I've been at Lehman since 1999, when I joined the History Department. I became chair of that department in July 2005, then served as Dean of Arts and Humanities from July 2009 through July 2012; now I'm back to teaching in History and serving as academic director of the MA Program in Liberal Studies. I also teach in the History Ph.D. Program at the CUNY Graduate Center. Before I came to Lehman, I taught for eight years in the History and Social Studies Departments at Harvard (with a brief sojourn at the University of Puget Sound in the Fall of 1998); my BA and Ph.D. are also from Harvard, in the History of Science Department.

I've published widely on British history, with a focus on the intersection of big business and culture in the nineteenth century. My first book, Conceiving Companies: Joint-Stock Politics in Victorian England (Routledge, 1998) compared banks and railways by focusing on their status as quasi-political institutions in the nineteenth century: I consider topics like shareholder participation in corporate governance, government regulation, and companies as providers of public goods. My second book, Regulated Lives: Life Insurance and British Society, 1800-1914 (University of Toronto Press, 2009), describes the rise of the life insurance industry as a complicated instance of modernity. I argue that several distinct, and often competing, meanings of modern life emerged in tandem with the business of life insurance, including melodrama, medicine, statistics, and commodification; and the process of folding these different meanings into a single business strategy was usually much more complicated than most theorists of modernity have assumed. I also co-edited a collection of primary sources on life insurance in Britain and the United States, published by Pickering and Chatto in 2013. In 2019 I published All That Glittered: Britain's Most Precious Metal from Adam Smith to the Gold Rush, which connects gold's cultural and economic functions in Britain between 1780 and 1850. My most recent book is on the changing character of misers in British religion, literature, theatre, and economics; this was published by Routledge in 2022 as Misers: British Responses to Extreme Saving, 1700-1860. Besides these books, I've published articles on such topics as the Indian census, national health insurance, bank failures, gold coins, an Irish gold mine, and tuberculosis. 

My teaching at Lehman and the Graduate Center has mainly focused on Modern European History. I've taught various courses on modern British history, as well as courses on 20th-century Europe, European imperialism, science and society, popular music in Britain and North America, and American business history. Besides being department chair and dean, my administrative experience at Lehman includes the chairmanship of the Senate Graduate Studies Committee (2007-2009), and membership on committees relating to the bell schedule, student evaluation of teaching, the General Education program, campus life, and Reassessing Access and Excellence at Lehman. My first year as chair I also participated in the inaugural year of the Bridging the Colleges program, which brought together faculty from Lehman, Hostos, and Bronx Community Colleges.

Although my scholarly and administrative work has kept me busy, in less stressful days I did manage to have a life outside of academia. Between 1989 and 1998 I ran a small record label, Harriet Records, which promoted bands of the slightly quieter than punk rock variety from the Boston area and around the world; and since a few years before that until 1998, a fanzine called Incite!, which was mainly about what the kids used to call indie pop. From 2004 through 2007 I was an active contributor to the Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form (OEDILF), for which I wrote over a thousand limericks describing and/or illustrating the use of words from the letter A through C (My Greatest Hits). Now, I read a lot about misers, listen to a lot of music, and watch a lot of TV iin Port Jefferson, where I live with my wife Alix Cooper (an historian at Stony Brook) and our cats Victoria and Albert.

Timothy Alborn

Department of History
Lehman College

City University of New York

250 Bedford Park Blvd West, Bronx, NY 10468
email: timothy.alborn@lehman.cuny.edu
telephone: 718-960-2267 (O)

Curriculum Vitae

Employment

Professor of History, Lehman College, 2009-present

Associate Professor of History, Lehman College, 2003-2009

Assistant Professor of History, Lehman College, 1999-2003

Associate Professor of History and Social Studies, Harvard University, 1996-98
Assistant Professor of History and Social Studies, Harvard University, 1991-96

Other appointments

Academic Director, MA program in Liberal Studies, Lehman College, 2015-present
Deputy Executive Officer, Department of History, CUNY Graduate Center, 2017-2019
Dean, School of Arts and Humanities, Lehman College, 2009-2012

Chair, Department of History, Lehman College, 2005-2009

Department of History, Graduate Center, City University of New York, 2000-present
MA Program in Liberal Studies, Graduate Center, CUNY, 1999-present
Adjunct Professor of Business, University of Puget Sound, 1998


Education

Doctor of Philosophy, Harvard University 1991. History of Science.

