Seminar: Crime and Punishment in American History Return to main page

Michael Trotti History Department 412 Muller  (607)274-1591

Readings
Writing
Research
External Sites
 

Why Crime?

The ways a society defines and punishes their criminals tells us much about the nature of broader community. By investigating key themes in the history of crime, criminality, and punishment, we will learn much about the treatment of women, of African-Americans, of crime trends, and the changing ways American culture has sensationalized various aspects of the crime in its midst.

Historians have approached the issue of crime in our past in tremendously divergent ways. Some have investigated a single moment, a case study. Others have focused on trends, quantifying the study of crime. Still others are interested in the links between crime and punishment and other sides of the American past: the insanity defense and psychiatry, for instance, or the broader issues of race, class, and gender. This broad variety in the nature of historical inquiry in the our criminal past allows us to explore the many different ways professional historians approach the past -- how they bring different questions to the sources they analyze.

In this way, this seminar has two overlapping goals: to familiarize you with the history of crime and punishment, and also to familiarize you with the nature of historical inquiry itself: how historians do their work. It is in a seminar like this one that you come closest (as an undergraduate) to becoming a historian yourself, and we will spend a number of class periods through the course focusing not so much on the subject matter as on practical issues - sources, reviewing, writing, methodologies. Much of the course will be oriented toward your writing a high-quality seminar paper on a topic in the history of crime, criminality, the courts, and/or the mechanism of punishment in America. The precise subject of that paper will depend upon your interest (in consultation with me).

Below are some of the readings, and an idea about what the written work is for the class. At the end are some very interesting websites I've found relevant to this course and its themes. Contact me if you have any questions!

Readings:

• Benjamin, Jules, A Student's Guide to History (2004). This slim volume contains a host of helpful guidelines for success as a student of history. If you have an older edition, that will serve.

• Lane, Roger, Murder in America: A History (1998). Roger Lane is one of the most famous historians of crime; this is his overview of murder that will serve as our introduction to the subject of crime and history.

• Cohen, Patricia Cline, The Murder of Helen Jewett: The Life and Death of a Prostitute in 19th-Century New York (1998). Helen Jewett, a prostitute in 1830s New York City, was murdered at the age of 22, the beginning of one of the most sensationalized murder stories in American history. Cohen does a marvelous job putting together the various sides of antebellum life that play a part in making this single crime so sensational.

• Trotti, Michael, The Body in the Reservoir: Murder and Sensationalism in the South (2008). By far the best book ever . . . I mean, uh, The definitive treatment of . . . OK, I'm not sure what to say about my book. It's a study of a series of murder cases in the South, showing how much society's sensationalist treatment of crime changes over time.

Additional readings available on the web -- you can get to them by clicking here. . .

. . . if you have access to the JSTOR database:

• Caputi, Jane, "The Sexual Politics of Murder" Gender and Society (1989).
• Gerald Benjamin and Stephen Rappaport, "Attica and Prison Reform" Proceedings of the Academy of Political Science 31 (May 1974).

. . . if you have access to the History Cooperative database:

• Martschukat, Jurgen, "'The Art of Killing by Electricity': The Sublime and the Electric Chair" Journal of American History (2002)

. . if you have access to the Proquest database:

• Flynn, Sean, "DNA Gothic" New York Times Magazine (27 April 2003).
• Seymour Hersh, "Torture at Abu Ghraib" New Yorker 80 (10 May 2004):42-47. This is part I of a three-part series on the events there. Follow up with his "Chain of Command" (17 may 2004) and "the Gray Zone" (24 May 2004).
• Kotlowitz, Alex, "In the Face of Death" New York Times Magazine (6 July 2003).
• __________, "Blocking the Transmission of Violence" New York Times Magazine (4 May 2008).
• Myers, Jim, "Notes on the Murder of Thirty of My Neighbors" Atlantic Monthly (Mar. 2000).

Another article -- Jon Wiener, "Cancer, Chemicals, and History" The Nation (7 Feb. 2005): 19-22 -- used to be available on Proquest but now is not. Look it up there, and click on article linker icon, which should take you to some options for getting the article full-text. I could not create a hot link to it, but you can find it there.

[note: computers on the IC network -- which has a paid subscription to these services -- will all arrive there. Home computers for IC faculty and students will not, because these databases will not recognize you as a subscriber. Sadly, this also now applies to those on ResNet, despite assurances to the library that their new software would allow ResNet to do this. You can get to them, but you have to go to the IC library website, enter your password to gain access to these databases, then search the databases for the articles. Others not tied to IC will not be able to open these documents unless you have also paid a subscription to these services.]

. . . if you have access to the Project Muse database: the History Cooperative database, you can look at the following review. It is not assigned for the course, but since you will be reviewing a book yourself, it might prove helpful:

• Trotti, Michael, "Review Essay: The Lure of the Sensational Murder" Journal of Social History (2001).

Recommended Reading for all my classes:

• Strunk and White, The Elements of Style. This is not required, and I did not specifically order copies for the course.  It is, however, the most concise and helpful guide to strong writing, and I suggest that you purchase and read a copy.  The student bookstore always has a stockpile of them, as do most used bookstores in town.  It is cheap, short, and extremely helpful -- what a deal!

