Theodore Koditschek

Theodore Koditschek
History
Bio

Theodore Koditschek (PhD, Princeton University) is Professor in the Department of History at the University of Missouri-Columbia.  He is a historian of Britain and the British Empire and especially interested in the development of liberalism, capitalism, class, and race during the nineteenth century. His most recent book, Liberalism, Imperialism and the Historical Imagination (Cambridge University Press, 2011), was recipient of the 2012 Peter Stansky "best book" Prize of the North American Conference on British Studies. This book explores the vicissitudes of liberalism and the uses of history in both Britain and the Empire during the nineteenth century. Discussions of histories of India, and of Indian historians, figure centrally in this volume, which examines both the ways in which British historians represented the subcontinent, as well as the ways in which Indian historians rewrote their own history. In his current work, Koditschek is focusing on the development of racial concepts and practices during the same period. Much of this work is similarly focused on the experience of the Indian subcontinent, considering the interaction of caste, class, economic development, ideas of scientific racism, and British administrative practices during the Victorian period.