Dissertation: "The Other Economists: Science and Commercial Culture in Victorian England." Fields in Science and Religion, History of Biology, and History of Economics

Bachelor of Arts, Harvard College 1986. Summa cum laude in History and Science.

Academic and Professional Honors

American Council of Learned Societies, Charles Ryskamp Fellowship, 2004-2005.

National Endowment for the Humanities "Extending the Reach" Fellowship, Spring 2001

 

Books

British Shareholder Meetings in the Long Nineteenth Century. Source book with editorial introductions. London: Routledge, 2024.

Misers: British Responses to Extreme Saving, 1700-1860. London: Routledge, 2022.

All That Glittered: Britain’s Most Precious Metal from Adam Smith to the Gold Rush. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.

Anglo-American Life Insurance, 1800-1914. Three-volume source book with editorial introductions. Edited with Sharon Ann Murphy. London: Pickering and Chatto, 2013.

Regulated Lives: Life Insurance and British Society, 1800-1914. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009.

Conceiving Companies: Joint-Stock Politics in Victorian England. London: Routledge, 1998.

Work in progress

"Alchemy and the Victorians" (journal article)

“Colonial Hubris: British Efforts to Discover Gold in India, 1830-1890” (journal article)

Articles and book chapters

“Embracing El Dorado: Anglo-American Reflections in the Long Nineteenth Century,” in El Dorado: A Reader, eds. Aimé Iglesias Lukin, Tie Jojima, Edward J. Sullivan, and Karen Marta (New York: Americas Society, 2024), pp. 32-36.

"Taxing Journeys: British Life Insurance and the White Man’s Burden, 1840-1914." In Jerònia Pons and Robin Pearson (eds.), Risk and the Insurance Business in History (Madrid: Fundación Mapfre, 2020), pp. 41-60.

“The Greatest Metaphor Ever Mixed: Gold in the British Bible, 1750-1850.” Journal of the History of Ideas 78 (2017): 427-447.

“Pivoting: 1874 in the Classroom.” Pedagogy 17 (2017): 323-333.


“King Solomon’s Gold: Ophir in an Age of Empire.” Journal of Victorian Culture 20 (2015): 491-508.

“Money’s Worth: Morality, Class, Politics.” In Martin Hewitt (ed.), The Victorian World (London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 209-224.

“An Irish El Dorado: Recovering Gold in County Wicklow.” Journal of British Studies 50 (2011): 359-380.

“Dirty Laundry: Exposing Bad Behavior in Life Insurance Trials, 1830-1890.” In Margot Finn, Michael Lobban, and Jenny Bourne Taylor (eds.), Spurious Issues: Legitimacy in Law, Literature, and History, 1680-1900 (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), pp. 148-172.

“Economics and Business.” In Francis O’Gorman (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Victorian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), pp. 61-79.

“Capital/Credit.” In Jeffrey Schnapp (ed.), Speed Limits. Milan: Skira, 2009), pp. 114-121.

"Quill-driving: British Life Insurance Clerks and Occupational Mobility, 1800-1914," Business History Review 82 (2008): 31-58

"Normal Bodies, Normal Prices: Interdisciplinarity in Victorian Life Insurance.” Romanticism and Victorianism on the Net no. 49 (February 2008). Accessible at http://www.ron.umontreal.ca/

"A License to Bet: Life Insurance and the Gambling Act in the British Courts.” Connecticut Insurance Law Review 14 (2008): 1-20. Also published in Geoffrey Clark et al. (eds.), The Appeal of Insurance (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), pp. 107-126.

"'A Useful Lesson of Contentment': Pedagogies of Failure in Mid-Victorian Market Culture." In Martin Daunton and Frank Trentmann (eds.), Worlds of Political Economy: Knowledge and Power in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), pp. 95-114

"Postnational Insurance on the Eve of Destruction." Connecticut Insurance Law Review 10 (2003): 73-101

"The First Fund Managers: Life Insurance Bonuses in Victorian Britain.” Victorian Studies 45 (2002): 67-92. Revised version in Nancy Henry and Cannon Schmitt (eds.), Victorian Investments: New Perspectives on Finance and Culture (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2008), pp. 58-78

"Senses of Belonging: The Politics of Working-Class Insurance in Britain, 1880-1914." Journal of Modern History 73 (2001): 561-602

"Insurance against Germ Theory: Commerce and Conservatism in Late-Victorian Medicine," Bulletin of the History of Medicine 75 (2001): 406-445

