Professor John Mackey
jmackey@bu.edu

John Mackey is assistant professor of social science at Boston University, College of General Studies. He earned a B.A. in history from Dickinson College in 1991, and an M.A. (1994) and Ph.D. (2002) in history from Boston College.

His academic interests include modern British and Irish history, European intellectual history, the history of dress and fashion, and the development of modern social theory and philosophy.

Before coming to CGS, Professor Mackey was Lecturer on History and Literature at Harvard University, where he received the Janice Thaddeus Teaching Prize in 2004. He has also taught courses on European and world history at Boston College and Suffolk University.

Professor Mackey’s dissertation is titled “Producing the Christian Body in Victorian Britain,” and it examines the relationship between Christian missionary movements, clothing, and the body in Britain and the British Empire in the nineteenth century. He is particularly interested in the ways in which the British defined themselves - and defined colonized peoples - through dress in Victorian-era missions.

Professor Mackey is currently working on research related to the development of the Salvation Army uniform in the last decades of the nineteenth century, and is also preparing an article on the portrayal of the Salvation Army in George Bernard Shaw's play Major Barbara.