Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Europe

Catalog description

This course will examine European legal and social institutions and their role in defining and punishing crime in the early modern era (c. 1400-1800). European society was fundamentally transformed in this period of transition between the medieval and the modern eras, and the laws and legal systems that exist in the Western world today reflect those influences at the deepest levels. This course will focus on how shifting definitions of "crime" and "punishment" reflected prevailing societal attitudes and anxieties toward perceived acts of deviance and persons on the margins of society. Assigned readings will examine the evolution of early modern European criminal court systems and the investigation and punishment of crime, focusing in particular on the historical debates concerning the use of torture and capital punishment and the evolution of modern policing and prisons. It will also address the criminalization of social deviance (witches, religious minorities, and other outcasts) and the legal enforcement of sexual norms and gender roles. The course concludes with an examination of current debates concerning criminal justice reform, policing, torture, and criminal punishment.