Seth Koven is the author of Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London (Princeton 2004) and co-editor with Sonya Michel of Mothers of a New World, Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States (Routledge 1993).

He is currently writing a history of the radical left in 20th century Britian through a study of six anti-imperialist pacifists who renounced their wealth and embraced voluntary poverty in their quest to reconcile rich and poor, east and west, black and white, men and women.

Dr. Koven's talk will explore the centrality of the body in his subjects' understandings of spirituality and global justice while telling their life stories through their experiments with a wide range of counter-culture body, diet, prayer and health regimes.