What you’ll need for this class

We’ll be reading three books together, which are on reserve through Collab or at Clemons Library and available for purchase at the UVA bookstore. If you prefer to buy them elsewhere, feel free to do so.

Edward Berensenon, The Trial of Madame Caillaux (University of California Press, 1993), ISBN 9780520084285

Dominique Kalifa, Vice, Crime, and Poverty: How the Western Imagination Invented the Underworld, trans. Susan Emanuel (Columbia University Press, 2021), ISBN 9780231187435

Helmut Walser Smith, The Butcher’s Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town (Norton, 2003), ISBN 9780393325058

Our other readings are available through our Collab site or the UVA Library catalog and article databases. If you have difficulty getting ahold of any course materials, please let me know so we can figure out how to get you what you need. For reasons we’ll discuss, I recommend working from hard copies of electronic readings. However you choose to read, please bring your marked-up texts and/or reading notes to class.

Format and expectations for the workshop

As a seminar, this course is designed to facilitate intensive, collaborative investigation of the course material through discussion and research work. There will be little, if any, lecture. We will use class time to talk through our shared readings and learn or practice relevant skills. Assessment in each of the areas below will draw on my evaluation, your own self-evaluation, and peer evaluation of your work.

Seminar Participation (45%) 

As in any intellectual community, we depend on each other to engage actively, honestly, and respectfully in the process of learning and developing ideas. This is especially true right now, when all of us are still grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic and its personal and societal impacts, as well as the cumulative effects of ongoing environmental, political, and social upheavals. That means doing our best to participate fully as an informed, active listener and contributor in discussions, while recognizing that the situation calls for flexibility, grace, and mutual support. We will develop a set of shared guidelines for discussion at the start of the semester and keep in mind that individuals and communities have different ideas about how best to engage in conversation. If you have any concerns about participation, please come see me so we can find ways for you to participate. Participation will be based on my and your own assessments of your work.

You will get the most out of the class by being consistently present, but please prioritize your own health and that of your classmates if you feel unwell or have been exposed to COVID-19. Don’t make yourself sick(er) or risk making others sick for the sake of this class! If you have to miss class for any reason or anything comes up that interferes with your ability to keep up, please let me know in as little or as much detail as you are comfortable sharing, so I can offer whatever support you might need and help figure out the best way for you to make up any missed work.

In-Class Reflective Writing (15%) 

Once a week, we will set aside 10 minutes or so for reflective writing on our readings. This will give you the opportunity to consider what you learned and to begin articulating ideas and questions for discussion. You may write by hand or type as you prefer, but should keep these writings in one place to turn in in week 8. These will earn credit/no credit based on whether they reflect informed, thoughtful engagement with the readings.

Microhistory Research Project (40%)

The main work of the semester, in addition to our collective exploration of the course material, will be group research projects centered on a specific case from the Central Criminal Court of England and Wales, known as the Old Bailey. Working with two or three of your colleagues, you will use the methods of microhistory to research and analyze a case of your choice using the skills introduced in the first half of the semester. To keep the focus on the research process, each group will present its findings not in a traditional paper, but in digital form using the ArcGIS StoryMaps storytelling tool. We will work with specialists from the Scholars Lab, UVA’s digital humanities hub, to learn how to make the most of this tool.

Sources of Help & Support

Academic Support

As your professor, I am here to help you succeed in this course and in your time at UVA however I can. Please come see me for clarification, to ask questions, or just to chat. If you find yourself struggling for any reason, I will do my best to help or to orient you towards some of the many other resources available on Grounds.

Statement on Diversity

The College of Arts and Sciences supports an environment in which all students, regardless of race, gender, age, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, or physical disability are encouraged to learn and to develop their skills. If you have comments, suggestions or objections in this regard please do not hesitate to contact your instructor. If you would prefer to speak with someone other than your instructor, please call the University Ombuds, https://eocr.virginia.edu/ombuds.  

Statement Regarding Safety on Grounds

The University of Virginia is dedicated to providing a safe and equitable learning environment for all students. To that end, it is vital that you know two values that we hold as critically important:  

• Power-based personal violence will not be tolerated. 
 

