Professor Garthine Walker

Publication

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• Type
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Research

Major Projects

Rape in England and Wales c.1500-c.1800

Funded by a Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship, 2013-2016

This project investigates the complex changes in the treatment of rape in the period 1500-1800. By examining a rich array of primary sources and situating rape in its broader cultural and individual contexts, I shall show that rape does have a history, but not one that we necessarily expect. How did the 'everyman-rapist' of the sixteenth century become the 'aberrant monster' of the late eighteenth? Why did seventeenth-century people seem to believe that guilty men were acquitted and their victims genuine? When and why did these perceptions change? What role did misogyny, religion, politics, and news play in changing attitudes? And what were the practical implications for women and children seeking justice? These questions will be explored in a number of articles and in a monograph. Early fruits of the project were published in 2013 in History Workshop Journal and in Past & Present - my article in the latter was awarded the 2014 Sutherland Prize of the American Society for Legal History, and a number of other publications.

Women Negotiating the Boundaries of Justice: Britain and Ireland, c.1100-c.1750

Funded by an AHRC Research Project Grant, 2014–2018

This four-year project explores women’s relative access to justice in a wide range of different courts, from a comparative perspective. The project team includes Principal Investigator Dr Deborah Youngs (Swansea University), and Co-Investigators Dr Garthine Walker and Professor Alexandra Shepard (University of Glasgow), two Research Associates, and two PhD students. The project's objectives are:

• To challenge the essentialist assumption found in many studies that women's gender placed them at a monolithic disadvantage: much relevant historical research is narrowly focused and draws inappropriate comparisons over time, place, and jurisdiction. Here, attention is paid to the potential differences of jurisdiction and region, and to the significance of language, ethnicity, and other affiliations and identities of individuals and groups.
• To assess critically the frameworks within which women's engagement with the law has been studied, and to challenge the tendency within British legal history to work within discrete, national frameworks and assume that the English situation represents a norm.  Given that women still struggle to obtain equal access to justice, particularly in politically unstable regions, the project intervenes in contemporary debates about women's legal subjectivity and the extent to which inequities might be disrupted or modified by political change.
• To compare women's strategies at different times and in diverse legal structures. A more nuanced understanding of gender is possible by exploring comparative determinants of difference. This project examines women as perpetrators, victims, plaintiffs, petitioners, and witnesses by mapping their experience of justice in a number of discrete contexts: Anglo-Norman England (including a focus on Jewish women); the English colony in late medieval Ireland; late medieval and early modern Wales; early modern Scotland, and early eighteenth century Scotland, Wales and England. Criminal, civil and church courts allow the study of violent offences, property disputes, marital and child custody cases, punishment, alternative routes to justice and the hierarchy of resort.

Publications

Books

The Extraordinary and the Everyday in Early Modern England: Essays in Celebration of the Work of Bernard Capp, co-edited with Angela McShane (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

Gender & Change: Agency, Chronology and Periodisation, co-edited with Alexandra Shepard (Blackwell, 2009). Also published as a Special Issue of Gender & History 20:3 (November 2008), to celebrate the twentieth volume of the journal.

Writing Early Modern History (Hodder Arnold/Bloomsbury, 2005).

Crime, Gender and Social Order in Early Modern England [Studies in Early Modern British History Series] (Cambridge University Press, 2003).

Women, Crime and the Courts in Early Modern England, co-edited with Jenny Kermode (UCL Press and University of North Carolina Press, 1994).

Journal articles (excluding review articles)

‘Imagining the Unimaginable: Parricide in Early Modern England and Wales, c.1600–c.1760’, Journal of Family History 41:3 (July 2016).

‘Everyman or a Monster? The Rapist in Early Modern England’, History Workshop Journal 76 (2013), pp. 5-31.

‘Rape, Acquittal and Culpability in Popular Crime Reports in England, c.1670–c.1750’, Past & Present, 220 (August 2013), pp. 115-42. Winner of the Sutherland Prize 2014 of the American Society for Legal History.

‘Gender, Change and Periodisation’, co-authored with Alexandra Shepard, Gender & History 20:3 (2008), pp. 453-462.

‘Widernatürliche Mütter? Die Tötung neugeborener Kinder und das englische Gesetz im siebzehnten Jahrhundert’, Querelles: Jahrbuch für Frauenforschung, Band 5 (2000), pp. 255-63.

‘Rereading Rape and Sexual Violence in Early Modern England’, Gender & History 10:1 (1998), pp. 1-25.

‘Expanding the Boundaries of Female Honour in Early Modern England’, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 6th ser., 6 (1996), pp. 235-45.

