Brian Cowan

Brian Cowan

Ph.D (Princeton)

Brian Cowan has held appointments at Yale University and the University of Sussex before coming to McGill University in 2004. He studies the social and cultural history of ideas in early modern Britain and Europe and is particularly interested in the ways in which ideas were communicated in the preindustrial world.

Informations générales ___

He is the author of The Social Life of Coffee: The Emergence of the British Coffeehouse, (Yale University Press: New Haven and London, 2005), which was awarded the Wallace K. Ferguson Prize by the Canadian Historical Association in 2006. His latest book, The State Trial of Doctor Henry Sacheverell(Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, forthcoming) lays the groundwork for a new understanding the most important political trial of the eighteenth century. His additional publications on the history of early modern taste have ranged from studies of art auctions and connoisseurship to gastronomy and food writing.

Along with with Prof. Elizabeth Elbourne, he edits the Journal of British Studies (Univ. of Chicago Press) for the North American Conference on British Studies. He also serves on the editorial boards for the journals History Compass, and Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture for the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies.

Publications significatives ___

Monographs ___

The State Trials and the Politics of Justice in Later Stuart England, edited with Scott Sowerby, Studies in Early Modern Cultural, Political and Social History, (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell & Brewer, 2021).

《咖啡社会生活史:英国咖啡馆的兴起》Communication University of China Press (Beijing), series: Translations on Urban Communication, (forthcoming).
Articles ___

“Periodical Literature,” in The Oxford Handbook of English Prose, 1640-1714, Nicholas McDowell and Henry Power, eds., (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, forthcoming, c. 2021).

“Relitigating Revolution: Address, Progress, and Redress in the Long Summer of 1710,” in The State Trials and the Politics of Justice in Later Stuart England, Brian Cowan and Scott Sowerby, eds., (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell & Brewer, 2021).

“Mr. Spectator and the Doctor: Joseph Addison and Henry Sacheverell,” in Tercentenary Essays on Addison, Paul Davis, ed., (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, forthcoming).

“Hoadly the High and Sacheverell the Low: Religious and Political Celebrity in Post-Revolutionary England,” in Bill Bulman and Freddy Dominguez, eds., Political and Religious Practice in the Early Modern British World: Essays in Honour of Peter Lake, (Manchester: Manchester Univ. Press, c. 2021).

“The Public Sphere,” in Information: A Historical Companion, Ann Blair, Paul Duguid, Anja Goeing, and Anthony Grafton, eds., (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 2021).

“Histories of Celebrity in Post-Revolutionary England,” Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung Supplement 32 (2019): 83-98. DOI: 10.12759/hsr.suppl.32.2019.83-98. Special issue on ‘Celebrity’s Histories: Case Studies & Critical Perspectives,’ Robert van Krieken & Nicola Vinovrški, eds. A revised version of “Celebrity, Politics and Sociability in Post-Restoration England,” (2017).

“Writings and Their Publics: Law and Literature in the Eighteenth Century,” Critical Analysis of Law 6:2 (2019): 163-73.

“ ‘Restoration’ England and the History of Sociability,” in Valérie Capdeville and Alain Kerhervé, eds., British Sociability in the Long Eighteenth Century: Challenging the Anglo-French Connection Studies in the Eighteenth Century, Studies in the Eighteenth Century, (London: Boydell & Brewer, June 2019), 7-24.

“In Public: Collectivities and Polities,” in A Cultural History of the Emotions in the Baroque and Enlightenment Age, Katie Barclay, David Lemmings, and Claire Walker, eds., for A Cultural History of the Emotions, 6 vols., general editors: Andrew Lynch, Jane Davidson, Susan Broomhall, (London: Bloomsbury Academic, Feb. 2019), 155-72, 179.

Coordonnées  ___

brian.cowan2@mcgill.ca

(514) 398-4400 poste 09292