Respectability on Trial

Respectability on Trial
Author: Brian Donovan
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 246
Release: 2016-09-21
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1438461968

Providing a front row seat at critical courtroom battles over seduction, pimping, rape, and sodomy in early twentieth-century New York City, Brian Donovan uses verbatim trial transcripts to understand the city's history during the so-called "first sexual revolution." By tracing the revolutionary and repressive dimensions of this time period, Donovan reveals how conflicting ideas about sex and gender shaped the city's criminal justice system. He unearths stories of sexual violence and legal injustice that contradict the image of early twentieth-century America as a time of sexual revolution and progress. Police and courts often served the interests of the upper classes, men, and racial and ethnic majorities, but the trial transcripts included here reveal the considerable extent to which members of working-class and immigrant communities used the machinery of law enforcement for their own ends. Many previous books have fully documented and analyzed the sensational trials of turn-of-the-century New York City, but none have paid such close attention to the courtroom experiences of common city dwellers.

Corruption in Urban Politics and Society, Britain 1780–1950

Corruption in Urban Politics and Society, Britain 1780–1950
Author: John Smith
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2017-05-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1351948318

Despite much recent interest in the area of urban governance, little work has been done on the changing ethical standards of urban leaderships, 'governing' institutions or the policing of public life. Yet the issue of ethical standards in public life has become a central concern in contemporary public discourse; with issues of public probity, moral order and personal standards re-emerging as central features of political debate. This volume places these debates into their historical perspective by examining the linkages between processes of 'modernisation', urbanisation and the ethical standards of governance and public life. It considers how ethical debates arise as a result of differential access to positions of authority and from competition for public resources. The contributions are drawn from a wide range of scholarly and disciplinary backgrounds and provide a broad analysis of the phenomenon of corruption, assessing how debates about corruption arose, the narratives used to criticise established modes of public conduct and their consequences for urban leadership.

Queer Philologies

Queer Philologies
Author: Jeffrey Masten
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2016-07-25
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 0812247868

Beginning with the beguiling queerness of the Renaissance letter Q, Jeffrey Masten's stylishly written and extensively illustrated Queer Philologies demonstrates the intimate relation between the history of sexuality and the history of the language.

Feminist Perspectives on Evidence

Feminist Perspectives on Evidence
Author: Mary Childs
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 301
Release: 2000-12-19
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1135343659

This text offers a collection of essays examining various aspects of the law of evidence. Each chapter provides a feminist critique of some aspect of evidence scholarship and evidence law. Much has been written about evidence and about feminist legal theory: this text explores their intersection.

Darwin, Literature and Victorian Respectability

Darwin, Literature and Victorian Respectability
Author: Gowan Dawson
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 18
Release: 2007-04-12
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0521872499

The success of Charles Darwin's evolutionary theories in mid-nineteenth-century Britain has long been attributed, in part, to his own adherence to strict standards of Victorian respectability, especially in regard to sex. Gowan Dawson contends that the fashioning of such respectability was by no means straightforward or unproblematic, with Darwin and his principal supporters facing surprisingly numerous and enduring accusations of encouraging sexual impropriety. Integrating contextual approaches to the history of science with work in literary studies, Dawson sheds light on the well-known debates over evolution by examining them in relation to the murky underworlds of Victorian pornography, sexual innuendo, unrespectable freethought and artistic sensualism. Such disreputable and generally overlooked aspects of nineteenth-century culture were actually remarkably central to many of these controversies. Focusing particularly on aesthetic literature and legal definitions of obscenity, Dawson reveals the underlying tensions between Darwin's theories and conventional notions of Victorian respectability.

Love at Last Sight

Love at Last Sight
Author: Tyler Carrington
Publisher:
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2019
Genre: Family & Relationships
ISBN: 0190917768

Framed by the life, murder, and sensational trial over an enterprising seamstress, Love at Last Sight tells a history of dating in Berlin, where the romantic technologies and opportunities of the turn-of-the-century city--such as missed connections and newspaper personal ads--offered men and women on the margins the best shot at finding love but exposed them to tremendous risk.