Rebecca McLennan
Contact
Office: 2224 Dwinelle
Hours: Tu 3:30-5, Th 4-5
Phone: (510) 642-1436
Email: mclennan@berkeley.edu
Books
The Crisis of Imprisonment: Protest, Politics, and the Making of the American Penal State, 1776 – 1941 (The Cambridge History of American Law series, Cambridge University Press, March 2008).
Life and Death in Anglo-American Law: A History (In progress; not yet under contract).
American Cultures, American Lives (with Prof. David Henkin. In progress; McGraw Hill, expected 2012).
Faculty Appointments
Associate Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley (2006 – present).
Assistant Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley (2003 – 2006).
Dunwalke Associate Professor of History and Associate Professor of Social Studies,
Harvard University (2003 -2004).
Assistant Professor of History and of Social Studies, Harvard University (1999 – 2003).
Education
Doctor of Philosophy, with distinction, History, Columbia University (1999).
Master of Philosophy, History, Columbia University (1993).
Master of Arts, History, Columbia University (1991).
Bachelor of Arts, with First Class Honours, History, University of Otago, New Zealand (1989).
Distinctions and Awards
2009 John Philip Reid Book Award for best book in English in Anglo-American Legal History (American Society for Legal History).
2009 Cromwell Book Prize for best first book in American legal history (William Nelson Cromwell Foundation).
Littleton-Griswold Prize in American Law and Society (for The Crisis of Imprisonment), American Historical Association, 2009.
Bancroft Award (best doctoral dissertation in historical studies, 1999, Columbia University).
Whiting Fellowship in the Humanities (1996-7).
President's Fellowship, Columbia University (1991-5).
Richard Hofstadter Fellowship, Columbia University (1990-91).
Fulbright Travel Scholarship (1990) (declined).
Commonwealth Scholarship (1990) (declined).
New Zealand University Grants Committee Postgraduate Scholarship (1990) (declined).
New Zealand Universities Junior Scholarship in Economics, English Literature, History, History of Art, and Pure Mathematics (1985).
Doctoral Thesis
Citizens and Criminals: the Rise of the American Carceral State, 1890-1935 (PhD diss., Columbia University, 1999) Committee: Barbara J. Fields (advisor), Eric Foner (second reader), Charles Tilly, Ira Katzelson.
Articles, book chapters, and reviews
“The Convict’s Two Lives,” in David Garland and Michael Meranze, eds., Rethinking the Death Penalty in Historical Context (forthcoming, 2010, NYU Press)
“Crime and Punishment in American History,” in Companion to American Legal History, (Blackwell, forthcoming, 2011).
“Imprisonment’s ‘Square Deal’: Prisoners and their Keepers in 1920s New York,” Journal of Urban History 28: 5 (Jul. 2003).
“The New Penal State: Globalization, History, and American Criminal Justice, c. 2000,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies (Fall, 2001).
“Revolutions and Rights,” and “Equality and Citizenship,” Contemporary Civilization Reader, 7th ed. (New York: Heritage Press, 2000).
“Writings of the American Revolution,” Contemporary Civilization Reader, 6th ed. (New York: American Heritage, 1997).
Selected Papers and Theses
“Ghosts of Penal Servitude: Lineages of the Mass Carceral State,” (forthcoming) OAH, 2010.
“American Penal History and The Crisis of Imprisonment,” University of Minnesota, Department of History, Legal History Workshop, 2009.
“Civilizing the Market, Disciplining the State/Rethinking American Penal History” University of Oxford (May 26, 2008), and University of Sydney, Spring 2008 (same official title, two different papers).
“The Market and the Prison,” NYU School of Law, Fall 2007.
“Civiliter Mortuus: The ‘Civil Death’ Penalty Reconsidered” (in progress), NYU School of Law, 2007.
“Between Social Death and the Gallows: the Necropolitics of Imprisonment in Nineteenth-Century America,” Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians, 2005.
“‘Slaves of the State:’ The Politics of Penal Servitude in Late Nineteenth-Century America,” Annual Meeting of the Law and Society Association, Chicago, 2004.
“The Rise of the American Penal State,” University of Chicago, 2003.
“Identity, Gender, and the Market: Global and Local Discourses of the U.S. Christian Right,” Comment, Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association, 2002.
“Documenting Prisoners,” Comment, Why We Write conference, Columbia University, 2002.
“The Crises of Imprisonment: Toward a Critical History of Punishment,” American Bar Foundation, Chicago, 2002.
