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Julie Taddeo

Julie Taddeo

Research Professor, History
Affiliate Faculty, School of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures

(301) 405-4304

2140 Francis Scott Key Hall
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Education

Ph.D., British History, University of Rochester

Research Expertise

Britain
Gender
Media Studies
Modern History
Television Studies

Julie Taddeo is the author of Lytton Strachey and the Search for Modern Sexual Identity (2002) and co-author of Rape in Period Drama Television: Consent, Myth, and Fantasy (2022) and several articles on British modernism, sexuality, and twentieth century popular culture. Her edited collections include Writing Australian History On-screen: Televisions and Film Period Dramas "Down Under" (2023); Diagnosing History:  Medicine in Television Period Drama (2022); Conflicting Masculinities: Men in Television Period Drama (2019); Upstairs and Downstairs: British Costume Drama Television from The Forsyte Saga to Downton Abbey (2014); Catherine Cookson Country: On the Borders of Legitimacy, Fiction, and History (2012); The Tube Has Spoken: Reality TV & History (2009);  and Steaming into A Victorian Future: A Steampunk Anthology (2012). She has edited a special issue on "Bridgerton" for the Journal of Popular Television (2023) and her current project is an examination of the history of the National Health Service on British Television. She has been interviewed by international news outlets including the BBC and the New York Times and featured in Maryland Today multiple times. Julie is the resident area expert on the Royal family.  She also gives public lectures on British history from the Georgians through the twentieth century and uses British popular culture like period drama  television to reach audiences beyond the university. One of her interviews on Royal weddings is here.

Her courses specialize in Victorian cultural and social history; Twentieth Century British history taught through the lens of popular culture; Modern British surveys; the History of Britain at War; Victorian Scandal and Crime; and The History of Women in Modern Britain.

Julie Taddeo also serves as Director of the Department of History Undergraduate Internship Program and Faculty Adviser to the History Undergraduate Association (HUA). She is the 2023 recipient of the Provost’s Excellence Award for Research for Professional Track Faculty.

 

Publications

Julie Taddeo Reviews National Gallery Photo Exhibition

Taddeo Review of Photo Exhibit "This is Britain: Photographs from the 1970s and 1980s"

History

Author/Lead: Julie Taddeo
Dates: -

On May 25, 2023 Julie Taddeo published a review of "This is Britain: Photographs from the 1970s and 1980s," a recent photo Exhibit at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. The exhbit included 46 photos, most of them in black and white. Julie writes: "The exhibit gives us multiple versions of what it means to “be British” as a generation of socially conscious photographers expose issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality that threaten inclusivity during these two tumultuous decades." The exhibit also includes an hour-long film, Handsworth Songs, made in 1986 by the Black Audio Film Collective and directed by John Akomfrah for Channel Four’s series, Britain: The Lie of the Land. The newsreels and still photographs from the 1985 riots featured in Handsworth Songs provide context for the racism directed against the Black community in Birmingham in the 1980s. 

From the review: "This Is Britain is a powerful visual reminder that trash and runoff, like proudly displayed Union Jacks on bikes, furtive kisses, and power suits on posh Londoners, are just some of the “bits and bobs” that make this history worth revisiting."


The exhibit runs until June 11, 2023. Read the full review HERE.

Julie Taddeo | Writing Australian History On-Screen

Julie Taddeo's new book has now been published by Lexington Books, co-edited with Jo Parnell.

History

Author/Lead: Julie Taddeo
Dates:
Inset image

Julie Taddeo's new book has now been published by Lexington Books, co-edited with Jo Parnell. According to the publisher, Writing Australian History On-Screen: Television and Film Period Dramas "Down Under" "reveals the depths of Australian history from convict times to the present day. The essays in this book are thematically driven and take a rounded historical-cultural-sociological-psychological approach in analyzing the various selected productions. In their analyses and interpretations of the topic, the contributors interrogate the intricacies in Australian history as represented in Australian filmic period drama, taken from an Australian perspective. Individually, and together as a body of authors, they highlight past issues that, despite the society’s changing attitudes over time, still have relevance for the Australia of today. In speaking to the subject, the contributing writers show a keen awareness that addressing new areas arising from the humanities is key to learning; and hence to developing an understanding of the Australian culture, the society, and sense of the ever-unfurling flag of an Australian something that is not yet a national identity."