"Boys to Men: Moral Restraint at Haileybury College." In Brian Dolan (ed.), Malthus, Medicine and Morality: 'Malthusianism' after 1798 (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2000), pp. 33-55

"Age and Empire in the Indian Census," Journal of Interdisciplinary History 30 (1999): 61- 89

"Coin and Country: Visions of Civilisation in the British Recoinage Debate, 1867-1894.” Journal of Victorian Culture 3 (1998): 252-281

"Persuading by the Numbers: The Balance Sheet in Late Victorian Financial Journalism." In John Davis (ed.), New Economics and its Writing (Durham: Duke University Press, 1998), 212-230

"The Business of Induction: Industry and Genius in the Language of British Scientific Reform, 1820-1840.” History of Science 34 (1996): 191-221

"The Moral of the Failed Bank: Professional Plots in the Victorian Money Market.” Victorian Studies 38 (1995): 199-225

"A Plague upon your House: Epidemic Disease and Commercial Crisis in Victorian England.” In Sabine Maason, Everett Mendelsohn, and Peter Weingart (eds.), Biology as Society, Society as Biology: Metaphors (London: Kluwer, 1995), 281-310

"A Calculating Profession: Victorian Actuaries among the Statisticians." Science in Context 7 (1994): 433-468. Also published in Michael Power (ed.), Accounting and Science: Natural Inquiry and Commercial Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 81-119.

"Economic Man, Economic Machine: Images of Circulation in the Victorian Money Market.” In Philip Mirowski (ed.), Natural Images in Economics: Markets Read in Tooth and Claw (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 173-196

"Commercial Therapeutics and the Banking Profession in early Victorian England.” Perspectives on the History of Economic Thought 4 (1990): 105-116.

"Thomas Chalmers's Theology of Economics.” Perspectives on the History of Economic Thought 3 (1990): 29-39

"Negotiating Notation: Chemical Symbols and British Society, 1831-1835.” Annals of Science 46 (1989): 437-460

"Peirce's Evolutionary Logic: Continuity, Indeterminacy, and the Natural Order.” Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society 25 (1989): 1-28

"The 'End of Natural Philosophy' Revisited: Varieties of Scientific Discovery.” Nuncius: Annali di Storia della Scienza 3 (1988): 228-250.

Blog Posts

“The Five Best Books About the Strangeness of Money,” Shepherd:
https://shepherd.com/best-books/the-strangeness-of-money

Contribution on All That Glittered to "The Page 99 Test": https://page99test.blogspot.com/2019/09/timothy-alborns-all-that-glittered.html

“Gold Tried 500 Times in the Fire”: JHIBLOG post accompanying “The Greatest Metaphor Ever Mixed”: https://jhiblog.org/2017/07/26/gold-tried-500-times-in-the- fire/

“A Digital Window onto Writing History Notes”: post accompanying “King Solomon’s Gold” on the Journal of Victorian Culture blog: http://jvc.oup.com/2015/10/09/timothy-alborn-a-digital-window-onto-writing-history-research-notes/

Book reviews

Philip J. Stern, Empire, Incorporated: The Corporations that Built British Colonialism, forthcoming, Journal of British Studies, 2024.

 

Benjamin Mountford and Stephen Tuffnell, eds., A Global History of Gold Rushes. Posted on H-Diplo, June 2019.

Antoninus Samy, The Building Society Promise: Access, Risk, and Efficiency, 1880-1939. Journal of Modern History 90 (2018): 442-443.

Supritha Rajan, A Tale of Two Capitalisms: Sacred Economics in Nineteenth-Century Britain. Victorian Studies, 59 (2016): 153-155.

Dan Bouk, How Our Days Became Numbered: Risk and the Rise of the Statistical Individual. Business History Review 90 (2016): 367-370.

James Vernon, Distant Strangers: How Britain Became Modern. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 46 (2015): 279-280.

Aeron Hunt, Personal Business: Character and Commerce in Victorian Literature and Culture. Nineteenth-Century Contexts 37 (2015): 179-181.

Robert Mayhew, Malthus: The Life and Legacies of an Untimely Prophet. American Historical Review 120 (2015): 331-332.

Kathrin Levitan, A Cultural History of the British Census: Envisioning the Multitude in the Nineteenth Century and Tom Crook and Glen O’Hara (eds.), Statistics and the Public Sphere: Numbers and the People in Modern Britain, c. 1800-2000, Victorian Studies 56 (2014): 297-300.

