The stories that we can uncover from the past are really fun, and disturbing, and interesting ways of forcing us to re-look at our own situation.
Joanna Bourke is a Fellow of the British Academy and a professor of history at Birkbeck, University of London. A self-described “socialist feminist,” she has written about Irish history, gender history, working-class culture, war and masculinity, the history of rape, pain, and the history of what it means to be human.
Her seven books include Dismembering the Male: Men’s Bodies, Britain, and the Great War, Fear: A Cultural History, and The Story of Pain: From Prayer to Painkillers. Her most recent title is Deep Violence: Military Violence, War Play, and the Social Life of Weapons. She is the Director of the Birkbeck Trauma Project.