Vivien Miller
Associate Professor, American and Canadian Studies, Faculty of Arts
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Teaching Summary
Current teaching portfolio:
Q42202: A HISTORY OF U.S. CRIME & PUNISHMENT
This module explores the history of crime and punishment in the United States from the late eighteenth century shift from public and corporal punishments through the early nineteenth century "invention" of the penitentiary to late twentieth-century concerns over high crime rates and mass incarceration. There is particular emphasis on how race, gender, class and region have shaped responses to violence, crime and disorder, and attitudes toward offenders. A key theme in 2012-13 will be the history of homicide.
Q43008: Policing the City and the Frontier
This module adopts a comparative approach to the study and understanding of police history by focusing on Britain, the United States, and Canada in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. It examines the creation and experiences of formal, uniformed, paid, round-the-clock and centrally-organised police forces in the three distinct but related countries. It goes on to compare and contrast the formation and development of police and law enforcement in the southern United States, and the western territories/states of the United States and Canada. Key questions include: What factors led to the formation of uniformed patrols in the growing cities of North America? In what ways did the London Metropolitan model influence urban police organisation in the United States and Canada? To what extent were the challenges of urban policing different from frontier policing, and how were these affected by factors such as geography, class, race, ethnicity gender, and mobility?
Q43005: PROHIBITION AMERICA
This module explores the United States' bold but disastrous experiment with Prohibition during the period 1918 to 1933, with particular focus on crime, disorder and policing. We begin with the reasons for passage of the Eighteenth Amendment which outlawed the liquor trade, and examination of its impact on US society and culture during the 1920s. We shall consider the rise of organized crime, gangsters and G-men, and the expanding crime fighting role of the state. The module concludes with the federal crime crusade of the early 1930s and the inglorious end of Prohibition.
Research Summary
Current research interests:
- Violence, crime and criminal justice in the 19th and 20th C American South
- Race, gender and class issues in southern punishment and penal practices
- Gender and capital punishment in the USA
My research interests lie in the histories of violence, crime, and criminal justice in the United States, particularly the south-eastern region or "the South" from the post-Civil War era to the present. Most of my published work to date has focused on Florida, the third most populous state in the US with a huge prison population and often controversial death penalty practices.
I have just completed a social history of Florida's prison system during the first half of the twentieth century that focuses on prisoners and their prison experiences on the chain gang or at the state prison farm in the decades before the civil rights and prisoner rights' movements - provisionally entitled Hard Labor and Hard Time in Florida's "Sunshine Prison" and Chain Gangs. It charts the origins and evolution of Florida's state prison farm and road prisons, and explores the different forms of inmate labor, the punishment regimes, inmate resistance and accomodation, as well as their relations with the guards and superintendents.
Shorter projects that are related to this larger study focus on elite jewel thieves and resort crime, and ransom kidnapping in 1930s Florida.
I have recently worked on several shorter projects which have focused on more contemporary forms of punishment in the United States, including the revived chain gang of 1990s Florida, Alabama, and Arizona, and the military prison at Guantanamo Bay and its similarities to the domestic "supermax" prison.
Selected Publications
VIVIEN M. L. MILLER, 2012. Hard Labor and Hard Time: Florida's "Sunshine Prison" and Chain Gangs University of Florida Press. (In Press.)
VIVIEN MILLER and HELEN OAKLEY, eds., 2012. Cross-Cultural Connections in Crime Fiction Palgrave Macmillan. (In Press.)
MILLER, VIVIEN, 2009. The life and crimes of Harry Sitamore, New York “Prince of Thieves” and the “Raffles” of Miami Florida Historical Quarterly. 87(3), 378-403
Past Research
Crime, Sexual Violence and Clemency was the first state-based historical study of executive clemency. From 1889 to 1918, more than 11,000 persons were convicted and sentenced to hard labour in Florida's convict lease camps. There were four routes to freedom: expriation of sentence, death, escape, and pardon. By comparing letters, petitions, and endorsements from prisoners and their supporters, the study showed that Florida's penal system and pardon board reinforced white male middle-class dominance and restricted the freedom of African American and lower-class white offenders, but at the same time offered opportunities for early release. Whereas most studies of southern crime and criminal justice had focused on the arrest, trial and sentencing stages, this study followed the cultural prejudices through the post-conviction stages. It showed that notions of respectability and proper behaviour were interpreted and selectively applied but were integral to the approval or denial of applications for mercy.
Future Research
Recent Publications:
'The life and crimes of Harry Sitamore, New York "Prince of Thieves" and the "Raffles" of Miami,' Florida Historical Quarterly 87/3 (Winter 2009): 378-403.
"Race, Class, Age and Punitive Segregation: Prisons and Prison Populations in the Southern United States," in Iwan Morgan and Philip Davis, eds. America's Americans: Population Issues in U.S. Society and Politics, (London: Institute for the Study of the Americas, 2007), 246-262.
"Murder, 'Convict Flogging Affairs,' and Debt Peonage: The Roaring Twenties in the American South," in Martin Crawford and Richard Godden, eds. Writing Southern Poverty Between the Wars, (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2006), 77-107.
"Tough Men, Tough Prisons, Tough Times: The Globalization of Super-maximum Secure Prisons," in Mary Bosworth and Jeanne Flavin, eds. Race, Gender and Punishment: From Colonialism To The War On Terror, Critical Issues in Crime and Society Series, (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2007), 200-215.
"Back on the Southern Chain Gang Lite," in Clive Emsley, ed. The Persistent Prison: Problems, Images and Alternatives, (London: Francis Boutle Publishers, 2005), 144-173.