Lisa Cody, Ph.D. FRHistS, FRSA
Department
Areas of Expertise
Biography
Lisa Forman Cody is a cultural historian of Britain and Northern Europe. She works on the history of the family, gender, and the reproductive body across the Atlantic and Northern European worlds. Her work explores law, medicine, literary and visual representations, and social conflict. She is the recipient of numerous prizes for her academic articles and first monograph, Birthing the Nation: Sex, Science, and the Conception of Eighteenth-Century Britons. Her book on the history of marriage, manners, and conflict (Sex and Sensibility: The Taming of Husbands and Wives from Shakespeare to Austen) will appear in 2027.
Her 2022 article, "'Marriage Is No Protection for Crime'" won two awards including the James Clifford Prize in eighteenth-century studies and was chosen as "30 for 75," one of the most significant thirty articles in the last 75 years of the Journal of British Studies. Her most recent essay, "'Mice in a Barn' or 'Every Little Miss': Figurative Imagination and Demographic Narratives," is in Histories of Science: Natural Philosophy in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (University of Virginia Press, 2025); an essay on cruelty and ugliness will appear in The Cultural History of Beauty (Bloomsbury) in early 2026,
Professor Cody is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. She currently serves as vice president (and president elect) of the Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies. She has held other elected posts with the American Historical Association, the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and the Pacific-AHA and has served on scholarly prize and fellowship committees and editorial boards. She also was appointed by the Governor of California to serve on the California State Bar's Judicial Nominees Evaluation Commission (2018-2021) and continues to serve as a commissioner pro tem for JNE.
Teaching Interests
British and European history, 1500-1945; History & Literature; Cultural History; Reproduction in the Atlantic World, 1500 to the present; Jane Austen's Britain; London and Paris the 19th Century; The Age of Elizabeth and Shakespeare; Adam Smith & the Enlightenment; Family, Neighborhood, & Law; History of English Legal Courts and Traditions; Culture, Arts & Politics; Gender, Sex, and the Family in Europe, 1500-1900; Art and Politics, Advertising and Propaganda in Europe, 1500-1960; Revolutions in London and Paris, 1640-1871.
Research Interests
Cultural history of Britain and Northern Europe. History of medicine, reproduction, gender, sexuality, abortion, and the human body; history of the family, the law, medicine, literary and visual representations, and social conflict.
I'm completing a book manuscript: Sex & Sensibility: The Taming of Husbands and Wives from the Stuarts to the Age of Jane Austen.
"'Marriage is No Protection for Crime': Coverture, Sex, and Marital Rape in Eighteenth-Century England" appeared in the October 2022 Journal of British Studies. It won the Clifford Prize from the American Society for 18th Century Studies and the Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies Article Prize.
Birthing the Nation: Sex, Science, and the Conception of Eighteenth-Century Britons examined the intersection of reproduction and politics and won three best book awards including the Berkshire Prize. My article on the English Poor Law's Treatment of Unwed Mothers in The Journal of Women's History won the Western Association of Women Historians Article Prize, and my article on Maternity Hospitals, Obstetrics, and Childbirth Fever won the WAWH Article Prize and the North American Conference on British Studies Walter D. Love Prize.
Education
A.B. magna cum laude, Harvard University; M.A., Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
Awards and Affiliations
James Clifford Article Prize, American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, 2024, for the best article of the year, for "'Marriage is no protection for crime': Coverture, Sex, and Marital Rape in Eighteenth-Century England," Journal of British Studies, October 2022.
Article Prize, Pacific Coast Conference on British Studies, 2023, for the best article of 2022 in any field of British studies, for "'Marriage is no protection for crime': Coverture, Sex, and Marital Rape in Eighteenth-Century England," Journal of British Studies, October 2022.
Berkshire Conference of Women Historians Best Book Prize, 2006, for the best first historical work published by a woman in any historical field in 2005, for for Birthing the Nation: Sex, Science, and the Conception of Eighteenth-Century Britons (Oxford University Press, 2005).
Birthing the Nation, shortlisted for the Whitfield Prize, the Royal Historical Society, 2006, for the best first book in British History published in 2005
The Sierra Prize for the best book in any field of history by a member of the society in 2005, Western Association of Women Historians, 2006, for Birthing the Nation: Sex, Science, and the Conception of Eighteenth-Century Britons (Oxford University Press, 2005).
Prize for the Best First Book in any Historical Field, Phi Alpha Theta, the History Honor Society, 2005, for Birthing the Nation: Sex, Science, and the Conception of Eighteenth-Century Britons (Oxford University Press, 2005).
Walter D. Love Article Prize for the best article in any field of British History, North American Conference on British Studies, 2005, for "Living and Dying in Georgian London's Lying in Hospitals," Bulletin of the History of Medicine (Summer 2004).
Judith Lee Ridge Article Prize, Western Association of Women Historians, 2005, for the best article of the year by a member of the society in any historical field, for "Living and Dying in Georgian London's Lying-in Hospitals," Bulletin of the History of Medicine (Summer 2004).
Judith Lee Ridge Article Prize, Western Association of Women Historians, 2002, for the best article of the year by a member of the society in any historical field, for "The Politics of Illegitimacy in an Age of Reform," The Journal of Women's History, 2000.
- "30 for 75," Journal of British Studies: my 2022 article, "'Marriage Is No Protection for Crime'" was chosen as one of the most significant thirty articles in the journal's 75 year history.
Research and Publications
"'Marriage is No Protection for Crime': Coverture, Sex, and Marital Rape in Eighteenth-Century England," Journal of British Studies 61.4 (October 2022): pp. 809-34.
Birthing the Nation: Sex, Science, and the Conception of Eighteenth-Century Britons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
Editor, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, Johns Hopkins University Press, vol. 41 (2012) and vol. 42 (2013).
"Living and Dying in Georgian London's Lying-in Hospitals," Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 78.2 (Summer 2004): 309-348.
“‘Every Lane Teems with Instruction, Every Alley is Big with Erudition’: Graffiti in Eighteenth-Century London,” in The Streets of London, 1660-1870, ed. Tim Hitchcock and Heather Shore (London: Rivers Oram Press, 2003), pp. 92-111.
“Sex, Civility, and the Self: Eighteenth-Century Conceptions of Gendered, National, and Psychological Identity,” in a Forum on Nina Gelbart's The King's Midwife and Gary Kates's Monsieur d'Eon is a Woman, French Historical Studies, 24:3 (Summer 2001): 379-409.
“The Politics of Illegitimacy in an Age of Reform: Gender, Reproduction and Political Economy in England's New Poor Law of 1834,” Journal of Women's History 11.4 (Winter 2000), pp. 131-156. Winner of the Judith Lee Ridge Article Prize, Western Association of Women Historians, 2000.
“The Politics of Reproduction: From Midwives' Alternative Public Sphere to the Public Spectacle of Man-Midwifery,” Eighteenth-Century Studies 32.4 (Summer 1999), pp. 477-495.
“’No Cure, No Money,’ or the Invisible Hand of Quackery: The Language of Commerce, Credit, and Cash in Eighteenth-Century British Medical Advertisements,” Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture 28 (1999): pp. 103-130.
“The Doctor's in Labour; or a New Whim-Wham from Guildford,” Gender and History 4.2 (Summer 1992): pp. 175-96.