See the publisher's website here for more information.

Julie Taddeo Publishes New Book

New Book from Julie Taddeo

History

Author/Lead: Julie Taddeo
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Jo Parnell (University of Newcastle, Australia)
Dates: -
Inset image

Julie Taddeo is pleased to announce the publication of her latest book,  Writing Australian History On-screen:Television and Film Period Dramas “Down Under”, co-edited with Jo Parnell (University of Newcastle, Australia), published January 2023 by  Rowman and Littlefield. 

The book uses a historical-cultural-sociological-psychological approach in analyzing the various selected productions; the contributors interrogate the intricacies in Australian history as represented in Australian filmic period drama, taken from an Australian perspective. Individually, and together as a body of authors, they highlight past issues that, despite the society’s changing attitudes over time, still have relevance for the Australia of today. 

Taddeo Virtual Book Launch

Launch for Diagnosing History: Medicine in Television Period Drama

History

Author/Lead: Julie Taddeo
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Katherine M. Byrne, Lecturer in English, Ulster University, UK James Leggott, Associate Professor of Film and Television Studies, Northumbria University, UK  
Dates:

Julie Taddeo's most recent book, Diagnosing History: Medicine in Television Period Drama, coedited with Katherine Byrne and James Leggott (Manchester University Press, 2022) will be featured in a virtual book launch on September 23, 2022 at noon EST, 5pm in the UK, The launch is hosted by Moving Image, Popular Media & Culture Research Group at Northumbria University, UK .

From the publisher's website:

"This timely collection examines representations of medicine and medical practices in international period drama television. A preoccupation with medical plots and settings can be found across a range of important historical series, including Outlander, Poldark, The Knick, Call the Midwife, La Peste, and A Place to Call Home. Such shows offer a critique of medical history while demonstrating how contemporary viewers access and understand the past. Topics covered in this collection include the innovations and horrors of surgery; the intersection of gender, class, race, and medicine on the American frontier; psychiatry and the trauma of war; and the connections between past and present pandemics. Featuring original chapters on period television from the UK, the US, Spain, and Australia, Diagnosing History offers an accessible, global and multidisciplinary contribution to both televisual and medical history."

Taddeo Book Launch: Rape in Period Drama Television

Taddeo Virtual Book Launch

History

Author/Lead: Julie Taddeo
Non-ARHU Contributor(s): Katherine Byrne
Dates:
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The BAFTSS British Cinema and Television SIG is hosting an online event on Friday 8 July at 4pm (GMT) in celebration of four book projects that have been published within the last two years.

This is in recognition of the fact that our community has produced some fantastic scholarship recently, but the challenges and uncertainty of the global situation has sometimes created challenges for promotion.  As a SIG, we’re committed to providing a space for colleagues to share their work as it is developed and when it is realised, and recognise that opportunities to do this have been reduced since the pandemic began. 

We’re pleased to announce that our event will be in celebration of the following books:

Hannah Andrews, Biographical Television Drama (Palgrave, 2022)
Katherine Byrne and Julie Taddeo, Rape in Period Drama Television (Lexington, 2022) 
Sarah Godfrey, Masculinity in Contemporary British Cinema: Troubled Times 1990-2010 (Edinburgh, 2021)
Jaap Verhuel (ed.), The Cultural Life of James Bond: Specters of 007  (Amsterdam, 2020)
To register for attendance, please sign up here. The event will be on Teams and will last around an hour. All welcome! A link will be sent closer the time.