Keith Rathbone (Ph.D., Northwestern University, 2015) researches twentieth century French social and cultural history. He writes about the transnational links between physical culture, associational life, agency, and politics for academic and popular audiences.

He is currently working on two books projects: the first The Man Called Artem: The Swimmer of Auschwitz, is a biographic microhistory of the French North African Jewish swimmer Alfred Nakache (under review with agents). 

His second book project, tentatively entitled American Bodies Abroad, looks at western European receptions of American bodies, both extraordinary and ordinary, as a way to understand the role of the body in producing American soft power across the twentieth century. 

His first book, entitled A Sport and Physical Culture in Occupied France: Authoritarianism, Agency and Everyday Life (Manchester University Press, 2022), examines physical education and sports in order to better understand civic life under the dual authoritarian systems of the German Occupation and the Vichy Regime. In investigating physical culture, he addresses historiographic issues such as the continuity between the Third Republic and the Vichy Regime, the gendered ideology of Vichy sports programs, and the development of collaboration and resistance.

https://manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9781526153289/ 

Keith arrives at Macquarie University after previous positions as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Nicholas D. Chabraja Center for Historical Studies at Northwestern University and as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the College of Wooster.  He has also lectured at the Sciences politiques de Paris and Indiana University Northwest. 

Keith's teaching interests include: modern French history, modern German history, military history, medical history, and the history of sports and leisure. He is currently convening units on Despotism and Democracy and Global Sports. 

He welcomes HDR supervisions of students interested in modern Europe and/or sport. 

He has previously taught courses on the French Revolution, 20th Century French History, War Stories and Soldiering, the History of Modern Warfare, the History of Terrorism, the History of Modern Sport, and both European Civilization and Global History.