Peter Borscheid and Niels Haueter (eds.), World Insurance: The Evolution of a Global Risk Network. Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 4 (2013): 523.

Ayse Çelikkol, Romances of Free Trade: British Literature, Laissez-Faire, and the Global Nineteenth Century. Economic History Review 65 (2012): 1598-1599.

Michael Heller, London Clerical Workers, 1880-1914. Journal of British Studies 51 (2012): 229-230.

Sharon Murphy, Investing in Life: Insurance in Antebellum America, in Business History Review 85 (2011): 631-633.

Thomas A. Stapleford, The Cost of Living in America: A Political History of Economic Statistics, 1880-2000. Isis 101 (2010): 669-670.

James Taylor, Creating Capitalism: Joint-Stock Enterprise in British Politics, 1800-1870. Victorian Studies 50 (2007): 147-149

H.V. Bowen, The Business of Empire: The East India Company and Imperial Britain, 1756-1833. Journal of Economic History 67 (2007): 254-256

Jo Anne Yates, Structuring the Information Age: Life Insurance and Technology in the Twentieth Century. Journal of Interdisciplinary History 37 (2007): 482-484

"Were the Victorians ever Modern?" (essay review of Richard Price, British Society 1680-1880). Journal of Victorian Culture 12 (2006): 154-160

Robin Pearson, Insuring the Industrial Revolution. Business History Review 79 (2005): 442-444

Simon Cordery, British Friendly Societies, 1750-1914. Victorian Studies 46 (2004): 104- 105

Tom Baker and Jonathan Simon, eds. Embracing Risk: The Changing Culture of Insurance and Responsibility. In Journal of Interdisciplinary History 33 (2003): 602-604

Regenia Gagnier, The Insatiability of Human Wants: Economics and Aesthetics in Market Society (essay review). In Victorian Studies 44 (2002): 639-646

Clive Trebilcock, Phoenix Assurance and the Development of British Insurance. In Connecticut Insurance Law Journal 7 (2001): 307-313

Ron Harris, Industrializing English Law. Posted on EH-Net [economic history], June 2001

Geoffrey Clark, Betting on Lives: The Culture of Life Insurance in England 1695-1775. In Business History Review 74 (2000): 541-543

Laurie Dennett, A Sense of Security: 150 Years of Prudential. In Business History Review 73 (1999): 568-570

Mary Poovey, A History of the Modern Fact. Posted on EH.NET, September 1999

Jonathan Boswell and James Peters, Capitalism in Contention: Business Leaders and Political Economy in Modern Britain. In Journal of Interdisciplinary History 30 (1999): 317-319

Kristine Bruland and Patrick O'Brien (eds.), From Family Firms to Corporate Capitalism. In Business History Review 72 (1998): 331-332

Theodore Porter, Trust in Numbers and M. Norton Wise, ed., The Values of Precision. In Technology and Culture 38 (1997): 259-261

Youssef Cassis, City Bankers 1880-1914. In Victorian Studies 39 (1996): 426-427

Richard Yeo, Defining Science. In Metascience n.s. 5 (1994): 22-24

"The Invisible Agenda of The Invisible Hand " (essay review of B. Ingrao and M. Israel, The Invisible Hand: Economic Equilibrium in the History of Science). In Research in the History of Economic Thought and Methodology 12 (1994): 130-137

1940. Bulmer, K. Bales and K.K. Sklar (eds.), The Social Survey in Historical Perspective 1880-1940. In Victorian Studies 36 (1993): 496-497

Albert Moyer, A Scientist's Voice in American Culture: Simon Newcomb and the Rhetoric of Science. In Science 258 (1992): 333-334

Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance. In Isis 83 (1992): 366-367


Philip Mirowski, More Heat than Light. Economics as Social Physics: Physics as Nature's Economics. In Isis 82 (1991): 258-259


Robert Richards, Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior. In Journal of the History of Biology 22 (1989): 361-367

Shorter Publications

“Eloge: Peter Buck (1943-2024).” Forthcoming in Isis, 2024.

Article on “Empires” in Roland Robertson and Jan Aart Scholte (eds.), Encyclopedia of Globalization (New York: Routledge, 2007), 377-381.

 

Articles on Sir John Lubbock (Lord Avebury), Sir John William Lubbock, and Joseph Fletcher, The New Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press).

