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An organ of murder : crime, violence, and phrenology in nineteenth-century America / Courtney E. Thompson.
- Format:
- Book
- Author/Creator:
- Thompson, Courtney E., author.
- Series:
- Critical issues in health and medicine.
- 4901 Critical issues in health and medicine
- Language:
- English
- Subjects (All):
- Phrenology--United States--History--19th century.
- Phrenology.
- Criminal anthropology--History--19th century.
- Criminal anthropology.
- Criminal psychology--United States--History--19th century.
- Criminal psychology.
- Criminology--United States--History--19th century.
- Criminology.
- Physical Description:
- 1 online resource.
- Place of Publication:
- Rutgers University Press
- New Brunswick, New Jersey : Rutgers University Press, [2021]
- Summary:
- An Organ of Murder explores the origins of both popular and elite theories of criminality in the nineteenth-century United States, focusing in particular on the influence of phrenology. In the United States, phrenology shaped the production of medico-legal knowledge around crime, the treatment of the criminal within prisons and in public discourse, and sociocultural expectations about the causes of crime. The criminal was phrenology's ideal research and demonstration subject, and the courtroom and the prison were essential spaces for the staging of scientific expertise. In particular, phrenology constructed ways of looking as well as a language for identifying, understanding, and analyzing criminals and their actions. This work traces the long-lasting influence of phrenological visual culture and language in American culture, law, and medicine, as well as the practical uses of phrenology in courts, prisons, and daily life.
- Contents:
- Cover
- Series Page
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Introduction: Through a Mirror, Darkly
- Chapter 1. Origins and Organs
- Chapter 2. Transatlantic Societies and Skulls
- Chapter 3. Phrenology on Trial
- Chapter 4. The Prison as Laboratory
- Chapter 5. Policing the Self and the Stranger
- Chapter 6. A Victory for Phrenology?
- Epilogue: Phrenological Futures
- Acknowledgments
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
- About the Author
- Series List
- ISBN:
- 9781978813083
- 1978813082
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