Profile

Biography

BA, DPhil (Oxon)

Mark is a Senior Lecturer in the History Department, in the Centre for Renaissance and Early Modern Studies and in the Centre for Eighteenth Century Studies. He works on the social and cultural history of early modern England and on the social history of medicine. He has served on the Editorial Boards of Social History of Medicine and Urban History.

Research

Overview

Mark began research by investigating 16th and 17th century English conceptions of cleanliness and dirt. This work drew on anthropology, social and cultural theory as well as intensive archival research and examined the environmental regulation of London as a way by which to reconstruct people's perceptions. He will soon complete this manuscript for publication by Oxford University Press. He is also completing a book derived from a major research project funded by the Wellcome Trust which examines the uses, distribution and perception of London's water between 1500 and 1830.

He has very wide interests in the social and cultural history of Britain c.1550-c.1780 and the social history of medicine and the history of the body. He is committed to interdisciplinary work which relates archival research to theoretical concerns and current work within anthropology, literary studies and social theory. He has published on gender, medicine, religious and political culture in seventeenth and eighteenth-century England.

Resources available for research students in York

York is an excellent place to do research in Early Modern History and on the History of Medicine and the Body. The J. B. Morrell Library has a very good range of primary and secondary material for early modern British history. It subscribes to Early English Books Online and to Eighteenth-Century Collections on-line.

Research students at York can therefore access nearly 250,000 titles published between 1473 and 1800. It also has subscriptions to a wide range of other sources including the Burney Collection of 17th and 18th century newspapers. The University is continuing to acquire more on-line resources (see New library acquisitions for research in history.)

The library also holds a large collection of microfilms in this area, including the State Papers Domestic for the C16 and C17, and the Repertories of the Court of Aldermen of London. It has a very good collection of journals and other sources to support research in the social history of early modern science and medicine, including microfilms of the records of the Royal Society and the Royal College of Physicians. Its holdings are complemented by the extensive and underused resources of the York Minster Library - the largest Cathedral collection of early printed books in the country, and by the very rich collections of the York Medical Society which are deposited on loan in the JB Morrell library, not to mention the holdings of the library of the York Retreat.

York and its region is also very rich in archival resources for early modern history. The Borthwick Institute for Archives is located on campus and is the largest archive in the north of England and a resource of national importance. The riches of the York City Archives are only now beginning fully to be appreciated by early modern historians. York is close to the British Library Lending Division at Boston Spa and to the branches of the West Yorkshire Archives Service, the North Yorkshire County Council : Archive services and to the East Riding County Record Office. It has excellent communication links to libraries in Leeds, Manchester and elsewhere in the North and is conveniently placed for research in Edinburgh and London.

Supervision

Mark has successfully supervised over a dozen PhDs in the last decade and these have produced five books and over twenty articles. Many of these PhD students have gone to post-doctoral fellowships and teaching positions in universities.

He has supervised theses in many areas of the social and cultural history of Britain between the sixteenth and late eighteenth centuries, including ‘Emotion in Early Modern England c.1660-1760’, ‘”When I am in Good Habitt”: Clothes in English Culture c1550-c1670', ‘Discipline and Manhood in the Society of Friends … c.1650-1750' , ‘Politics and Graphic Satire in England 1600-1650', ‘Material Culture and Respectability in Early Modern Yorkshire,’ ‘Colour in Early Modern England’ and ‘Sex in Two Cities: Moral Discipline and the Reformation in York and Edinburgh, c.1560-c.1640' .

He also supervises a wide range of PhDs in the history of medicine and on topics which explore aspects of historical methodology and textuality, including ‘Psychiatric Texts and Psychiatric Writing: Identity, Culture and Subjectivity in the York retreat, 1875-1940', ‘”For the Honour of the Faculty”: Fashioning Medical Identities in York c.1750-c1850’, ‘Soot, Skin and Dust: A Comparative History of Chimney Sweeps, Occupation Health and Testicular Cancer 1775-1925', Equine Medicine in a Horse Drawn World: Farriery, Horse-Doctoring and Equine Surgery in England c.1680-c.1800 ’ and ‘The Family History Phenomenon in Britain c.1945-present’ .

He welcomes inquiries from those interested in postgraduate research in early modern history, the history of the body, the history of medicine, and related areas. He is happy to correspond with those interested in refining possible topics for research and to advise on how to draw up applications for AHRC, ESRC and Wellcome Trust funding.

