Skip to main content
PBS logo
 
 

Search - List of Books by Nicole Hahn Rafter

Nicole Hahn Rafter (English pronunciation: ni-kohl h-ah-n raf-ter) is a feminist criminology professor at Northeastern University. She received her Bachelor of Arts from Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. She then went to achieve her Masters in Teachers from Harvard University, and finally got her Ph. D in Criminal Justice from State University of New York in Albany. She began her career as a high school and college English professor and switched to criminal justice in her mid-thirties.

In 1977 Rafter began teaching at Northeastern University’s College of Criminal Justice in Boston Massachusetts. Here she developed one of the country’s first courses on women and crime as well as a course on crime films. In 1999 she resigned her position as a full-time professor to focus on her writing projects. She continued affiliation with Northeastern University as an adjunct professor and overseeing dissertation students but not teaching regular courses. In 2002 she resumed teaching at the College of Criminal Justice with a graduate course in Biological Theories of Crime.

During the 1980s is when the first wave of her writings began to be published. Rafter, having written "Gender, Prisons, an Prison History" in 1985, was interested in re-writing the scarce literature that was present at the time on the female prison system. Here she argues that there have always been differences between the prison systems for the sexes and littler academia has focused on women since studies were done on male institutions by male writers. Here she dives into the history of prisons for women, accounting for their differences for that of men as well as commenting on the affects that gender has on an institution and vice versa.

Towards the end of the 1980s, Rafter published White Trash: The Eugenic Family Studies 1877-1919 in which she writes on the eugenic movement in England and the way in which the poor were reshaped as being inferior through heredity. Rafter diverts from her original theme of prisons for women and studies the gender-neutral account of eugenics and the biological scapegoats created there within. At the beginning of the 1990s Rafter accounted for gender in the eugenic movement in the United States showing how women were negatively affected with biological notions of being carriers of disease through reproduction.

Intellectual History   more

Major Works   more

Book Summary   more

Contributions to Feminist Criminology   more

Recent Awards   more

Bibliography   more

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Nicole Hahn Rafter", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0
Total Books: 8
Creating Born Criminals
Creating Born Criminals (Hardcover)Paperback
ISBN-13: 9780252022371
ISBN-10: 0252022378
Genres: Nonfiction, Science & Math, Medicine, Medical Books
  ?

Creating Born Criminals
Creating Born Criminals (Paperback)Hardcover
ISBN-13: 9780252067419
ISBN-10: 025206741X
Genre: Nonfiction
  ?

Criminal Woman the Prostitute and the Normal Woman
Criminal Woman the Prostitute and the Normal Woman (Hardcover)Paperback
ISBN-13: 9780822332077
ISBN-10: 0822332078
Genre: Nonfiction
  ?

Encyclopedia Of Women And Crime
Encyclopedia of Women and Crime (Other)
ISBN-13: 9780613810456
ISBN-10: 0613810457
Genres: Reference, Nonfiction
  ?

Partial Justice Women in State Prisons 18001935
Partial Justice Women in State Prisons 18001935 (Other)
ISBN-13: 9780930350635
ISBN-10: 0930350634
Genre: Nonfiction
  ?

Prisons in America A Reference Handbook
Prisons in America a Reference Handbook (Other)
ISBN-13: 9781576071021
ISBN-10: 1576071022
  ?

Shots in the Mirror Crime Films and Society
Shots in the Mirror Crime Films and Society (Paperback)
ISBN-13: 9780195129830
ISBN-10: 0195129830
Genres: Nonfiction, Humor & Entertainment
  • Currently 1/5 Stars.
 1

White Trash The Eugenic Family Studies 18771919