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Jeffrey R.

Wilson

A dagger of the mind:
Mental Illness, Masculinity, and Murder in Macbeth

Research Paper Proposal

This paper concerns the relationship between mental illness and crime as it appears in William
Shakespeare's play Macbeth. Literary critics such as Robert Reid and Kevin Curran have
discussed the complexities of criminal thought and behavior in this play, but only one scholar,
Victoria Time, has done so using the theoretical resources of criminology and related fields.
Unfortunately, Time suggests that Macbeth validates rational choice theories of criminology, a
suggestion that wildly overlooks the great lengths to which Shakespeare went to represent
Macbeths compromised mental state. As a corrective to Times suggestion, my paper draws
upon modern psychological concepts such as postpartum psychosis and modern criminological
theories such as Robert Agnew's general strain theory in an attempt to show how the relationship
between the mind and crime in Macbeth resonates with the same relationship as it occurs in
modern society. As I argue, Macbeth shows the ways that mental illness can be both the cause
and the effect of crime. Specifically, the Macbeths (both of them) show the symptoms of
postpartum psychosis, a condition that, if present, could explain their infanticidal thoughts and
actions as well as the hallucinations that both lead to and follow from the murders they commit.
My paper is largely devoted to a close reading of Macbeth, including detailed discussions of
Lady Macbeth's "Unsex me here" soliloquy and Lord Macbeth's "Is this a dagger I see"
soliloquy, but I also touch upon modern cases such as that of Andrea Yates (the mother who
drowned her five children in a bathtub) and that of John Hinckley (the mentally ill man who
attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan). The example of Hinckley, which inspired the
Insanity Defense Reform Act (the legislation that gave us the verdict of "guilty but mentally ill"
as an alternative to "not guilty by reason of insanity"), arises in the context of Shakespeare
"sentencing" the Macbeths to death by making his play a tragedy. As I suggest in my conclusion,
Macbeth illustrates the problems that can emerge when dealing justice to the mentally ill,
problems that continue to plague our criminal justice system, and problems that force us to think
of justice as tragedy, not comedy.
Jeffrey R. Wilson

Hate Crimes in The Merchant of Venice:
Moral Panics, Folk Devils, and Revenge Tragedy

Research Paper Proposal

This paper addresses the causes and effects of hate crimes in William Shakespeare's play The
Merchant of Venice. Since World War II, literary critics have consistently noted, and bemoaned,
the play's anti-semitism; most recently, Stephen Greenblatt has suggested that hatred is the
theme of the play, a reading that puts the Jewish-Christian tensions in Merchant in conversation
with the Arab-American tensions in modern terrorism. Merchant has therefore played an active
role in recent religious and cultural studies, but the play has not been considered in the
vocabulary of criminal justice, namely that of hate crimes. My paper aims to fill this gap by
looking at crime in Merchant through the lens of criminological theories such as Frank
Tannenbaums dramatization of evil and Stanley Cohen's folk devils. I argue that
Shakespeare, writing The Merchant of Venice in and against the tradition of revenge tragedy,
made Shylock both a victim and the perpetrator of hate crimes, which makes hatred both the
cause and effect of crime. On the one hand, moral entrepreneurs concerned with cultural
prosperity can raise a moral panic that makes those identified as others into folk devils,
effectively leading to hatred and hostility against those whose identities set them apart from the
professed norms and values of a society. On the other hand, when the victims of hate crimes seek
justice for the wrongs done to them, that justice is constitutionally not forthcoming from the
society that made them into folk devils, and that justice must therefore be carried out by the
individual him- or herself: in other words, that justice is enacted as revenge, and that revenge is
sought not against the individual who committed the initial hate crime but against the society that
created the folk devil in the first place. I locate this theory of hate crime in a reading of
Shakespeare's Shylock, a Jew who is spit upon and kicked just for being Jewish, and who
attempts to murder his assailant in response. I also consider a modern case, the Boston marathon
bombing of 2013, in which the perpetrators were motivated by revenge, not the desire to incite
fear. As I conclude, a reading of The Merchant of Venice can provide us with new ways of
thinking about the kind of crime commonly called terrorism, a kind of crime that is rarely
about inciting fear, one that is usually about exacting revenge; it could be useful, with reference
to the literary tradition in which Shakespeare wrote Merchant, to rebrand what is commonly
called terrorism as revenge tragedy. Second, the changes Shakespeare made to his sources,
turning tragedy into comedy, offer us a way of thinking about persistence in and desistence from
revenge, as I discuss with reference to the split fates of the two Tsarnaev brothers who
committed the Boston Marathon bombing.
Jeffrey R. Wilson

War, Honor, and Murder in Titus Andronicus and the Christopher Dorner Case

Research Paper Proposal

This paper addresses the problem of violent crime committed by military veterans. Psychological
studies have discussed the link between post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) acquired through
military service and violent crime. Without disputing this research, I suggest that the problem
may be sociological as well: violent crime committed by veterans may be not simply the result of
a psychological "disorder" (the D in PTSD) but also an unfortunate extension of the notionally
healthy sociological order learned during military service. Thus I view the military as what
Richard Nisbert and Dov Cohen called a "culture of honor," a culture in which one's reputation is
everything and one that is marked by a readiness to perceive and violently respond to
disrespectful threats to one's reputation. As I argue, the heavy emphasis on honor in the military,
while usually a source of ethical action, can in some cases have unpredictable and disastrous
consequences. The culture of honor in the military can condition soldiers such that demilitarized
veterans feel compelled to seek violent revenge when they think someone has slighted their
integrity. This argument has its origin in an unconventional source: William Shakespeare's play
Titus Andronicus, which opens with the title character returning from war and ritually
slaughtering the eldest son of his enemy's empress. I use this example to theorize the military as
a culture of honor; then I use this theory to address some modern cases of violent crime
committed by veterans, such as Christopher Dorner's 2013 killing spree, which he waged, he
said, to defend his honor. I conclude with a call for criminologists to consider the extent to which
violent crime committed by veterans is a psychological or a sociological phenomenon: that is,
the extent to which violent crime committed by veterans stems, on the one hand, from stress
related to trauma experienced during war or, on the other hand, from the culture of honor in the
military itself.
Jeffrey R. Wilson

Hamlets Delay:
Detection, Due Process, and the Death Penalty

Research Paper Proposal

This paper concerns the course of justice in William Shakespeares Hamlet, specifically the
problem of Hamlets delay. I suggest that the debate about Hamlets delay in literary criticism
(whether it makes the play a success or a failure) can be extrapolated to a comparable debate
about delays in executing death penalty sentences in modern society (whether they make our
criminal justice system a success or a failure). As I argue, Hamlets delay is a dramatization of
due process in criminal justice proceedings. In both Hamlet and modern society, there is a
significant gap of time between the sentence and the execution of capital punishment because
those responsible for the administration of justice (on both an individual and an institutional
level) feel a deep ambivalence about performing the very act they are punishing, namely
homicide. This ambivalence manifests in an often extensive, occasionally absurd, and explicitly
theatrical public performance of the justice systems inability to act. This performance, in turn,
engenders a polarized response from the public audience that observes the dramatization of due
process: the idealists who demand absolute justice express frustration while the realists who
value procedural justice express appreciation for the delays in executing a sentence of capital
punishment. I locate this logic in a reading that parallels the plot of Hamlet with stages of capital
punishment cases, from a criminal investigation to a trial to a lengthy appeals process to a public
execution.

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