Welcome to the ePortfolio of Dr Deborah Toner.

I am currently working as a Post-doctoral Fellow in Latin American History at the Institute for the Study of the Americas, School of Advanced Study, University of London. I am working on a digitisation project, Liberalism in the Americas, to establish a digitial library of resources for scholars working on liberalism throughout the Americas and organising a series of international events on this research theme. I completed my PhD in the History Department at the University of Warwick in December 2009. I began this research in September 2006 after completing a taught MA in The History of Race in the Americas and a BA (honours) in History, also at Warwick. I am primarily interested in the history of drinking, drunkenness and alcoholism in the Americas, and I work with an interdisciplinary approach, combining literary and historical analyses.

To help further the development of my comparative and interdisciplinary interests, in September 2010, in collaboration with several colleagues in the History Department, I established the Warwick Drinking Studies Network, an interdisciplinary forum for scholars working on any aspect of drink and drinking cultures in any society and in any time period. I am currently acting as co-ordinator of this network, organising several events over the coming months, including our second annual symposium, 'Drink and the Life Cycle', to be held in September 2011.

These pages contain information my research, teaching, and professional development. If you have a particular interest in me, my work and my plans, you are welcome to contact me for more information at deborah.toner@sas.ac.uk

About My Research

Department: History

Supervisor: Dr Rebecca Earle

Research topic: Alcohol and Nation-Building in Nineteenth Century Mexican Fiction: My doctoral research explores the thematic use of alcohol in Mexican literature as part of a nineteenth century nation-building discourse that sought to confront the deep social, political and cultural divisions that separated various groups within the emerging nation. The broad themes I deal with are drinking spaces, masculinity, citizenship and the body, alcoholism as a medical concept, and failure.

Funding: 

• 2009-10: IAS Early Career Fellowship. Six month fellowship at the Institute of Advanced Study, University of Warwick
• 2005-09: ESRC 1 + 3 studentship (for MA and PhD)
• 2007: Mellon-Newberry scholarship to participate in a two-week residential workshop on European and New World Forms of Knowledge in Colonial Spanish America

Publications:

• 'Xochitl's Bar: Pulquerias and Mexican costumbrismo', Art and Architecture of the Americas, 8 (2010)

Forthcoming

• 'Drinking to Fraternity: Alcohol, Masculinity and National Identity in the Novels of Manuel Payno and Heriberto Frías,' Bulletin of Hispanic Studies (TBC)
• Various book reviews for The Journal of the Historical Association
• Several articles for The Encyclopedia of the Caribbean, ed. John Garrigus (New York: Facts on File, TBC)

About My Teaching:

University of Liverpool

• 2010-11: Lecturer in Conquest and Colonialism in Latin America; Guest Lecturer in MA in Latin American Studies

University of Manchester

• 2010-11: Lecturer in From Silver to Cocaine: The History of Commodities in Latin America and Economic and Social History of Latin America
• 2009-10: Seminar tutor in Economic and Social History of Latin America

University of Warwick

• 2011: Lecturer and seminar tutor in Latin America Themes and Problems
• 2009-11: Tutor in Introduction to North American Literature 
• 2009, 2011: Tutor in Introduction to Latin American Literature
• 2007-9: Seminar tutor and lecturer in Latin America Themes and Problems
• 2008: Seminar tutor in Introduction to Latin American Poetry
• 2007-08: Contributions to The Social History of Food in Latin America