معرفی
Alice Weinreb is an Associate Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago, where she teaches courses in the history of psychiatry, twentieth-century Europe, the politics of food and hunger, and memory and the Holocaust. Currently on leave for the 2024-25 academic year, Professor Weinreb has established herself as a leading scholar at the intersection of food history, German history, and the history of medicine.
Her educational background includes a PhD from the University of Michigan (2009), an M.A. from Humboldt Universität zu Berlin (2003), and a B.A. from Columbia University (1999). These diverse academic experiences have informed her interdisciplinary approach to historical research.
Professor Weinreb's research primarily focuses on the historical intersections of food, power, and mental health in twentieth-century Germany and Europe. Her work explores how food systems, hunger, and eating disorders have been shaped by political ideologies, war, and social change. She examines how everyday experiences of food preparation and consumption reflect broader historical processes, particularly in the context of the World Wars, the Cold War, and the Holocaust. Her scholarship bridges the history of medicine, cultural history, and political history, offering nuanced perspectives on how bodily experiences are intertwined with larger historical narratives.
Professor Weinreb has received significant recognition for her scholarly contributions. Her first book, Modern Hungers: Food, and Power in Twentieth Century Germany, published with Oxford University Press in 2017, was awarded both the Wiener Library Fraenkel Book Prize in Contemporary History and the Waterloo Centre for German Studies Book Prize. Most recently, she was awarded a prestigious 2024 NEH Fellowship to support her new project tracing a transnational history of the construction of eating disorders as a category of mental illness in the late twentieth century.
In addition to her book awards, Professor Weinreb has been invited to present significant lectures, including the 15th Annual James H. Cassedy Lecture in the History of Medicine in February 2024, titled "Anorexia in the Archives: Documenting the Late Twentieth Century Rise in Eating Disorders." Her research has been featured in numerous interviews and discussions about the historical dimensions of food politics and eating disorders.
Professor Weinreb teaches a range of courses at Loyola University Chicago, including HIST 102: The Evolution of Western Ideas and Institutions since the Seventeenth Century, PSYCH 386: History of Psychiatry: Research Seminar on Eating Disorders, HIST 331A: Food Hunger and Power in the Modern World, and courses on women and family in Europe, race and racism in Germany, and Holocaust memory. Her teaching reflects her interdisciplinary research interests and commitment to engaging students with complex historical questions about food, medicine, and politics.
