Dr. John Finkelberg is an instructor in the Roots of Contemporary Issues program at Washington State University and specializes in the history of menswear and modern capitalism in Europe and North America. His research interests include fashion history, gender and sexuality studies, economic history, and visual culture. Dr. Finkelberg finished his PhD in History at the University of Michigan in 2022. He also earned a MA in History and Literature from Columbia University in 2014, and a BA in History from Dartmouth College in 2013.

Dr. Finkelberg is currently working on his first book project, Becoming a Man in the Age of Fashion: Gender and Menswear in Nineteenth-Century France, which is based on his dissertation research. This project examines the production, sale, use, and representation of menswear in France from 1830 to 1870. More specifically, Finkelberg examines how the menswear industry transitioned from specializing in bespoke tailoring to mass-produced ready-to-wear. Dr. Finkelberg is also the author of “English Dandies and French Lions,” in The Male Body in Representation edited by Silvia Gerlsbeck and Carmen Dexl (Springer 2022), and the co-author of “Fashion in the Life of George Sand” published in Fashion Theory: The Journal of Dress, Body, and Culture (2020). His new article, “Dressing the Part: King Louis-Philippe I, Tailoring, and Fashioning the July Monarchy,” will appear in the Fall 2022 issue of Dix-Neuf.