alabama, April 6, 2005
“In the Air?: London Smallpox Hospitals and the Politics of Urban Space, 1870-1885,” Joint Atlantic Seminar for the History of Medicine, Harvard University, October 16, 2004
“Technologies of Separation: Preventing Acquired Infections in Early Twentieth Century Fever Hospitals,” Society for the Social History of Medicine Summer Conference, University of Manchester, United Kingdom, July 12, 2003
“Communicating Fevers: The Social World of Early Twentieth-Century English Isolation Hospitals,” International Network for the History of Hospitals, McGill University, Montreal, June 21, 2003
“Feverish Communications: Medical Discourses of Contagion and Communicability in Early Twentieth Century English Isolation Hospitals,” Association of English Graduate Students, University of Southern California, February 1, 2003