“Four Strikes and You’re Out”: America’s First War on Crime,” Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians, 2002
“The Decline and Fall of the American Prison,” Inter-Asia Cultural Studies Conference on Globalization, Fukuoka, Japan, 2000.
“Saving Justice from Democracy: Progressive Era Prison Reform Reconsidered,” Columbia University Seminar on 20th Century Politics and Society, 2000 and the Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, 2000.
“Citizens and Criminals: Penal Justice and the Rise of the Modern Liberal State,” York University, Toronto, Canada, 1998.
“The Strange Career of American Race Ideology,” Canterbury University, Christchurch, 1998.
“Citizens and Criminals: Prisons, Violence, and the State, 1890-1940,” Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians, 1997.
“Discipline and Assault: the Everyday Practices of New York State Prisons in the Progressive Era,” Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, 1996.
“Psycho-asthenics and the Body Politic in Progressive America,” Figuring U.S. Culture Conference, Columbia University, 1995.
“Bodies on the Borderline: the 'Menace of the Feebleminded' and the Social Body in the Progressive Era,” Annual Meeting of the American Studies Association, 1994.
“‘Derelict Upon the Ocean:' the Theorizing of Feeble-mindedness and the Borderline Case in
Progressive America,” (unpublished Masters essay), Columbia University, 1991.
Teaching
New courses (2006-10)
• Grad. seminar: The Rule of Law in International Historical Perspective (with Huri Islamoglu).
• Senior thesis seminar: Law, Morality, and the Market: U.S. Legal History, 1607-present.
• Undergrad seminar: Land of Desire: Selected Topics in US Cultural History
• Grad. research seminar: American Modernity Revisited
Established courses
• Graduate Seminar in post-Civil War US Historiography (with David Hollinger, UC Berkeley).
• US History Survey, 1877 – 1941 (lecture course, UC Berkeley).
• Senior Thesis Seminar (UC Berkeley).
• America’s “Dark Flower”: The Prison in American Politics, Law, and Society, 1945 – present (senior seminar, UC Berkeley).
• Imagining America: Foreign Perspectives on the U.S., Revolution - present (with Prof. Akira Iriye, lecture
course, Harvard).
• Crime and Punishment in American History, 1776 - present (lecture course, Harvard and UC Berkeley).
• Punishment and Modern Society (undergrad. seminar, Harvard).
•The Rule of Law: Social Theoretical Debates (junior tutorial, Harvard).
Other
• Social Studies 10 (Social Theory, Smith - Habermas), (sophomore tutorial, Harvard).
• Contemporary Civilization I (Plato - Locke) (seminar, Columbia).
• Contemporary Civilization II (Rousseau - Foucault) (seminar, Columbia).
Administrative Positions (Selected)
Berkeley:
US Field Co-ordinator
Panelist, Committee on Student Conduct (2008-09)
Chair, Prize Committee, (2008-09)
Graduate Advisory Committee (2008-09)
Mid-career Review Committee (2008-09)
University-wide Ad Hoc Personnel Committees (2007-08; 2008-09)
Job Search Committee, US and the World (2007-08)
Graduate Admissions Screening Committee (2007-08)
CHUM/Committee on Undergraduate Matriculation (2004-6)
Harvard:
Head Tutor, Junior Tutorial Program, Social Studies, Harvard, Fall 2000-Spring 2002.
Languages
French
Selected Service
Address, Graduate Student Association, UC Berkeley, 2009
Reviewer, Oxford University Press
Co-organizer, “New Voices in American History,” speaker series, UC Berkeley History Department,
2008-09 (with David Henkin)
Co-organizer, “Innovating U.S. History: New Approaches to the American Past,” Faculty Workshop,
Harvard University, 2001-02 (with Sven Beckert)
Faculty Advisor, Athena (Feminist group working with teenage girls in the Boston area), 2000-02
Principal Organizer, “Figuring U.S. Culture,” American Studies Symposia,
Columbia University, 1994-5.
Co-founder and Organizer, History and American Studies Group. A student-faculty group sponsoring
interdisciplinary seminars and colloquia on History, Cultural Studies and American Studies, 1994-9.
Member of the Executive, Otago University Students Association, 1987.
Member of the Media Board, Otago University Students Association, 1987.
Disc jockey, Radio One, Dunedin, New Zealand, 1986-8.
Referees
Prof. Barbara J. Fields, History Department, Columbia University.
Prof. Eric Foner, History Department, Columbia University.
Prof. Sven Beckert, History Department, Harvard University.
Prof. Elizabeth Blackmar, History Department, Columbia University.
Prof. David Hollinger, History Department, UC Berkeley