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Mary S. Gibson

Mary S. Gibson - Professor - profile photo

Research Interests

  • Modern Italy; History of Crime; European Women's History

Education

  • Ph.D. Indiana University

Contact

Affiliated Campus(es)

  • John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Selected publications:

  • Italian Prisons in the Age of Positivism, 1861-1914 (London: Bloomsbury, 2019); Italian translation forthcoming, 2021 (Rome: Viella).
  • Translation (with Nicole Rafter) of Cesare Lombroso’s Criminal Man [with scholarly introduction and notes] (Duke University Press 2006)
  • Translation (with Nicole Rafter) of Cesare Lombroso’s Criminal Woman, the Prostitute, and the Normal Woman [with scholarly introduction and notes] (Duke University Press 2004)
  • Born to Crime: Cesare Lombroso and the Origins of Biological Criminology (Praeger Press 2002) [translated as Nati per il crimine: Cesare Lombroso e le origini della criminologia biologica (Bruno Mondadori 2004)
  • Prostitution and the State in Italy, 1860-1915. 2nd Edition (Ohio State University Press 1999); 1st Edition (Rutgers University Press 1986) [translated as Stato e prostituzione in Italia, 1860-1915 (Il Saggiatore 1995)]

Articles/Reviews/Essays:

  • “La sfida italiana alla Società delle Nazioni e all’abolizionismo,” in Cittadinanze incompiute. La parabola dell’autorizzazione maritale, ed. Stefania Bartoloni (Rome: Viella, 2021), pp. 243-263.

  • “Cesare Lombroso and the Gendered Prison,” in La donna delinquente e la prostituta. L’eredità di Lombroso nella cultura e nella società italiana, eds. Liliosa Azara and Luca Tedesco (Rome: Viella, 2019), pp. 107-121.

  • (with Ilaria Poerio), “Modern Europe, 1750-1950,” in A Global History of Convicts and Penal Colonies,” ed. Clare Anderson (London: Bloomsbury, 2018), pp. 337-370.

  • “Gender and Convict Labour: The Italian Case in Global Context,” Global Convict Labour, ed. Alex Lichtenstein and Christian de Vito (Brill: Leiden, 2015), pp. 313-332.

  • “Forensic Psychiatry and the Birth of the Criminal Insane Asylum in Modern Italy,” International Journal of Law and Psychiatry,” v. 37 (2014), pp. 117-126.

  • “The Journal of Prison Sciences: Between Administration and Advocacy,” Una tribuna per le scienze criminali. La “cultura” delle Riviste nel dibattito penalistico tra Otto e Novecento, ed. Luigi Lacchè and Monica Stronati (Macerata: EUM, 2013), pp. 49-68.

  • “Cesare Lombroso, Prison Science, and Penal Politics,” The Lombroso Handbook, ed. Paul Knepper and P. J. Ystehede (NY: Routledge, 2012), pp. 30-46.

  • “Global Perspectives on the Birth of the Prison,” American Historical Review, v. 116, n. 4 (2011), pp. 1040-63.

  • “La criminologia prima e dopo Cesare Lombroso,” Cesare Lombroso. Gli scienzati e la nuova Italia, ed. Silvano Montaldo (Milan: Il Mulino, 2010) pp. 15-32.

  • “Women’s Prisons in Italy: A Problem of Citizenship,” Crime, History, Societies/Crime, Histoire, Sociétés v. 13, n. 2 (2009) pp. 27-40.

  • “Cesare Lombroso and Italian Criminology: Theory and Politics,” Criminals and Their Scientists: The History of Criminology in International Perspective, eds. Peter Becker and Richard Wetzell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006) pp. 137-58.

  • “Science and Narrative in Italian Criminology, 1880-1920,” Crime and Culture: An Historical Perspective, ed. Amy Gilman Srebnick and René Lévy (Aldershot, Eng.: Ashgate, 2005) pp. 37-47.

Grants and Awards:

  • Senior Scholar Citation, Society for Italian Historical Studies, 2020
  • Distinguished Fellow, Advanced Research Collaborative, Graduate Center, CUNY, Spring 2016
  • Senior Fellow, International Research Center for Cultural Studies (IFK), Vienna,  Oct. 2012-Jan. 2013
  • Senior Scholar in Residence, American Academy in Rome, Spring, 2010
  • National Endowment for the Humanities Faculty Research Grant, 2009-2010
  • Fulbright Senior Research Award (Italy), 2008-9
Mary S. Gibson - Professor - profile photo

Contact

Affiliated Campus(es)

  • John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Books

italian prision in the age of positivism mary gibson

Italian Prisons in the Age of Positivism, 1861-1914

by Mary S. Gibson Professor, History, Professor, Women's and Gender Studies

Mary Gibson

During a period dominated by the biological determinism of Cesare Lombroso, Italy constructed a new prison system that sought to reconcile criminology with nation building and new definitions of citizenship. Italian Prisons in the Age of Positivism, 1861-1914 examines this second wave" of global prison reform between Italian Unification and World War I, providing fascinating insights into the relationship between changing modes of punishment and the development of the modern Italian state. Mary Gibson focuses on the correlation between the birth of the prison and the establishment of a liberal government, showing how rehabilitation through work in humanitarian conditions played a key role in the development of a new secular national identity. She also highlights the importance of age and gender for constructing a nuanced chronology of the birth of the prison, demonstrating that whilst imprisonment emerged first as a punishment for women and children, they were often denied "negative" rights, such as equality in penal law and the right to a secular form of punishment. Employing a wealth of hitherto neglected primary sources, such as yearly prison statistics, this cutting-edge study also provides glimpses into the everyday life of inmates in both the new capital of Rome and the nation as a whole. Italian Prisons in the Age of Positivism, 1861-1914 is a vital study for understanding the birth of the prison in modern Italy and beyond.

Published July 2019
Bloomsbury, 2019

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