Coming
june 3, 2025!
A surprising history of human hair in nineteenth-century America, where length, texture, color, and coiffure became powerful indicators of race, gender, and national belonging.
Whiskerology is now available for pre-order!
Order from Harvard University Press
Also available to order from local bookstores, including Bay Area favorites like Pegasus Books in Berkeley and Oakland, East Bay Booksellers in Oakland, Mrs. Dalloway’s in Berkeley, Orinda Books in Orinda, and Copperfield’s Books across the North Bay!
UPCOMING EVENTS
JUNE 12, 2025 | WARWICK’S, LA JOLLA, CA
In conversation with Rebecca Jo Plant, professor at UC San Diego
This event is FREE and open to the public. You can reserve a seat (and pre-order a copy of the book!) on the Warwick’s website.
JULY 24, 2025 | ELLIOT BAY BOOK COMPANY, SEATTLE, WA
In conversation with Aubrey Williams, digital history librarian at University of Washington
This event is FREE and open to the public. More information will be available soon on Elliot Bay’s website.
JULY 29, 2025 | AMERICAN ANTIQUARIAN SOCIETY (VIRTUAL)
A virtual program hosted by an archive of early American history (located in the Worcester, MA) where I conducted some of the research for this book.
This virtual talk is FREE and open to the public, but requires registration. Register on the AAS website.
FALL 2025 | BANCROFT LIBRARY (VIRTUAL)
A virtual program hosted by UC Berkeley’s rare books and manuscripts library, home of some of Whiskerology’s sources (and many of its images!). Presented as part of the Bancroft Roundtables, a monthly noon talk series held since 1997.
This virtual talk is FREE and open to the public, but requires registration. More information will be available soon on the Bancroft website.
press
Listen: Interview with David Marr on Late Night Live (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
PRAISE FOR WHISKEROLOGY
“Whiskerology is a delightful, meticulously researched deep dive into the history of hair in nineteenth-century America. Exploring the intersection of body and identity in US history, Sarah Gold McBride untangles and redefines our understanding of our tresses, locks, and curls. Through vivid storytelling, she unveils how hair has long shaped and reflected cultural anxieties about race, ethnicity, and gender. The result is a fascinating account of how something as intimate and ubiquitous as hair became a public marker of power and belonging.”
“An illuminating history of an unruly ‘appendage.’ Once considered mere dead matter, hair was reconceptualized in the nineteenth century—when its hue and texture, volume and silhouette came to signal supposedly unalterable aspects of identity. Gold McBride deftly showcases the ways in which hair has been used to define, defend, and contest the boundaries of race and gender.”
“Gold McBride’s fascinating study invites us to take human hair seriously. Nineteenth-century Americans, we learn, saw hair as a body part that expressed truths about one’s identity and character. Some even saw racial ancestry in the structure of each individual hair. I will never look at hair the same way again!”
“In this innovative and surprising history, Gold McBride reveals wigs, moustaches, and hair dye to be about much more than fashion. Many nineteenth-century Americans fixated on hair as evidence of an individual’s place in supposedly natural hierarchies, even as they feared that people were disguising themselves through widespread ‘hair fraud.’ Whiskerology shows that you can’t understand the history of gender, race, or class without thinking about hair.”