Articles on business and corporate structure, the census, empire, gold rushes, gold standard, insurance, and railways. In James Eli Adams, ed., Encyclopedia of the Victorian Era (Danbury, CT: Grolier Academic Reference, 2004), I: 186-189, 221-224; II: 58-62, 167-170, 273-275; III: 297-300.

Entries on James W. Gilbart and James Wilson, The Biographical Dictionary of British Economists (Bristol, UK: Thoemmes Press, 2004)

Selected Papers and Invited Talks

“Romancing the Philosopher’s Stone: Alchemy in Late-Victorian Popular Culture,” North American Conference on British Studies, Denver, November 2024.

“El Dorado in the Anglosphere, 1750-1920,” invited lecture, symposium on Political Economies of Labor and Love, Boston College, October 2023.

“The Ethics of Information and the Perils of Mutualism,” keynote address, workshop on Insurance and Society, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, Cologne, Germany, Online, June 2021.

“Colonial Hubris: British Efforts to Discover Gold in India, 1830-1890,” Nineteenth Century Studies Association conference on “Discovery.” Online, March 2021.

"Revisions of Mirzah: Death's Trap Doors, 1711-1915," Art and the Actuarial Imagination, Huntington Library, Pasadena, CA, April 2020. (Canceled due to COVID)

"Taxing Journeys: British Life Insurance and the White Man’s Burden, 1840-1914." Risk and the Insurance Business in History. Seville, Spain, June 2019.

“Alchemy and the Victorians.” CUNY Victorian Studies Seminar, April 2018.

“On and Off Crusoe’s Island: Valuing Gold in Britain, 1770-1850.” Invited Talk, European History and Politics Workshop, Columbia University, October 2017.

“Before the Gold Rush: Mining and Informal Empire in Britain, 1819-1849.” North American Conference on British Studies, Washington, DC, November 2016.

Invited Panelist. The Social, Legal, and Political Life of Money. Heyman Center, Columbia University, May 2015.

“King Solomon’s Gold: Ophir in an Age of Empire.” Gold in/and Art, University of Toulouse, September 2014.

“Stipendiary States: British Military Subsidies, 1750-1815,” American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies annual conference, Williamsburg, VA, March 2014.

“Following the Money: Bullion Supplies and the Fate of ‘Mercantilism’ in the Nineteenth Century.” Mercantilism through the Ages, Columbia University, November 2013.

Book Prize Roundtable (Plenary Panelist), North American Victorian Studies Association annual conference, Pasadena, CA, October 2013.

"'A Real Salvation Army': Late-Victorian Insurance Salesmen in and Out of Uniform.” Invited Talk, Cultivating the Economy: Literature, Politics, Economics, 1870-1940, Columbia University, May 2013; also delivered at the Victorian Studies conference on "Wealth, Poverty and the Victorians", Leeds, UK, July 1999

“Teaching 1874.”  Plenary panel on pedagogy at the Northeast Victorian Studies conference, Boston, April 2013.

“The Strange Death of Mercantilist England: Gold and Protectionism, 1815-1846.” Columbia University Seminar on Economic History, December 2012.

“Swallowing Gold: New-World Bullion and Anglo-Indian Trade, 1700-1820.” North American Conference on British Studies, Denver, November 2011.

“Three Futures of British Life Insurance, 1800-1920: Statistics, Medicine, and Melodrama.” Invited lecture, Centre de Recherches Historiques, Paris, April 2011.

“Gold and the British Global Imagination.” The Global Nineteenth Century, University of California, Riverside, October 2010.

“Retrospecting: Seeking Gold in Online Databases.” North American Conference on British Studies, Louisville, November 2009.

“The Perverse Economics of Life Insurance Insolvency in Nineteenth-Century England.” Invited lecture, Wharton School of Business, October 2009.

“An Irish El Dorado: The Victorian Rediscovery of Gold in County Wicklow.” Plenary lecture, Victorian Disruptions, University of South Carolina, October 2008.

"Fraudulent Self-Murder: Contesting Suicide Claims in Victorian Life Insurance.” North American Conference on British Studies, San Francisco, November 2007.

"Life Insurance and Multiple Modernities in the Nineteenth Century.” Economic Modernization, Yale University, September 2007. Also delivered at Center for Humanities, Temple University, October 2007.

"Interrogating the Body: The Prosecution of Victorian Insurance Examinations.” North American Victorian Studies Association annual conference, Purdue University, August 2006.

"Victorian Collaborations.” Keynote presentation, Northeast Victorian Studies Association annual conference, Washington, DC, April 2005.