• Everyone has a responsibility to do their part to maintain a safe community on 
Grounds.


If you or someone you know has been affected by power-based personal violence, please see the UVA Office of Equal Opportunity and Civil Rights website, http://eocr.virginia.edu/.

As your professor, I care about you and your wellbeing, and stand ready to provide support and resources as I can. As a faculty member, I am a “responsible employee,” which means that I am required by University policy and federal law to report information about sexual and gender-based harassment to the University's Title IX Coordinator. The Title IX Coordinator's job is to ensure that reporting students receive the resources and support they need, while also reviewing the information presented to determine whether further action is necessary to ensure survivor safety and the safety of the University community. If you would rather keep this information confidential, there are 
Confidential Employees you can talk to on Grounds (see link below). The worst situation would be for you or a friend to remain silent when there are so many here willing and able to help. https://eocr.virginia.edu/confidential-employees-and-confidential-resources  

Basic Needs Security  

Any student facing challenges securing food or housing is urged to contact the Office of the Dean of Students in Peabody Hall (http://odos.virginia.edu/). If you are comfortable doing so, please tell me and I will help if I can. 

Semester Schedule of Classes, Readings, & Assignments

Readings marked with © are posted in the Resources section of our Collab site. All other readings are in required books or through the Library website.

Week 1, Getting Started

1. W 8/25, Introductions

Week 2, Case I: London, 1888

2. M 8/30, The Story of Jack the Ripper

Read: Judith Walkowitz, “Jack the Ripper and the Myth of Male Violence,” Feminist 

Studies 8, no. 3 (1982): 542-572.

3. W 9/1, Revisiting the Ripper Story 

Read: © Hallie Rubenhold, The Five: The Untold Lives of the Women Killed by Jack the 

Ripper (London: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019), introduction, Part II, 

conclusion

Week 3, What Are We Doing and How?

4. M 9/6, Doing History with Crime & Scandal

Read:   © Sarah Maza, Thinking About History, ch. 5

Dominique Kalifa, Vice, Crime, and Poverty, introduction + conclusion

5. W 9/8, Introducing ArcGIS StoryMaps (with Drew MacQueen from the Scholars Lab)

[Last day to drop without a W]

         Read:   Make a StoryMaps account following the instructions distributed in class

                     Explore sample story maps on Collab

Week 4, Case II: Konitz, 1900

6. M 9/13, The Murder of Ernst Winter

Read:   Helmut Walser Smith, The Butcher’s Tale, prologue, ch. 1-2, ch. 3 (from p. 112)

7. W 9/15, Making Sense of Murder

Read:   Smith, The Butcher’s Tale, ch. 4-6, epilogue

Week 5, Case III, Paris, 1914

8. M 9/20, The Caillaux Case

         Read:   Edward Berenson, The Trial of Madame Caillaux, prologue, ch 1-3

9. W 9/22, Defining Analytical Frameworks

         Read:   Berenson, The Trial of Madame Caillaux, ONE of chap. 4-6 + epilogue

Week 6, The Spectacle of Crime

10. M 9/27, Inventing the Underworld

         Read:   Kalifa, Vice, Crime & Poverty, ch. 1, 3-6

11. W 9/29, On the Media [MEET AT SMALL SPECIAL COLLECTIONS LIBRARY]

         Read:   Re-read Walkowitz, “Jack the Ripper and the Myth of Male Violence”

P.E. Moskowitz, “True Crime is Cathartic for Women. It’s Also Cop Propaganda,” Mother Jones (May/June 2020)

Listen: “Subverting true crime: Connie Walker on the ethics of storytelling,” CBC Radio,  

November 2019,  (12:12)

Week 7, The Old Bailey I [** Team meetings with Prof. Sessions 10/5-10/20**]

12. M 10/4, Introducing the Old Bailey Online (OBO)

Read:   “The Value of the Proceedings as a Historical Source” and “Historical Background: Crime, Justice and Punishment” (all subsections) at www.oldbaileyonline.org

         Watch: “Search: Getting Started” at www.oldbaileyonline.org

13. W 10/6, Gender & Sexuality

         Read:   Joseph Bristow, “The Blackmailer and the Sodomite: Oscar Wilde on Trial,” Feminist Theory 17, no. 1 (2016): 41-62.