Book chapters

'Psychoanalysis and Psychohistorical Methods' [with Tracey Loughran], in Writing History: Theory and Method, eds S. Berger, H. Felder, and K. Passmore, 3rd edn (Bloomsbury Academic, 2020).

‘Historical Research’, in A Practical Guide to Studying History: Skills and Approaches, ed. T. Loughran (Bloomsbury Academic, 2017). 

‘Child-Killing and Emotion in Early Modern England and Wales’, in Death, Emotion & Childhood in Early Modern Europe, ed. Katie Barclay, Ciara Rawnsley and Kim Reynolds (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). 

‘Framing Premodern Desires: Between Sexuality, Sin and Crime. An Introduction’ in Framing Premodern Desires ed. Satu Lidman et al. [Crossing Boundaries Turku Medieval and Early Modern Studies] (University of Amsterdam Press, 2016).

‘Rape and Sexual Violence in Europe, 1500–1750’, in The Routledge History of Sex and the Body in the West, 1500 to the Present, eds Kate Fisher and Sarah Toulalan (Routledge, 2013).

‘The Strangeness of the Familiar: Witchcraft and the Law in Early Modern England’, in The Extraordinary and the Everyday in Early Modern England: Essays in Celebration of the Work of Bernard Capp, eds Angela McShane and Garthine Walker (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 105-24.

‘Gender, Change and Periodisation’, co-authored with Alexandra Shepard, in Gender & Change: Agency, Chronology and Periodisation, co-edited with Alexandra Shepard (Blackwell, 2009), pp. 1-12.

‘Keeping it in the Family: Crime and the Early Modern Household’, in The Family in Early Modern England: Essays Presented to Anthony Fletcher, eds Helen Berry and Elizabeth Foyster (Cambridge University Press, 2007), pp. 67-95.

‘Modernization’, in Writing Early Modern History, ed. Garthine Walker (Hodder Arnold, 2005), pp. 25-48.

‘Introduction’ to Writing Early Modern History, ed. Garthine Walker (Hodder Arnold, 2005), pp. xi-xvii.

‘Telling Tales of Infant Death in Seventeenth-Century England’, in Culture and Change: Attending to Early Modern Women, eds Margaret Mikesell and Adele Seeff (University of Delaware Press and Associated University Presses, 2003), pp. 98-115.

‘Psychoanalysis and History’, in Writing History: Theory and Practice, eds Stefan Berger, Heiko Felder and Kevin Passmore (Arnold, 2003), pp. 141-60.

‘“Strange Kind of Stealing”: Abduction in Early Modern Wales’, in Women and Gender in Early Modern Wales, eds Michael Roberts and Simone Clarke (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000), pp. 50-74.

‘“Demons in Female Form”: Representations of Women and Gender in Murder Pamphlets of the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries’, in Writing and the English Renaissance, eds William Zunder and Suzanne Trill (Longman, 1996), pp. 123-39.

‘Women, Theft and the World of Stolen Goods’ in Women, Crime and the Courts in Early Modern England, eds Jenny Kermode and Garthine Walker (UCL Press and University of North Carolina Press, 1994), pp. 81-105.

‘Introduction’ to Women, Crime and the Courts in Early Modern England, eds Jenny Kermode and Garthine Walker (UCL Press and University of North Carolina Press, 1994): pp. 1-25 [with Jenny Kermode].

Teaching

Undergraduate teaching

I am a guest lecturer on the year two History core module, Approaches to History, covering psychohistory and the history of emotions. 

Biography

Biography

I began my academic career as a mature student reading Modern History and English Literature at Liverpool University 1986-89, where in the early 1990s I undertook my doctoral research on gender and crime in early modern England. After holding a Scouloudi Research Fellowship at the Insitute of Historical Research, University of London, and lectureships in History at the Universities of Warwick and Liverpool, I joined the Department of History at Cardiff in 1995 as a lecturer, becoming successively senior lecturer, reader and professor. 

In 2017, I left full-time academe and my position as Professor of Early Modern History to focus on my career in integrative psychotherapy and psychotherapeutic counselling. I now commit the majority of my time to my therapy practice and professional development in psychotherapy.  You can find out more about what I do as a therapist here: www.gw-psychotherapy.co.uk [external link].

I nonetheless remain engaged with the academic community, and with the department of History at Cardiff University. I contribute a lecture on psychohistory and the history of emotions to undergraduates and have continued to support postgraduate researchers. 

My two areas of expertise continue to intersect in my research and publications, which have recently focused on emotions in history and the ways in which psychoanalysis and other psychohistorical methods inform professional historical writing. I am a member of the UK Council for Psychotherapy Practitioner Research Network, and am currently writing a chapter on demedicalised integrative therapy for a counselling and psychotherapy publication. 