Writing:
 
Most of the writing in this course will be geared toward a thoroughly researched, gracefully written seminar paper on a topic concerning crime, justice, and/or punishment in American history that students and I will agree upon together.

Once we decide on a topic for your final project, students will write a book review on an important secondary source for their paper (again, more instructions will be forthcoming).

The lion's share of the writing in the course will be a research paper, based in primary and secondary sources, of approximately 25 pages. We will take on this project in stages - first defining a topic, then developing a bibliography of sources for students to explore (one secondary source of which will be the subject of the book review). The class will begin writing the paper with a one-paragraph statement of the argument accompanied by an outline of the paper, followed by a writing sample, a rough draft, and, in the last week, the final draft.

At the end, I will ask students to present their findings to the class and to critique the work of a fellow student. That brief critique will be the final written assignment.

Research:

Ithaca College and Cornell offer a tremendous number of opportunities for researching the history of crime, criminality, and punishment in American History. Here follow some sources that will be of help to you in your projects.

Journals:
there are a number of helpful Journals, although IC does not have many that specialize in the history of crime or corrections. The Journal of American History, the American Historical Review, Journal of Social History, Journal of Southern History, and American Quarterly all might be of help. They are searchable through the web database "America: History and Life" mentioned below.

Books:
a few in the reference collection and hundreds in the stacks, generally in the "HV" section, although some others might be in the general American History sections: "E" and "F".

Web:
several very helpful resources are connected to the IC Library webpage. "America: History and Life" offers a terrific way to get to scholarly works by historians. It is searchable by subject and will connect you to the full-text articles in JSTOR and Project Muse. This is a wonderful asset, allowing you direct access to a wealth of scholarship which you can then simply print out or read on your screen. Other options for similar sources: "ProQuest" or Infotrac's"Expanded Academic Index". All of these web sources are databases for articles -- this is one of the two ways the web is useful for historical research (the other way is when primary sources are put on the web: the "historical New York Times" by itself is a wealth of primary material). There are thousands of sites out there with "stuff" having historical content. But because no one is checking them for accuracy, they cannot be depended upon and are not acceptable for this course.

Interlibrary Loan:
our library is actually much bigger than you might think. We have books and journals, but through "JSTOR" in particular, the web offers us much more. We are also able to use the holdings of all sorts of libraries across the country. If there is a book or journal article that you want and we don't have it, go to the Interlibrary Loan Form on the IC Library's Catalog page, and ask our library to get it for you. They are very good about getting things, although it takes time to do so. Ask early in the semester, and you could get all sorts of material that our own library does not offer. Ask late, and you won't.

Cornell's Research Libraries:
IC is a college focused on undergraduate education, and our library reflects that orientation. Cornell is a university with a number of graduate-level programs, and therefore it has accumulated library collections many times the size of ours. It has, in fact, 19 separate libraries, although most everything of interest to you would be in the Uris and Olin libraries. I do not require you to research at Cornell, but research libraries offer so many opportunities to expand your understanding of both the potentials of research and what is "out there" on a particular topic, that I highly recommend it. As you research at IC, flip over to the Cornell Library catalog and see what is available there as well.

External Links to Sites Relevant to this Course:

The Dramas of Haymarket -- an exhibit from the Chicago Historical Society on the 1886 Haymarket bombing.

Wet With Blood -- The Investigation of Mary Todd Lincoln's Cloak

One Rape. Two Stories -- excerpts from the diary of a midwife tell the story of a prominent man who might have raped a local woman in 1789 Maine. Looking at a series of sources provided on this website, you can try to decide for yourself what happened.

She is More to be Pitied than Censured -- brief story lines from a number of 19th century murder cases involving women. Images are nice, but it is not a very deep web exhibition.

This American Life -- a ranging radio show that every so often interrogates some side of crime, law, punishment. You can listen to almost any episode via any computer (please use earphones if in a lab!). Listen, for instance, to one of these archived episodes. Just search for the title and then click on the icon for listening to the show:

• Crime Scene (episode 164) -- several stories about crime scenes including a medical examiner explaining what can be learned from a crime scene and an interview with someone who is paid to clean up crime scenes.
• Perfect Evidence (episode 210) -- this is about DNA evidence, and how it is proving not just who did or didn't commit misdeed, but also how police and interrogation methods can get it wrong.
• Allure of Crime (episode 135) -- there are many crimes and many kinds of criminals. This is three stories each out of the ordinary, including senior citizen shoplifters.
• DIY (episode 282) -- very affecting story about a man wrongfully committed to prison for 21 years, and the efforts -- successful, finally -- of a friend to get him out. . . . with the help of the real shooter!
• The Mob (episode 76 -- how the Mob is portrayed in movies and how it is in real life; charting the ways stories of the mob have a hold on us.
• Detectives (episode 28) -- Act 3 in this episode is charting a reporter going on surveillance with a real private investigator.
• Justice (episode 48) -- follows the idealistic Americans and their quest for justice in the Yugoslavian war crimes trials of the 1990s.
• Act V (episode 218) -- prisoners put on a performance of Hamlet.
• The Competition (episode 344) -- Act 2 of this episode, "The Race for 2nd Place," follows the story of two competing news teams with information on a local sex offender, and how they use the same facts to build two completely different story lines.

This website is occasionally maintained by Michael Trotti. (Last update: 27 November 2008).