Staff profiles
Dr Marie Hockenhull-Smith
Senior lecturer, BA, PGCE, Law Society's CPE, PHD
Phone 0114 225 6095
E-mail m.hockenhull-smith@shu.ac.uk
Research interests/current work
My research is mainly, but not exclusively, interdisciplinary: reading literary and legal texts of the long eighteenth century. I am interested in their representation of offences in the grey areas on the edges of criminalization, when and where ideas are in transition and society has not homogenized its moral views: eg. treason, adultery, and many issues in labour relations as diverse as smuggling and slavery.
Currently completing
Monograph, Negotiating Transgression in Eighteenth-Century Literature and Law.
[This reads legal and literary texts together to bring out how law and culture combine in society's negotiation of an individual's transgressive behaviour.]
Article, 'So firm, established and constant the laws: a farce of legal, theatrical and geological catastrophe.' On John Gay's 'Three Hours after Marriage' and its satire of scientist John Woodward.
'Playing to the Scullery': On Eighteenth-Century Country House Theatricals and Servant Transgression.
I am also developing work on contemporary issues; I am working on an interdisciplinary paper and article which compares contemporary cultural representations and practice in detention issues, with 18th-century counterparts: dangerous radicals, terrorists and the dilemma of detention on intention [this discusses how the law establishes the mental element of criminal guilt in inchoate offences; with the matter of free will].
Research outputs since 2001
Article, ''…You'll be made a slave in your turn; you'll be told also that it is right that you should be so, and we shall see what you think of this justice:' libido, retribution and moderation in The Island of Slaves.' The British Journal of Eighteenth-Century Studies, Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol 31, no.2 (2008), pp223-239
Article, 'Superego, Special Juries anda Split Law: Eighteenth-Century Adultery Trials viewed through Žižek's Lens', Law and Critique, Volume 18, Issue 1, January 2007. [Using trial reports, Henry Fielding, Jeremy Bentham, and Slavoj Žižek's cultural theory.]
Article, ''The children will be subject to the infamy of their deluded and unfortunate mother:' rhetoric of the courtroom, a gothic fantasy and a Plain Letter to the Lord Chancellor.' Journal of Law and Literature, Fall 2006, Volume 18, Number 3, pp 403-430. [This is a narrative of the link between the gothic and the political sublime, using Blackstone, Charlotte Dacre's 'Zofloya' and Caroline Norton's 'Letter on the Infant Custody Bill'.]
Article, 'The Woman in the Criminal Conversation Trial and her Displaced Defences; a Letter Always Reaches its Destination. 'Romanticism on the Net, Issue 45, February 2007. [On trials and letters and Eighteenth-Century marriage law: discussing European marriage law, a purloined love letter, and the use of a letter in Wollstonecraft's 'Maria'.]
