Identity, Crime and Legal Responsibility in Eighteenth-Century England

Dana Rabin is Professor of History at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She specializes in the history of early modern Britain with an emphasis on law, gender, emotion, and identity and is the author of Searching for the Self in Eighteenth-Century English Criminal Trials, 1730-1800.

• Crime, Culture, and the Self 'Of Persons Capable of Committing Crimes': Pleas of Mental Distress in the Eighteenth-Century Courtroom Old Excuses, New Meanings: "Temporary Frenzy," Necessity, Passion, and Compulsion Bodies of Evidence, States of Mind: Infanticide, Emotion, and Sensibility 'An indulgence given to great crimes'? Sensibility, Compassion, and Law Reform The End of Excuse? James Hadfield and the Insanity Plea From Self to Subject Bibliography

- '[Rabin] give[s] weight to abstractions like 'sensibility' as actual forces in the courtroom and in the reform movement.' Paul Baines, Eighteenth-Century Studies, vol.42, no.1, 2008