You can follow my academic twitter feed on @GarthineW and my psychotherapy one on @GWPsychotherapy.

Honours and awards

Recent awards, honours, distinctions

2015  Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professorship to enable Professor Tim Stretton (St Mary’s University, Halifax, Canada) to spend six months at Cardiff University.

2015  Royal Historical Society, Conference Grant to conference organisers to support conference registration costs for historical conferences where there is substantial involvement of early career (PGR and immediate postdoctoral) researchers.

2015  Annual Public Lecture, Centre for Gender History, Glasgow University.

2014  Co-Investigator, AHRC Project ‘Negotiating the Boundaries of Justice: Britain and Ireland, c1100-c.1750’ (48-months).

2014 Sutherland Prize of the American Society for Legal History for the Best Article on English History Published in the Previous Year, for ‘Rape, Acquittal and Culpability in Popular Crime Reports in England, c.1670–c.1750’, Past & Present, 220 (August 2013), pp. 115-42. 

2013  Leverhulme Trust Major Research Fellowship (36-months).

2013  Research Development Grant, History Research Wales.

2012  Visiting Professor / Directeur d’études, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociale, Paris.

Professional memberships

Editorial and advisory boards

• Gender & History, editorial collective, 2004-2019 (Book Reviews Editor, 2004-2007).
• Journal of Social History, editorial board, 2005-2011.
• Women's History Review, editorial board, 2004-2009.
• Rethinking History, editorial board, 1997-present.
• Law, Crime & History, editorial advisory board, 2011-present.
• Crimes & Misdemeanours: Deviance and the Law in Historical Perspective, editorial advisory board, 2007-2010.
• H-Frauen-L: History of Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe, H-Net Discussion List, editorial committee, 1998-2002.

• Advisory board member, Leverhulme Trust Research Project, ‘Women’s Work in Rural England 1500-1700: A New Methodological Approach’, 2015-2018 (PI: Professor Jane Whittle, Exeter).
• External Expert, Periodic Review of Undergraduate Programmes, Department of History, University of Essex, 2013.
• External Subject Specialist to validate MA in Early Modern History, Swansea University, 2006.

Supervisions

Postgraduate Research

Research students (completed)

2019. Elizabeth Howard, ‘Women and Crime in Wales 1550-1660’: AHRC-funded [research project grant], lead supervisor to 2017. 

2018 Abby Johns, ‘Death, Accidents and Children in England and Wales 1600-1800’: AHRC-funded [SWW-DTP], PhD, lead supervisor to 2017.

2018 Anna Field, ‘Intimate Crime in Early Modern England and Wales 1660-1760’: AHRC-funded [SWW-DTP] PhD 2018, lead supervisor to 2017.

2016 Hector Roddan, ‘Defining Differences: The Religious Dimension of Early Modern English Travel Narratives, c.1550-c.1840’: AHRC-funded, lead supervisor.

2015 Catherine Horler-Underwood, ‘Women’s criminality in Wales, c.1660-c.1803’: AHRC-funded PhD, lead supervisor.

2014 Rachel Butler, ‘Hidden mysteries and open secrets: negotiating age in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century culture’: AHRC-funded PhD, lead supervisor.

2006 Rachel Bowen, ‘“The anatomy of abuses”: nature, artifice and the body, 1300-1700’: AHRB-funded PhD, lead supervisor.

2005 Kevin Stagg, ‘Putting the monsters in order: monstrosity in early modern society’: AHRB-funded PhD, lead supervisor.

2001 Patricia E. Brimer, ‘Population in the parish of Awre: size, growth and structure, 1538-1811’: PhD, lead supervisor.

2001 Anna Lovelock, ‘Gender, stereotypes and stories of courtship and domestic violence in the courts of early modern England and Wales’: MPhil, lead supervisor.

In progress:

Wendy Hill, ‘The Representation of Sexual Deviance in Jacobean Drama and a Presentist Study of its Reception’, part-time PhD, co-supervisor to 2017 with Dr Ceri Sullivan in the School of English, Communication and Philosophy.

Jasmine Losasso, ‘Betraying Bodies and Dissembling Demeanours in Early Modern England c.1600-1750’: AHRC-funded [SWW-DTP], lead supervisor to 2017.

External examining

• University of Hull, PhD external examiner, 2018.
• Trinity College Dublin, PhD external examiner, 2016.
• Durham University, MA History, 2015-2017.
• University of Western Australia, PhD external examiner, 2009. 
• University of East Anglia, PhD external examiner, 2008. 
• University of St Andrews, Undergraduate sub-honours History, 2008-2012.
• Roehampton University, MA in Historical Research, 2004-2009.
• University of London, PhD external examiner, 2002.