Graduate Student, History
Thesis Title: “'Beauty on Bond Street’: gender, enterprise, and the establishment of an English beauty industry, 1850-1910"
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Judith R. Walkowitz
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About
A Ph.D. Candidate in History at the Johns Hopkins University, I study the history of women and gender, business, consumption, and urban space in the British World.
My dissertation, "'Beauty on Bond Street': gender, enterprise, and the establishment of an English beauty industry, 1850-1910," is an innovative exploration of London’s commercial beauty and grooming industry that focuses on a critical moment of economic and cultural transformation not yet addressed in previous studies of beauty consumption. It reveals how material developments converged with cultural discourses on beauty to reshape a Victorian culture that demanded the concealment of artificial manipulation into one that tolerated and sanctioned women’s overt beauty consumption. It does so by tracking the demographic profile of discrete London spaces and the material practices and social networks of its local merchants, both male and female.
My forthcoming project, “Imperial Beauty: the global trade in appearance, 1830-1930,” relocates the dissertation’s metropolitan themes to the imperial setting, charting London manufacturers, British migrants, and indigenous residents’ participation in a global beauty culture.
My research and professional development has received support from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Johns Hopkins’ Program for the Study of Women, Gender, & Sexuality, and the North American Conference on British Studies. My article, “Pomeroy v. Pomeroy: beauty, modernity, and the female entrepreneur in fin-de-siècle London” is forthcoming in The Women’s History Review.
Contact Information
| Address: | Department of History
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