Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction Through a Mirror, Darkly
1 Origins
and Organs
2 Transatlantic
Societies and Skulls
3 Phrenology
on Trial
4 The
Prison as Laboratory
5 Policing
the Self and the Stranger
6 A
Victory for Phrenology?
Epilogue Phrenological
Futures
Notes
Bibliography
Inde
COURTNEY E. THOMPSON is an assistant professor of the history of science and medicine and U.S. women’s history at Mississippi State University in Starkville. She received her Ph.D. from the program in the history of science and medicine of Yale University in 2015.
"The book will be of clear interest to those interested in
phrenology, but it will also be relevant to scholars working in the
history of criminology and punishment. One reason is Thompson's
excellent demonstration of phrenology's reliance on the prison,
which raises larger questions about criminology's relationship with
confinement....An Organ of Murder will prove interesting and
helpful to scholars working in the history of criminology and
punishment." — Punishment & Society
Privacy International - Technology Pill podcast interview with
Courtney Thompson— Privacy International - Technology Pill
podcast
"An Organ of Murder is a fascinating, well-written history of
phrenology....Recommended."— Choice
"For a compelling introduction to what a new generation of scholars
is discovering about the perennially interesting topic of
phrenology, Courtney E. Thompson’s An Organ of Murder comes highly
recommended. This sophisticated, well-written history explores an
aspect of phrenology that deserves more attention: its influence on
both elite and popular conceptions of criminality....An Organ of
Murder should find an appreciative readership not only among
historians of science and medicine but also scholars interested in
the new carceral history."— Journal of the History of Medicine and
Allied Scienes
"This short but informative book will appeal to anyone with an
interest in phrenology, criminology, or the histories of
psychiatry, psychology, and related fields, especially in
nineteenth-century America. It fills a void, is well researched,
and is written in an engaging and captivating way."— Journal of the
History of Neurosciences
An Organ of Murder? - BYU Radio "Constant Wonder" interview with
Courtney E. Thompson— BYU Radio, "Constant Wonder"
"Unlike many existing studies of phrenology, which tend to focus on
the science’s European fortunes, Thompson takes on the
nineteenth-century United States, particularly the period from 1830
to 1860. The book situates phrenology in the history of American
criminal justice and the emerging conceptualization of criminality
as an innate biological predisposition....Thompson adds a new,
distinctively legal note to recent histories of phrenological
science."— New Rambler Review
"This book provides much needed insight into the confluence of
phrenology, criminal justice, and the attempts by Americans to
better explain, understand, and even correct criminal behavior in
the nineteenth century and beyond."— Law and History Review
"In this compelling book, Courtney Thompson takes readers to the
prisons, courtrooms, and streets of antebellum cities to expose
just how phrenology claimed authority on criminality. Rich in
detail and analysis, An Organ of
Murder vividly illustrates the long history of making
criminal minds and bodies into objects of medical and scientific
inquiry." — Carla Bittel, Loyola Marymount
University
"Courtney Thompson provocatively measures the face, head, and soul
of American phrenology and invites us to a discovery of the
historical origins of scientific criminology."— Stephen Casper,
Clarkson University
"Professor Thompson’s book does what it does quite well. It is an
important contribution to the literature. And we might expect that
it will be a guide to contemporary legal theory as well. It surely
should be."— Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books
"Vividly narrated with great wit and
insight, An Organ of Murder constitutes an
important contribution to the history of criminology as well as
phrenology, with important implications for the practice of law and
the human sciences... Thompson succeeds
brilliantly. An Organ of Murder deserves a wide
readership among historians and legal scholars, who will readily
see the importance of following her leads."— Susanna L. Blumenthal,
Isis
Consortium for History of Science, Technology and Medicine,
Sciences of the Mind forum held in partnership with American
Philosophical Society: Courtney Thompson and Alicia
Puglionesi in discussion — Consortium for History of
Science, Technology and Medicine - Sciences of the Mind
"New Books Network - New Books in Medicine" interview with Courtney
E. Thompson— New Books Network - New Books in Medicine
"Thompson presents an impressively researched and appealingly
structured argument for the importance of crime and punishment to
phrenology, that problematic frontrunner of so many human and
social sciences."— Journal of the History of the Behavioral Science
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