Beverly Lemire, DPhil, MA, BA

About

My research is focused on the period from 1600 to about 1850 during the advent of the early global era, attending to imperial and industrial forces. I am fascinated by the changes in material life and cultural practice in this period. I focus on the British imperial world, as well as global and comparative topic, recognizing the power of global exchanges. Issues of gender and race are explored through a study of material culture and entanglement.

Material evidence provides unique insights into the past and the techniques of material culture studies are an important element of my research.

Fellow, Royal Society of Canada (2003); Member, Order of Canada (2023)

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Research

Fashioning Empire: Race, Gender & Material Culture, c. 1660-1820

Funded by the Social Science & Humanities Research Council of Canada, Insight Grant, 2022-25.

How did racist thinking become everyday? How was it spread through material practice? How were racism and resistance manifest through material culture? 

This project combines thematic historical strands that explore the racialism promoted or resisted through the making, maintenance and movement of material culture. Racialized white-washing and laundry form one of these strands, as does the role of free and enslaved Black women in fashion sectors. Imperial whiteness in dress and policies contrast with the resistance of enslaved. Fashion was used both as a pillar of empire and a means to resist.

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Teaching

I incorporate material culture study into my courses through a variety of techniques and visits to museum collections on campus.

Co-edited with Laura Peers and Anne Whitelaw, Object Lives and Global Histories in Northern North America: Material Culture in Motion, c. 1780-1980 (MQUP, 2021).https://www.mqup.ca/object-lives-and-global-histories-in-northern-north-america-products-9780228003984.php?page_id=46&

Winner of the Horowitz Book Prize for the best book on the decorative arts, design history, or material culture of the Americas published in 2021.

https://www.bgc.bard.edu/about/news/922/19-oct-2022-2021-horowitz

HECOL 464 - Fashion and Material Culture: Politics, Economies, Societies, c. 1600-1900

Examines the evolution and practice of fashion as a social, economic, political and cultural phenomenon from a cross-cultural perspective. Prerequisite: consent of instructor. Normally offered in alternate years.

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HECOL 664 - Fashion and Material Culture: Politics, Economies, Societies, c. 1600-1900

Examines the evolution and practice of fashion as a social, economic, political and cultural phenomenon from a cross-cultural perspective. Prerequisite: consent of the instructor. Not to be taken if credit received for HECOL 464.

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HIST 405 - Fashion and Material Culture c. 1600-1900

The evolution and practice of fashion as a social, economic, political and cultural phenomenon from a cross-cultural perspective. Prerequisite: 3 units in HIST at the 300-level or consent of Department.

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HIST 617 - Fashion and Material Culture: Politics, Economies, Societies, c. 1600-1900

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Browse more courses taught by Beverly Lemire

This project studies objects and object systems to better understand the ways race and racial hierarchies became integral to western society, to expressions of

gender and everyday life. Clothing and other everyday media are my focus; habits and routines are explored including the reification of whiteness in dress and laundry.

Beverly Lemire

Amsterdam. 2024 February; Floral Culture in the Tudor and Stuart Courts, ed. Susannah Lyon-Whaley

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Editors: Christopher Breward, Beverly Lemire & Giorgio Riello

Cambridge, UK. 2023 July; 11. 1-1524

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Beverly Lemire

London & New York. 2023 June; Routledge International Handbook of Critical Race and Whiteness Studies, eds., Rikke Andreasse, Catrin Lundström, Suvi Keskinen, and Shirley Anne Tate 10.4324/9781003120612-12

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Beverly Lemire

London. 2023 March; Formative Modernities in the Early Modern Atlantic and Beyond: Identities, Polities and Glocal Economies, Veronika Hyden-Hanscho and Werner Stangle, eds.

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Beverly Lemire

Amsterdam. 2023 February; In-Between Textiles: Weaving Cultural Encounters in the Early Modern World, Beatriz Marin-Aquilera and Stefan Hanss, eds.

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Beverly Lemire

Paris. 2022 July; Album Holker. The Holker Album. Textile Samples and Industrial Espionage in the 18th Century, Ariane Fennetaux & John Styles, eds.

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Beverly Lemire

New York. 2022 February; Writing Material Culture History, 2nd ed. Anne Gerritsen & Giorgio Riello, eds

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Beverly Lemire

MAVCOR Journal (mavcor.yale.edu). 2021 April;

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Edited by Beverly Lemire, Laura Peers and Anne Whitelaw

Montreal. 2021 January;

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Beverly Lemire

Montreal & Kingston. 2020 February; Reinventing the Economic History of Industrialisation, Kristine Bruland, Anne Gerritsen, Pat Hudson & Giorgio Riello, eds.

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co-editors Beverly Lemire and Giorgio Riello

2019 January; 10.4324/9781351028745

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Beverly Lemire

2019 January; Dressing Global Bodies, Beverly Lemire & Giorgio Riello, eds

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Beverly Lemire

2018 January; 10.1017/9780511978814

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Beverly Lemire

Cultural and Social History. 2016 January; 31 (1):1-23 10.1080/14780038.2016.1133493

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Beverly Lemire

Journal of British Studies. 2015 February; 54 (2):288-319 10.1017/jbr.2015.7

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Janice Helland, Beverly Lemire & Alena Buis, eds.

London. 2014 September;

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Beverly Lemire

Textile: Journal of Cloth & Culture, Special Issue. 2012 May; 10 (2):306-324 10.2752/175183512X13315695424392

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Beverly Lemire

Oxford. 2011 May;

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Beverly Lemire, ed.

London. 2010 September;

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Beverly Lemire, ed.

London. 2010 August;

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Beverly Lemire

Manchester, UK. 2005 January;

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Beverly Lemire, Ruth Pearson, and Gail Campbell, eds.

Oxford. 2001 September;

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Beverly Lemire

Basingstoke, UK. 1997 January;

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Beverly Lemire

Oxford. 1991 January;