Dr Matt Cook

Senior Lecturer in History and Gender Studies

Co-director of the Raphael Samuel History Centre (with Professor Barbara Taylor, University of East London) 

Teaching interests* Current research* Research supervision* Publications* Contact details

Matt Cook is a cultural historian specializing in the history of sexuality and the history of London in the ni neteenth and twentieth centuries. He has a background in literary and cultural theory and a strong interest in cross and inter disciplinary work.  He is an editor of History Workshop Journal and was previously Lecturer in Modern British History at Keele University. Dr Cook became co-director of the Raphael Samuel Centre in September 2008 and is also a member of the steering committees of the Birkbeck Institute of Gender and Sexuality (BIGS); Birkbeck’s  Centre for Research in Representations of Kinship and Community; the cross-institutional Britain at Work project; and the Stonewall/GALOP community oral history project

Teaching interests

Dr Cook is a member of the convening team for Birkbeck’s masters programmes in gender and sexuality studies MA Gender, Sexuality and Culture; MSc Gender Sexuality and Society. He teaches on the core modules ‘Theorizing Gender’ and ‘Masculinities/Femininities’, and leads option modules on  ‘Sex, Gender and the City’ and ‘Queer Histories, Queer Cultures’. Until 2008 Dr Cook  was responsible for Birkbeck’s Certificate in Higher Education history  programme and taught a number of modules, including ‘Queer Histories: London’s lesbian and gay past’;  ‘Constructing the Capital: London in the nineteenth century’;  and ‘Constructing the Metropolis: London in the twentieth century’. Dr Cook has previously also taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses on class in the nineteenth century and on Victorian literature and culture. 

Current research

Dr Cook is currently working on a book and a series of articles exploring queer families and domesticity in the twentieth century. He is also editing books on the queer 1950s (with Heike Bauer [Birkbeck]) and on queer Europe since the second world war (with Jennifer Evans [Carlton, Canada]). 

Research supervision

Dr Cook is happy to discuss the supervision of projects on 19th and 20th century cultural and urban history and on the history of gender and sexuality. He is also interested in interdisciplinary projects and is happy to co-supervise with Birkbeck colleagues working in other schools and departments.

He is currently supervising doctoral projects on: Victorian anglo-catholicism and queer theory; bachelor domesticities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; medical treatments for homosexuality in the post world war II period; concepts of euphoria; and the Ghanain community in London. Doctoral projects on nineteenth century poverty and on nineteenth century domestic murder have recently been successfully completed.

Publications

Books

• London and the Culture of Homosexuality, 1885 - 1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)

• Lead author and editor of: A Gay History of Britain: Love and Sex Between Men since the Middle Ages (Greenwood, March 2007)

Edited journals

• (co-editor with Marybeth Hamilton) of History Workshop Journal, 63 (Spring 2007)

• (co-editor with Catherine Hall) of History Workshop Journal 64 (Autumn 2007)

Journal Articles

• ‘A New City of Friends: London and Homosexuality in the 1890s’, in History Workshop Journal, 56 (autumn 2003) 35 – 58

• ‘Orton in the Archives’, in History Workshop Journal, 66 (Autumn 2008), pp. 163 – 179

• ‘Families of Choice? George Ives, Queer Lives and the Family’, in Gender and History (forthcoming 2010)

Chapter in books

• ‘“Words Written Without any Stopping”: Derek Jarman’s Written Work’, in Roger Wollen, ed., Derek Jarman: A Portrait, (Thames and Hudson, 1996), pp.105 - 113

• ‘Sex Lives and Diary Writing: the Journals of George Ives’, in David Amigoni, ed., Life Writing and Victorian Culture (Ashgate, 2006)

• ‘Law’, in H.G.Cocks and Matt Houlbrook, eds, The Modern History of Sexuality (Palgrave, 2006), pp.64 – 87

• ‘Wilde Lives: Derek Jarman and the Queer Eighties’, in Joseph Bristow, ed., Oscar Wilde and Modern Culture: The Making of a Legend (Ohio University Press, 2008)

Forthcoming

• ‘Homes fit for homos: Joe Orton and the Domesticated Queer’ for What is Masculinity? Historical Perspectives and Arguments, eds Sean Brady and John Arnold (Palgave Macmillan, 2010)

• ‘Queer Domesticities’ for The Domestic Space Reader,  eds. Chiara Briganti and Kathy Mezei (Tornonto University Press, 2010 )

Essay reviews and shorter pieces include:

• ‘Queer London’, in Times Higher Education Supplement (February 2006)

• ‘No Clear Roadmap to a Man to Follow’, in Times Higher Education Supplement (29 June 2006)

• ‘Urban Desires’ ,History Workshop Journal , 62 (Autumn 2006),

• ‘Histories of Masculinity’ in The Journal of Contemporary History (Jan 2008; vol. 43) pp. 127 - 135.)

• ‘Morris Kaplan’s Sodom on the Thames’ in Victorian Review, 34, 1 (2008 )

• ‘From the Ancient Greeks to Mother Clap our Lives and Loves Have Changed’, Pink Paper, issue 893 (9 February 2006)

• ‘George Ives’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press, 2006)

• ‘We’re here, we’re queer – our human rights are clear’, in THES (4 May 2007)

Web and other media

• Co-editor (with Daniel Pick), ‘Deviance, Disorder and the Self’, a primary source archive of nineteenth century documents. The site won the Birkbeck Award for  Innovations in Teaching 2007. http://www.bbk.ac.uk/hca/staff/pick/   

• Dr Cook has appeared in a number of TV documentaries exploring the history of sexuality in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, including  ‘Prince Eddy: The King We Never Had’  (Channel 4, 2005);  ‘The Irish Crown Jewels’,  (BBC History 2004); ‘Normality’ (BBC2 Autumn 2008); and ‘Victorians Uncovered’ (Channel 4, 2008)

Contact details

Room 203, 26 Russell Sq, London WC1B 5DQ

tel: 020 7631 6680

email: m.cook@bbk.ac.uk