Roger Ekirch Explained

Roger Ekirch
Birth Date:	6 February 1950
Birth Place:	Washington, D.C., U.S.
Discipline:	Historian
Workplaces:	Virginia Tech

Arthur Roger Ekirch (born February 6, 1950) is University Distinguished Professor of history at Virginia Tech in the United States.^[1] He was a Guggenheim fellow in 1998.

The son of intellectual historian Arthur A. Ekirch Jr. and Dorothy Gustafson,^[2] Roger Ekirch is internationally known for his pioneering research into pre-industrial sleeping patterns that was first published in "Sleep We Have Lost: Pre-Industrial Slumber in the British Isles"^[3] and later in his award-winning 2005 book At Day's Close: Night in Times Past.^{[4] [5] [6] [7]}

Selected publications

Books

• "Poor Carolina": Politics and society in Colonial North Carolina, 1729–1776, University of North Carolina Press, 1981.
• Bound for America: The Transportation of British Convicts to the Colonies, 1718–1775, Oxford University Press, 1987.
• At Day's Close: Night in Times Past, W.W. Norton, 2005.
• Birthright: The True Story of the Kidnapping of Jemmy Annesley, W.W. Norton, 2010.
• American Sanctuary: Mutiny, Martyrdom, and National Identity in the Age of Revolution, Pantheon, 2017.
• La Grande Transformation du Sommeil: Comment la Revolution Industrielle a Bouleversé Nos Nuits, Editions Amersterdam, 2021.

Articles

• "Sleep We Have Lost: Pre-Industrial Slumber in the British Isles", The American Historical Review, 2001.
• "The Modernization of Western Slumber: Or, Does Insomnia Have a History?", Past & Present, 2015.
• "Segmented Sleep in Preindustrial Societies", Sleep, 2016.
• "What Sleep Research Can Learn From History", Sleep Health, 2018.

See also

• Biphasic and polyphasic sleep

External links

• Rethinking Sleep (NY Times)
• Segmented sleep (Harpers)

Notes and References

1. Web site: A. Roger Ekirch . Department of History, Virginia Tech . History.vt.edu . 2017-08-08.
2. Web site: Arthur A. Ekirch Jr. (1915-2000) Perspectives on History AHA . 2022-11-07 . www.historians.org.
3. Web site: "Sleep We Have Lost" Commentary . Department of History, Virginia Tech . History.vt.edu . 2017-08-08.
4. Web site: Gideon Lewis-Kraus . 'At Day's Close': The Dark Ages . The New York Times . 2005-07-24 . 2017-08-08.
5. Web site: Review: At Day's Close by A Roger Ekirch | Books . The Guardian . 2005-07-30 . 2017-08-08.
6. Web site: Gorvett. Zaria. January 10, 2022. The forgotten medieval habit of 'two sleeps'. BBC Future. https://web.archive.org/web/20220110010605/https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220107-the-lost-medieval-habit-of-biphasic-sleep. January 10, 2022. live.
7. Web site: Hegarty. Stephanie. February 22, 2012. The myth of the eight-hour sleep. BBC News. https://web.archive.org/web/20140315065729/https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16964783. March 15, 2014. live.