After completing the thematic courses, the student acknowledges the multidimensional nature of the field of historical studies. The student will also be able to analyze historical phenomena and their interconnections.

The aim of this particular course is to provide students with knowledge about the history of crime and gender in different historical periods in Britain and North America. The course is based around key texts that the students will be asked to read at home each week and then discuss together in the seminar. This method encourages students to engage critically with the historiography and improve their analytical skills when dealing with historical debates. Students will also be asked to give group presentations, therefore enhancing their group work and public speaking skills. At the end of the course students should be able to write an essay on a given topic relating to the history of crime that engages critically with the historiography.

This course combines crime history and gender history to explore many different themes in British and North American social history from 1880 – 1980. Each week will be based around a different topic with key texts to discuss. The topics include: Policing; sentencing; punishment; media and moral panics; youth crime and gangs; domestic violence; the policing of sexuality, prostitution, alcohol and drugs. The importance of key themes such as gender, class and race will be emphasised throughout the course and the differences and/or similarities between Britain and North America will be discussed each week.

• 100% attendance obligatory (absence only acceptable for illness or other extenuating circumstances)
• 1 group presentation
• An essay based on the literature (20 pages, double spaced)

Course Outline

Week 1: Introduction

• Introductions and information
• Discussion about criminal history and gender history methodologies – history from bellow
• Changes in the understanding of the causes of crime

Week 2: Policing Crime

• History of the Police in Britain and North America 
• Trends in crime patterns and sentencing
• Women Police

Week 3: Punishment

• Theory - Foucault, Crime and Punishment and Garland, Punishment and Welfare
• History of Prisons
• History of Probation
• History of corporal punishment and the death penalty

Week 4: Domestic Violence

• Violent crime in the public and domestic spheres
• Wife assault
• Child abuse

Week 5: Crime and Sexuality

• Criminalisation of homosexuality and deviant sexuality
• Controlling venereal disease

Week 6: Prostitution

• Policing of prostitution
• Experiences of prostitution

Week 7: Youth crime, Gangs and drugs  

• Juvenile delinquency
• Prohibition in the USA
• Gangs and gangsters
• ‘War on drugs’

Week 8:  Media and crime

• Press reporting and sensational crime
•  Moral panics