Beyond Deviant Damsels: Re-evaluating Female Criminality in the XIX Century

Fri 8 November 2024

Murray Edwards College

In this talk, Professor David Nash and Professor Anne-Marie Kilday will discuss their book Shame and Modernity in Britain: 1890 to the Present.

The book argues that traditional images and practices associated with shame did not recede with the coming of modern Britain. Following on from the authors’ acclaimed work, Cultures of Shame, this monograph looks at shame in the modern era; investigating how current social and cultural expectations in war and peace, changing attitudes to sexual identities and sexual behaviour, new innovations in media, and changing representations of reputation, all became sites for the reconstruction of 20th Century styles of shame.

Using a suite of detailed micro-histories, the book examines 20th Century sites of shame including conceptions of cowardice/conscientious objection during the First World War, fraud and clerical scandal in the interwar years, the repeated redefinition of shame associated with both abortion and sexual behaviour, shoplifting in the 1980s and, lastly, the shifting perception of homosexuality - from ‘Coming Out’ to embracing ‘Pride’, and, finally, rediscovering the positivity of shame with the birth of the ‘Queer’.

Speakers:

Professor David Nash is the Senior Research Fellow in History at Jesus College, University of Oxford. He is the Emeritus Professor of History at Oxford Brookes University, and was previously at the Universities of Leicester and York where he taught primarily 19th and twentieth century British History. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and a formal officer of the Social History Society of Great Britain.

Professor Anne-Marie Kilday is Vice Chancellor and Professor of Criminal History at the University of Northampton and joined the University on 1 August 2022. She writes and researches on various aspects of criminal history, particularly focusing on violent behaviour and gendered criminality. Professor Kilday started her academic career in Scotland working at the University of Strathclyde and then the University of Glasgow. She joined Oxford Brookes University in 2000 as a Lecturer in Early Modern History and progressed her career at the University securing various promotions from Principal Lecturer through to Dean.

Cost: Free