Description
This volume explores the multifaceted influence of Cesare Lombroso, known as the father of modern criminology, and his work across the Americas from the late 19th to the mid 20th century. Offering an interdisciplinary and transatlantic perspective, and with essays by European, Latin and North American scholars, Lombroso in the Americas asks how and why this controversial man became one of the most influential criminologists of his time, and sheds light on his transatlantic legacy.
Made up of four parts, the first traces the reception of Lombroso's theories, such as the born and atavistic criminal, and highlights their impact on cultural debates and criminal justice reform. Part two explores how his ideas informed discourses about race and eugenics in the USA and Latin America, while part three considers how his theories contributed to the understanding of political crime and the psychology of crowds. The final part investigates how Lombroso's influence and legacy extended beyond the field of criminology and shaped debates on gender, prison science, genius and madness, and childhood education across the Americas. By bringing together scholars from various disciplines and countries, this volume provides a comprehensive overview of the reception, adaptation, circulation and critique of Lombroso's ideas in North and Latin America.
Table of Contents
Introduction, Silvano Montaldo and Franco Orlandi (University of Turin, Italy, and KU Leuven, Belgium)
Part I: The Criminal Man in the Americas
1. “Like a Literary Whale”: The First Journeys of Lombrosian Theories in the United States (1870–1895), Silvano Montaldo (University of Turin, Italy)
2. The Long Shadow of Lombroso: The Polyvalent Presence in the Birth of Positivist Criminology in Argentina, Máximo Sozzo (National University of Litoral, Argentina)
3. Criminal Anthropology in Chile: Origin, Trajectory, and Circulations, Marco Antonio León (Universidad del Bío-Bío, Chile)
4. The Impact, Uses and Vicissitudes of Lombroso's Theories in Bolivia, Francoise Martinez and Pablo Quisbert (Sorbonne Université, France and Sociedad Boliviana de Historia, Bolivia)
5. The Indian as a “Born Criminal”? Lombroso and the Italian School of Positive Anthropology in Peru (1889–1930), Gabriella Chiaramonti (University of Padua, Italy)
Part II: Criminal Anthropology and Racisms
6. Prisons, Laboratories, and Museums: Cesare Lombroso and his Presence in Mexico in the Late Nineteenth Century, Laura Cházaro-García and Gerardo García-Rojas (IPN's Centre for Research and Advanced Studies and Cinvestav-IPN, Mexico)
7. Social Sciences, Jewish Public Opinion and the Jewish Race in the United States of the Progressive Era: American Echoes of Cesare Lombroso's L'antisemitismo 1893–1911, Emanuele D'Antonio (University of Turin, Italy)
8. Imagining Southern Italians as Undesirable Aliens: How North American Social Scientists Adapted, Adopted or Rejected the Views of the “Italian School of Criminology” while Debating Mass Immigration (1890–1924), Alessandra Lorini (University of Florence, Italy)
9. How the Median Occipital Fossa Became Aymara, Maria Teresa Milicia (University of Padua, Italy)
Part III: Transnational Debates on Art, Prison, Anarchism and Blackness
10. Beautiful Poems and Dirty Literature: Criminological Readings of Mass Culture in South America, Diego Galeano (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)
11. “Exaggerations of the Truth”: Cesare Lombroso, Criminology and Anarchism in Argentina, Martín Albornoz (Universidad de San Martín – Conicet, Argentina)
12. What remains? Finding Losses and Retracing Presences: The Misplaced Photographs by Lewis Hine in the Cesare Lombroso Museum of Criminal Anthropology, Nadia Pugliese (University of Turin, Italy)
13. Raimundo Nina Rodrigues, Aurelino Leal, Cesare Lombroso and the Making of a New Ethnographic Sensibility in Bahia, Brazil (1896–1906), Livio Sansone (Federal University of Bahia, Brazil)
14. Between Social Transgression and Cultural Integration: Following Criminological Traces in the Work of Fernando Ortiz in Cuba, Mario Valero (The Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT), USA)
Part IV: After Lombroso
15. Lombroso and Brazilian Prisons, Viviane Borges and Fernando Salla (State University of Santa Catarina and Violence Studies Center, Brazil)
16. Criminal Somatotypes and Ambivalent Lombrosianism in the United States, c. 1940-1950, John Shepherd (Durham University, UK)
17. Lombroso's Lasting Legacy in the United States: The Criminology of Women, 1920-1970, Mary Gibson (City University of New York, USA)
18. The Problematic Gravitation of Cesare Lombroso in the Work of José Ingenieros and in the Journal Archives of Psychiatry and Criminology (Buenos Aires, 1902-1913), Alejandra Mailhé (University of La Plata – Conicet, Argentina)
19. Israel Castellanos and Lombrosian Criminal Anthropology in Cuba, Franco Orlandi (KU Leuven, Belgium)
