Crime, Society, and Popular Culture in Early America

Catalog description

Since the late seventeenth century, American readers have been endlessly fascinated by the subjects of crime and punishment-and especially by murders and other violent offenses committed in their own communities. Much as Americans today "consume" crime through movies, television, newspapers, magazines, mystery novels, "true crime" books, websites, podcasts, and popular music, so also did Americans of the 1670s through 1850s "consume" crime through a variety of popular genres, including execution sermons, criminal (auto)biographies, trial reports, and murder ballads. Since most convicted criminals in early America came from non-elite backgrounds (and often belonged to oppressed or otherwise subordinated social groups, including African Americans and Native Americans), such publications not only shed light on crime, punishment, the legal system, normative social values, power relations, and popular culture, but also provide historians with some of their most valuable sources on the day-to-day experiences of ordinary men and women. This seminar explores all of these topics. Each week, students will read topically-related clusters of early crime publications, usually in conjunction with relevant modern scholarship drawn from the fields of social history, legal history, psychology, criminology, and literary studies. The types of crimes explored include witchcraft, piracy, burglary, robbery, and various types of homicide, such as infanticide, familicide (men murdering their wives and children), and sexual homicide (or courtship murder). Each student will write several short analytical papers drawn from the shared readings and, at the end of the semester, complete an independent multi-modal, multi-draft research project.