"Dirty Laundry: Exposing Bad Behavior in Life Insurance Trials, 1830-1890.” Invited lecture, Legitimacy & Illegitimacy: Law, Literature & History, c. 1780-1914, Huntington Library, Pasadena, CA, January 2005.

"Quantifying the White Man's Burden: Vital Statistics and Insurance in British India.” Northeast Conference on British Studies, Tufts University, November 2003.

"The Thrift Wars: Savings Banks and Life Assurance in Victorian Britain." International Economic History Society, Buenos Aires, July 2002.

"Time's Thievish Progress: Anglo-American Finance and the End of Atonement, 1850- 1870.” On Time (Royal Historical Society), Liverpool, UK, September 1999.

"Insurance against Germ Theory: Commerce and Conservatism in Late-Victorian Medicine." Medical Professionals: Identities, Interests And Ideology (Society for the Social History of Medicine), Glasgow, UK, July 1999.

"Providence Postponed: Gambling, Luxury and Late-Victorian Life Assurance.” Invited lecture, Monetary History Group, London, UK, November 1998.

"Wasted Work: Doctors and Bodies in Early Victorian Life Insurance.” History of Science Society Annual Meeting, Kansas City, MO, October 1998.

"Two Kinds of Compulsion: National Insurance and the Market Ideal in Britain, 1900- 1920.” North American Conference on British Studies, Monterey, CA, October 1997.

"Unco-operative Friendly Societies: Destabilizing the Local in British Vital Statistics, 1780-1860.” Joint conference of the History of Science Society and the British Society for the History of Science, Edinburgh, UK, July 1996.

"Malthus and the Moral Restraint of East India Patronage.” Interdisciplinary Nineteenth Century Studies conference on "The Nineteenth Century City: Global Contexts, Local Productions", Santa Cruz, CA, April 1995.

"Private Finance, Public Science: J.W. Lubbock and the Antinomies of Scientific Reform in the 1830s.” Presented at the conference "Science and British Culture in the 1830s," Trinity College Cambridge, July 1994.

Fellowships (other than major awards listed above)

PSC-CUNY Fellowship, Lehman College, 2015 ($6000)

Faculty Development Grant, Lehman College, 2003 ($5000)
Shuster Fellowship, Lehman College, 1999 and 2002 ($1000)
PSC-CUNY Fellowships, Lehman College, 2000-2002 ($10,000)
Whiting Fellowship, Harvard University, 1990-91 ($15,000)

Related professional experience

North American Conference on British Studies
Treasurer, 2019-2022
Executive Committee, 2019-2022
Executive Council, 2017-2019
Mentorship Committee 2018-present

Mid-Atlantic Conference on British Studies
President, 2017-2019
Vice President, 2015-2017

Treasurer, 2012-2015
Local conference organizer, 2013-2014
Program chair, 2007-2008

Royal Historical Society
Fellow, 2022-present

Referee
Articles for Business History, Business History Review, Economic History Review, Historical Journal, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Journal of Modern History, Journal of Victorian Culture, Nineteenth Century Contexts, Social History of Medicine, Victorian Literature and Culture, and Victorian Studies; book manuscripts for Bloomsbury Academic, Cambridge University Press, Harvard University Press, Oxford University Press, Pickering and Chatto, Stanford University Press, University of Chicago Press, and Yale University Press.

Grant panelist
American Council of Learned Societies, 2012-14; National Endowment for the Humanities, 2003 and 2008; Council on European Studies, 2007; UK Fulbright Commission, 2015-16 and 2018; referee, National Science Foundation, 1996; Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, 2012; Swiss National Science Foundation, 2018-19.

Judge, Richard Stein article prize (Interdisciplinary Nineteenth Century Studies), 2021.

With James Eli Adams, judge for the inaugural North American Victorian Studies Association book prize, 2013.

External reviewer, Department of History at St. Mary’s College (2014), Providence College (2016), and Sacred Heart University (2018).

 

Outside referee for tenure for the History Department at the University of Kentucky (2016) and Boston College (2018), and for promotion at the University of New South Wales (2022).