Publications

Selected publications

Edited books

• with P. Wallis, Medicine and the Market in England and its Colonies, c.1450- c1850 (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007).
• with P. Griffiths, Londinopolis: Essays in the Social and Cultural History of Early Modern London (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000).

Articles (selected)

• "Tasting Lichfield, Touching China: Sir John Floyer's Senses," Historical Journal 53 (2010): 647-70.
• "Follow your Nose? Smell, Smelling, and Their Histories," American Historical Review 116, no. 2 (2011): 335-51.
• "London," in The Oxford History of Popular Print Culture 1473-1660 , ed. J. Raymond (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
• "Monopoly, Markets and Public Health: Pollution and Commerce in the History of London Water 1780-1830," in Medicine and the Market in Pre-Modern England and its Colonies 1450-1850 , ed. Mark Jenner and P. Wallis (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007).
• "'Nauceious and Abominable'? Pollution, Plague and Poetics in John Gay’s Trivia," in Walking the Streets of Eighteenth-Century London: John Gay’s Trivia , ed. C. Brant and S. Whyman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).
• "Curare L’Ambiente Senza Dottori? Igiene Publica e Governo dell’Ambiente a Londra nella Prima Età Moderna (= Doctoring the Environment Without Doctors? Public Cleanliness and Environmental Governance in Early Modern London)," Storia Urbana 112 (2006).
• "Death, Decomposition and Dechristianization? Public Health and Church Burial in Eighteenth-Century England," English Historical Review (2005). To read this, click here.
• "Airs, Waters, Places 1500-1800," in The Healing Arts: Health, Disease and Society in Europe 1500-1800, ed. P. Elmer (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004).
• "L’Eau Changé en L’Argent? Vendre L’Eau dans les Villes Anglaises au Dix-Septième Siècle," Dix-Septieme Siecle (2003): 637-51.
• "Luxury, Circulation and Disorder: London Streets and Hackney Coaches c.1640-c.1740," in The Streets of London: From the Great Fire to the Great Stink, ed. T. Hitchcock and H. Shore (Rivers Oram, 2003).
• "The Roasting of the Rump: Scatology and the Body Politic in Restoration England," Past and Present 177 (2002).
• "Guildwork," in Guilds, Society and Economy in London 1450-1800, ed. I. A. Gadd and P. Wallis (Centre for Metropolitan History, 2002).
• "Don't Do That: It's Dirty," in Dirty Washing (Design Museum, 2001), to read this – click here .
• "From Conduit Community to Commercial Network? Water in London 1500-1725," in Londinopolis: Essays in the Social and Cultural History of Early Modern London , ed. P. Griffiths and M. S. R. Jenner (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2000).
• with Bertrand Taithem, "The Historiographical Body," in Medicine in the Twentieth Century, ed. R. Cooter and J. V. Pickstone (Harwood Academic, 2000).
• "Civilization and Deodorization? Smell in Early Modern English Culture," in Civil Histories: Essays Presented to Sir Keith Thomas , ed. P. Burke, B. Harrison and P. Slack (Oxford University Press, 2000).
• "Body, Image, Text in Early Modern Europe," Social History of Medicine (1999).
• "Bathing and Baptism: Sir John Floyer and the Politics of Cold Bathing," in Refiguring Revolutions: Aesthetics and Politics for the English Revolution to the Romantic Revolution, ed. K. Sharpe and S. Zwicker (University of California Press, 1998).
• "Overground, Underground: Pollution and Place in Urban History," Journal of Urban History (1997).
• "The Great Dog Massacre," in Fear in Early Modern Society, ed. W. G. Naphy and P. Roberts (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1997).
• "Quackery and Enthusiasm; or Why Drinking Water Cured the Plague," in Religio Medici, ed. A. Cunningham and O. Grell (Scolar Press, 1996).
• "The Politics of London Air: John Evelyn's Fumifugium and the Restoration," Historical Journal (1995). To read this, click here.
• "'Another Epocha?' Samuel Hartlib and the Cleansing of London," in The Advancement of Learning in the Seventeenth Century, ed. M Greengrass, M Leslie and T Raylor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
• "Women, Work, Property and Gender in Early Modern Europe," European Review of History 1 (1994).

Teaching

Undergraduate

• The First Metropolitans? London Lives c.1560-c.1690
• From Feasting to Fasting, from Sipping to Puking: Food and Drink in Early Modern England, c. 1525 - c. 1725
• Sickness and Health in Early Modern England, c. 1500 - c. 1720