                     Ginger Frost, “‘She is but a Woman’: Kitty Byron and the English Edwardian Criminal Justice Sytem,” Gender & History 16, no. 3 (2004): 538-560.

Week 8, The Old Bailey II

14. M 10/11—NO CLASS, READING DAYS

         Research: Begin working with your team on selecting a microhistory case from the OBO

15. W 10/13, Race & Ethnicity

Read:   Brad Beaven, “Foreign Sailors and Working-Class Communities: Race, Crime, and Moral Panics in London’s Sailortown, 1880-1914,” in Migrants and the Making of the Urban-Maritime World: Agency and Mobility in Port Cities, c. 1570-1940, ed. Christina Reimann and Martin Öhman (London: Routledge, 2020), 86-106.

             Daniel Grey, “‘Almost Unknown Amongst the Jews’: Jewish Women and Infanticide in London, 1890-1918,” The London Journal 37, no. 2 (2012): 122-135.

Week 9, Digging In

16. M 10/18, Case Studies

         Read:   Document packet for the case assigned to your team. Prepare to discuss how your reading of the documents relates to the historian’s analysis of the case we read.

- How has the historian used these documents?

- What did they draw in and what did they leave out?

- How did they decide what analytical framework and contexts were relevant?

- What other analytical frameworks or additional contexts might shed light on this case?

17. W 10/20, Searching for Primary Sources (with History librarian Keith Weimer)

         Research: Finalize your team’s choice of case for the microhistory research project      

Week 10, On The Case

18. W 10/25, Nothing But the Facts

         Research: Prepare to present your team’s case from OBO

                     - The facts of the crime, the trial, & its outcome

                     - A preliminary timeline & map of events

                     - A cast of significant characters

                     - Possible themes and analytical frameworks

[T 10/26, last day to drop with W]

19. W 10/27, Work Session—Newspaper & Other Primary Sources

         Research: Search for newspaper coverage of your case and/or similar cases. Bring questions/problems/ pleas for help

Week 11, Assembling the Evidence

20. M 11/1, Read All About It

         Research: Analyze press coverage of your case/related cases and prepare to present your findings in class

                     - What was at stake?

                     - What analytical themes do the newspapers suggest?

                     - What historical contexts will be relevant?

21. W 11/3, November 3, Searching for Secondary Sources (with Keith Weimer)

         Research: Continue primary source research as necessary

Week 12, What Does It Mean?

** Team meetings with Keith Weimer sometime this week **

22. M 11/8, NO CLASS

         Research: Work on collecting secondary sources to contextualize your case

23. W 11/10, Work Session—Secondary Research & Contextualization

Research: Continue secondary & other context research. Bring questions/problems/pleas for help

Week 13, Adding It All Up

24. M 11/15, Expert Witness (with Dr. Sarah Horowitz, Washington & Lee University)

         Read:  Excerpt from Dr. Horowitz’s book-in-progress on the Steinheil Affair in Paris

                     Review Moskowitz and Connie Walker interview from 9/29

         Research: Turn in bibliography of secondary sources for your case

24. W 11/17, Work Session—Storyboarding StoryMaps

Research: Bring a preliminary outline of your team’s Story Map & ideas for media to include to use as the basis for a storyboard of your Story Map

Week 14, Carrying On

26. M 11/22, NO CLASS

         Research: Continue team work on your Story Map

27. W 11/24, THANKSGIVING BREAK—RELAX & GET SOME REST!

Week 15, Drafting Story Maps

28. M 11/29, Work Session (with Drew MacQueen)— Troubleshooting Story Maps

Bring StoryMaps with as much progress as you can

29. W 12/1, NO CLASS

         Continue work on drafting Story Map

Week 16, The Whole Enchilada

30. M 12/6, Peer Review of Completed Story Map Drafts

Finals Period

M 12/13, Final Revised StoryMaps due

F 12/17, Peer Assessment of Final Story Maps due

“Trial of the Four American Forgers at the ‘Old Bailey,’ London,” in George Bidwell, Bidwell’s Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison. Fifteen Years in Solitude (Hartford, Conn.: Bidell, 1897), p. 297.