RESEARCH INTERESTS
The labour, economic, and social history of early modern London
Forthcoming volume
Humfrey, Paula. Phebe Harrison in London. A milkmaid and country gentlewoman in the Atlantic metropolis, 1694-1707. (Routledge, forthcoming 2024).
Edited volume
Humfrey, Paula. The Experience of Domestic Service for Women in Early Modern London. (Routledge, 2019). First published 2011 by Ashgate.
Book chapters
Humfrey, Paula. "Staging Fictions for Privacy in Early Eighteenth-Century London Households" in S. Hague and K. Lipsedge, (eds.), At Home in the 18th Century: Interrogating Domestic Space (Routledge, 2021), pp. 21-41.
Humfrey, Paula. "Female servants and women's criminality in early modern London" in S. Devereaux, A. May and G. Smith, (eds.), Crime and Society in the Old World and the New (Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto, 1998).
Humfrey, Paula. "What the Servants Knew", in V. Frith (ed.), Women and History: Voices of Early Modern England, 1600-1800 (Irwin Publishing, 1995). Second printing.
Podcasts
Rosie Parent, Host. "Privacy in 18th Century London with Dr. Paula Humfrey". HISTORY, EH?. Podcast audio, 19 Feb 2020.
Articles and reviews
Humfrey, Paula. "A carnival of plague masks and the revelation of the individual." GRAVAMEN, March 2021.
Humfrey, Paula. "Review of Dowd and Korda" (eds.), Working Subjects in Early Modern English Drama. Journal of British Studies, Vol. 51, No. 2 (April 2012), pp. 448-449.
Humfrey, Paula. "Household Servants in Early Modern London", Times Higher Education magazine (THE) 2 September 2010
Humfrey, Paula. "The Canon: The Hanging Tree: Execution and the English People 1770-1868. By V.A.C. Gatrell", Times Higher Education magazine (THE) 12 August 2010
Invited papers
Humfrey, Paula. "Staging Fictions of Privacy in Early Eighteenth-Century London Households." British Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Meeting, St. Hugh's College, Oxford University UK, 5 January 2019.
Humfrey, Paula. "Trialling early eighteenth-century domesticity: servants’ evidence." American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies Annual Meeting, Minneapolis USA, 28 March 2017.
Humfrey, Paula. "Staging fictions of privacy in early-modern London households". 'At Home': Exploring Eighteenth-Century Domestic Space, Romanticism and Eighteenth-Century Studies, Oxford University, UK, 13 June 2015.
Humfrey, Paula. "Locating love and bastardy in the interstice between domestic service and domestic space in early modern London households". 'Home-Work: Connections, Transitions and the Wider World, Centre for Studies of Home at Queen Mary University of London, Geffrye Museum of the Home, London UK, 24 June 2014.
Humfrey, Paula. "The emergence of domestic labour for London women." Economic History Association 57th Annual Meeting, Rutgers University, USA, September 1997.
Humfrey, Paula. "The importance of mobility and invisibility to female servants' agency in early modern London". Anonymity, Harvard University, USA, 15 March 1997.
Humfrey, Paula. "Female servants in the metropolis of Queen Anne's London." Bennington College Women's Issues Study Group, Spring Lecture Series, USA, April 1991.
Humfrey, Paula. "Women in seventeenth-century England: a review of the literature." University of Toronto Women's Studies History Group, Canada, October 1988.
Historical and metaphysical concepts of the western frontier
Humfrey, Paula. "'Sustained by a folklore of hope': Small farmer migrants and the shaping of frontier rhetoric." Crosstown Traffic: Anglo-American Cultural Exchange Since 1865, Royal Historical Society, North American Conference on British Studies and British Association for American Studies, University of Warwick, UK, 2 July 2004.
Cultural histories of the long decades of the Great Depression and the 1960s
Humfrey, Paula. "Digital 'deviants' and the spirit of '68", Times Higher Education magazine (THE) 18 November 2010.
Developing ways of understanding higher education in the online environment
Humfrey, Paula. The Bandit Guide to Teaching Online: Prospering as a Contract Knowledge Worker in a Time of Academic Revolution (Next Level Press, 2010).
The history of monetary theory
Humfrey, Paula, Ed. Filice, Livio. (2017). Winning at Income Investing: Creating a defensive stock strategy to generate reliable and consistent income. (n.p.): Author.
TEACHING EXPERIENCE
Current appointment
University courses taught 1990-2023
In English
- History of the Modern World
- Western Civilization I: Prehistory to Renaissance
- Western Civilization II: Renaissance to Present
- The Development of Western Civilization
- The Rise of Christianity in the West
- The Renaissance in Italy and Northern Europe
- The Struggle for Power: Britain 1450-1689
- History of Women and the Family in the Preindustrial Era
- History of Women and the Women's Movement in the Modern Era
- United States History I: 1607-1865
- Colonial New England
- Early American Intellectual History
- History of the Canadian Family
- Comparing Frontier Cultures in the American and Canadian West
- Cities in Canada: An Historical Perspective
- Twentieth-Century Europe to World War II
- European History Since World War II
- The Great Depression
- The European Holocaust
- The Sixties
- Introduction to the 20th Century
En français
- Histoire du nord de l'Ontario
- L'histoire des femmes et de la famille à l'ère préindustrielle
- Histoire des Premières Nations au Canada
Interdisciplinary
- Introduction to Literature
- Leadership, Ethics, and Decision Making
- Freedom and Responsibility
- Understandings of Morality
- Life and Death
Online and distance education appointments 1997-2023
- Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada 1997-2023
- Eastern Oregon University, La Grande, Oregon, USA 2001-2012
- Lakeland University, Sheboygan, Wisconsin, USA 2000-2012
- Southern New Hampshire University, Manchester, New Hampshire, USA 2001-2010
PERSONAL INFORMATION
Distinctions
- 2003-2004 Formby Research Fellow, Texas Tech University
- 2003-2004 'By Faculty, For Faculty' Workshop Grant Recipient, Institute for Online Education, Southern New Hampshire University
- 1986-1987 University of Toronto Open Fellowship
- 1984 Rhodes Scholarship Finalist, Province of Ontario, Canada
Education
- 2000 Ph.D History, University of Toronto
- 1988 M.A. History, University of Toronto
- 1986 B.A. (History and Literature), Bennington College
- 1984 Summer student, Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge University
Theses
- 2000 "Domestic service for women in London, 1660-1745", unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Toronto. (Abstract)
- 1988 "Women and violence in London, 1720-25", unpublished Master's major paper, University of Toronto.
- 1986 "Strange Bedfellowes: Moll Flanders, Roxana, and the problem of morality in Augustan London", unpublished undergraduate thesis, Bennington College.