American Friends of the Institute for Historical Research: board member, 2014-present

Columbia Seminar on British History: Co-chair, 2008-09

Gale Digital Collections: Member, Advisory Board, 19th Century UK Periodicals

Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Associate, 1996-1999
Member, Steering Committee, 1997-98
Chair, Study Group on Politics and Enterprise in Europe, 1998

Forum for History of Human Science
Vice Chair, 1995-1999
Member, Steering Committee, 1988-90

Teaching experience

Department of History, Lehman College, City University of New York

Undergraduate and MA-level courses on modern European history, British history, European imperialism, research methods, science and society, American business history, sociology and social history, and Popular Music in Britain and North America

MA Program in Liberal Studies, Lehman College, City University of New York

Seminars on Social Science and research methods

Ph.D. program in History, City University of New York Graduate Center

Seminars on Modern British History; Britain and the World; Literature of Modern European History; History of Science; first-year research seminar; dissertation writing workshop; independent studies on history of capitalism, comparative urban history, history of technology, and British intellectual history

Dissertation supervision

Jiwon Han, “Buttressing Britain’s Financial Rise: Anglo-Dutch Brokers in Eighteenth Century London” (in progress)

Jarrett Moran, "Culture and Its Discontents: Anglo-American Concepts of Culture from the 1860s to the 1960s" (in progress)

Stephanie Makowski (co-advisor with Dagmar Herzog), “From Riot to War and Back Again: Interracial Relationships in Britain from 1919 to 1959” (in progress)

Alexander Baltovski (co-advisor with David Waldstreicher), “The King’s Church Revisited: The Church of England in Colonial America, 1680-1784” (in progress)

Sophie Muller, Poster Boys: "Charity, Working-Class Boyhood, and Masculinity in Victorian and Edwardian London" (in progress)

Matthew Sherman, “White Blinders: A Study of Race Relations Theory in Britain, 1948-1988” (2022)

Luke Reynolds, “Who Owned Waterloo?: Wellington's Veterans and the Battle for Relevance” (2019)

Dory Agazarian, “Buying Time: Consuming Urban Pasts in Nineteenth Century Britain” (2018)

Neal Goldman, “Fallible justice: The Dilemma of the British in the Gold Coast, 1874- 1944” (2016)

Cheryl Wahl, “The Business of Settlement: Land companies and Colonization in the British Empire, ca. 1800-1850” (2012)

Joseph Sramek, “A Moral Empire? Anxieties about Masculinity and Colonial Governance in Company India, ca. 1780-1857” (2006)

Steven Saltzman, “The Middle Class and Debt Financing of Municipal Trading: A Case Study in 19th Century Glasgow and Birmingham” (2005)

MA program on Liberal Studies, City University of New York Graduate Center

Seminars on Science and Society and The Enlightenment,

English Department, City University of New York Graduate Center

Served on dissertation committees, 2002-5 and 2011-14.

School of Business and Public Administration, University of Puget Sound

Lecture course on Personal and Professional Ethics, Fall 1998

Department of History, Harvard University

Undergraduate lecture courses on British economic history, 1750-1914, British history 1688-1783, and nineteenth-century Britain; undergraduate seminars on Western intellectual history, modern British historiography, and the British empire. Supervised reading and qualifying exams with graduate students, 1995-98.

Committee on Degrees in Social Studies, Harvard College

Sophomore tutorial section, introductory course on European social thought (Social Studies 10); junior tutorial on law and society (Britain and the United States). Advised senior theses on legal positivism, critical race theory, the sociology of leisure, and medical sociology.

Department of Economics, Harvard University:

Supervisor, dissertation on the Economics of the Family in Victorian England (1995).

Committee on Degrees in History and Science, Harvard College

individual tutoring, juniors and seniors, 1987-1992; section leader, Epidemic Disease and Society, fall 1988 (taught by B.G. Rosenkrantz and A. Brandt); planned and taught junior seminar on Science and Imperialism, 1750-1900, spring 1989.

Committee on Degrees in History and Literature, Harvard College

Planned and co-taught sophomore tutorial, 1989-1990: Selected themes in English and American history and literature.

Administrative experience

Lehman College, City University of New York

Academic director, MA program in Liberal Studies, 2014-present
Responsible for admissions and for advising students to select electives in a self-determined studies program; helped departments at Lehman without MA programs create graduate-level topics courses that enabled MALS students to attend upper-level undergraduate courses and receive graduate-level credit.

Dean, School of Arts and Humanities, 2009-2012
Responsible for administering ten departments (African & African American Studies, Art, English, History, Journalism Communications & Theatre, Languages & Literatures, Latin American Studies, Music, Philosophy, Speech-Language-Hearing Sciences) with 120 full-time and 200 part-time faculty members.

