Opera, Heroic Masculinity, and Jewishness in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain

Uri Erman is a cultural historian of Britain and Western Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His research focuses on the public discourse about performers—actors and singers—as a central site for the negotiation of personal and group identity in modernity, particularly regarding perceptions of gender, class, and ethnic identity. He has a Ph.D. in History from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with a dissertation titled “The Castrato, the Jew, and the Prima Donna: British Singers in the Public Discourse, 1760–1830.” His research also examines the power dynamic that had developed between actresses and male nobles in eighteenth-century Britain. He has held fellowships previously at the Open University and at Ben-Gurion University in Israel.