HST309 : Lawmakers & Lawbreakers: Crime & Punishment in Britain
Description:
This course will introduce students to the study of criminality in England over the past 700 years, and to the numerous and varied ways in which crime was perceived, defined, and penalized. By setting analysis of crime firmly in its social, cultural and economic context, you will see how--in the distant as well as the recent past--crime was construed in different ways depending on changing conditions. The course will examine how social status inevitably affected perceptions of crime and the criminal, and how the protection of property and of reputation or community motivated victims, bystanders and law enforcers. It also will show that policing, too, necessarily reflected varied and evolving assumptions as well as new technologies and organizing skills. Finally, the course will consider how, over long periods of time, attitudes in most social classes changed fundamentally – towards violence, for example, or about magic and witchcraft, or towards prostitution, thus providing some reasons why England became, by 1900 or so, a surprisingly orderly, well-policed society of citizens who mainly sought respectability and the protection of property, all in extraordinary contrast to the England of 1300 or 1750.
Available Locations:
England
Semester(s) Offered:
Offered: Spring, Fall
Credits:
3
Department:
History