Chair, Department of History, 2005-2009

Ran searches for three tenure-track professors and one lecturer
Supervised revision of curriculum in undergraduate major and MA program
Responsible for appointment of part-time faculty

Chaired departmental personnel and budget committee

Member, search committees, 2006-12 and 2018-2019
Department of History [Modern Europe] (chair), 2019; Dean of Education (chair), 2011; Dean of Continuing and Professional Studies, 2010 and 2018; Research and Sponsored Programs Office associate director, 2008; Professor of Social Studies Education, 2007 and 2015; Professor of African History (African and African American Studies), 2007

Webmaster, Department of History, 2009-2021 and MA program in Liberal Studies, 2016-2021.

Member, Senate Committee on Graduate Studies, 2006-2009 (chair, 2007-2009) Responsible for assessing curricular changes and new programs

Member, sub-committee of History Department chairs on CUNY IRB policies, 2007

Member, Bell Schedule Committee, 2006-7

Responsible for revising schedule of classes at Lehman to enable a more efficient use of classroom space and to better accommodate student demand

Member, Advisement Scheduling Committee, 2005-2012
Responsible for setting summer advising hours

Area 6 (History) Liaison, General Education Advisory Council, 2005-2008
Responsible for approving new distribution area courses
Responsible for setting curricular parameters in general education program Active participation in biannual workshops

Participant, Bridging the Colleges (monthly workshop sponsored by Lehman, Bronx Community, and Hostos Community Colleges), 2005-2006
Monthly workshops on common curricular concerns across the colleges. Observed classes taught at Hostos and Bronx Community Colleges. Presented findings at General Education Symposium, Queensborough Community College.

Member, committee for rolling out Turn-It-In.Com, Fall 2005.

Member, Professional Education Advisory Council, 2001-4
Discussed strategies for complying with NCATE certification

Member, Senate Committee on Campus Life and Facilities, 2001-4


Professional Staff Congress, City University of New York
Select Faculty Teaching Panel, 2015-present

Research Awards, History Review Panel, 2012-2014 and 2022-23

City University of New York Graduate Center, Department of History

Member, Faculty Membership Committee, 2016-18, 2021-23 (to nominate consortial faculty members)

Deputy Executive Officer, 2017-2019. Chair of admissions committee. Responsible for student advising. Wrote department self-study report for 2018 external review.

Member, Executive Committee, 2002-09, 2014-2020. Responsible for final curricular and faculty appointment decisions and student appeals.

Member, Curriculum Committee, 2014-16, 2023-2024

Member, Admissions Committee, 2001-2, 2006-7, 2013-14, 2016-19


Member, committees to evaluate qualifying examinations, dissertation proposals, and dissertations, 2001-present.


Member, Doctoral Student Research Grants Committee, 2006-2008, 2016

Member, Provost’s Pre-Dissertation Fellowship Committee, 2018

Harvard College, Committee on Degrees in Social Studies

Head of junior tutorial, 1995-98
Responsible for assigning tutorials and advising juniors in the concentration.

Assistant head tutor, 1993-94

Other activities

Harriet Records (1989-1998, 2021-present)
Independent record label, sole proprietor. Released 45 singles and 10 CDs through 1998 and 9 more CDs (with digital distribution) since 2021
https://harrietrecords.bandcamp.com

Incite! Magazine (1985-1998)
Indie pop fanzine. 30 issues. Forthcoming inclusion in RILM Archive of Popular Music Magazines. Reviewed in London Review of Books, 2012: https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2012/may/incite

HARMONIES IN MY HEAD

My youthful stab at patronizing the arts ... by Tim Alborn

Incite! was a fanzine I published from 1985 until 1998, while I was first a student, then a professor, at Harvard University.. Although it evolved over the years, its main focus was on independent music, with side forays into various aspects of pop culture and personal reflections. In 2012 I digitized all 30 copies and posted them on my home page at Lehman College, but they didn’t survive a migration to a new platform. So I’m replanting them here, with some new bells and whistles—specifically, links on most pages to songs from records I reviewed or bands I discussed. Each issue includes a short description (from 2012) of the context in which it was written; a nice overview of the fanzine can be found here, in something my friend Stephanie Burt wrote for the London Review of Books when I first posted it at Lehman.  I’ve included an index of all thirty issues below, with links and short descriptions of their contents.  

List of issues (all articles are by Tim Alborn unless otherwise noted)

 

Visit my contributions to the Omnificent English Dictionary in Limerick Form

Visit my New York Times Spelling Bee limericks