Courses

This seminar is intended to introduce students to the study of crime from two perspectives: historical and cultural. On the one hand, the seminar will read introductory and representative texts on the history of crime, particularly in Europe and the Americas. Themes to be discussed include urbanization and cultural change on historical patterns of crime; transgression and punishment in the construction of collective identities; everyday relationship of urban populations with the law, the police, and the judiciary, and the gendered meanings of violence. Movies and literature will be used to discuss the themes, genres and explanations that characterize popular understandings of crime. These cultural products will be set in a dialogue with our historical knowledge of criminal practices.