Lydia Murdoch
Associate Professor of History
Office: Swift Hall, room 34
Phone: (845) 437-5664
Hours: M, 2-3 p.m., Th, 2-4 p.m., and by appointment
Originally from Kents Store, Virginia, Lydia Murdoch earned her B.A. in History from Vassar College (1992) and her M.A. and Ph.D. in British History and Victorian Studies from Indiana University (2000), under the direction of M. Jeanne Peterson. Her book, Imagined Orphans: Poor Families, Child Welfare, and Contested Citizenship in London (Rutgers University Press, 2006), is a cultural and social history of child welfare in Victorian London. In it she contrasts middle-class reformers’ images of poor children as abandoned “waifs and strays” with the family backgrounds of institutionalized children reconstructed through archival records. Professor Murdoch is currently researching British responses to the Indian Revolt of 1857.
In addition to an introductory British history course, Murdoch teaches classes on Victorian Britain, the British Empire, the First World War, and the history of childhood in nineteenth-century Britain. She is also actively involved in Vassar’s Victorian Studies and Women’s Studies programs, having co-taught the Introduction to Women’s Studies.