Marisha Caswell

 

Email: marisha.caswell@queensu.ca

Education

PhD, Queen's University, 2012
MA, St Mary's University, 2006
BA Honours, Dalhousie University, 2005

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About

My research focuses on English history during the seventeenth and eighteenth century, especially the history of the English criminal justice system. My doctoral dissertation examined the criminal experiences of married women; specifically, how the common law doctrine of coverture affected these experiences. It focused on determining how people assigned criminal responsibility to these women – who were not legally individuals – in the context of changing ideas about citizenship and the political world.

I am also interested in the history of the early modern Atlantic World, the British Empire, and how families interacted with legal and social systems.

Courses Taught

HIST 287: Early Modern England
HIST 281: Gender in History: A European Perspective
HIST 403: Topics in History: The British Atlantic World, c. 1500-1800
HIST 418: Reformation and Revolution in Early Modern England

Publications

"Murdering Mothers, Murdering Wives: Marital Status and 'Acceptable' Murder Victims in London, 1674-1790," in Female Transgression in Early Modern Britain: Literary and Historical Explanations, ed., Pauline Ruberry-Blanc and Richard Hillman (forthcoming, Ashgate)

"Killing a Husband: Alice Arden and her Accomplices on the Early Modern Stage," in Representations of Murderous Women in Literature, Theatre, Film and Television: Examining the Patriarchal Presuppositions Behind the Treatment of Murderesses in Fiction and Reality, ed. Juli L. Parker (Edwin Mellen Press, 2011), co-written with Erin Bone Steele

"'Attending to Early Modern Women' Conference 2009: Review by Graduate Students," Early Modern Women: An Interdisciplinary Journal 5 (2010), 295-302, co-written with Amy L. Merritt, Marie Ladino, Nora Lambert, and Lara Langer

Dissertation

Married Women, Crime, and Questions of Liability in England, 1640-1760, Queen's University, 2012