Beyond sticks and stones: The strange history of reputation in modern Britain, c. 1750-2000
Caroline Shaw is associate professor of history at Bates College. She received her Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Berkeley in 2010 and was a Mellon/ACLS Recent Doctoral Recipient Fellow in 2011-2012. Shaw’s specialty lies in modern British history and the histories of liberalism, humanitarianism, and human rights from the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries. Her book Britannia’s Embrace: Modern Humanitarianism and the Imperial Origins of Refugee Relief (Oxford University Press, 2015) traces the nineteenth-century development of refuge as a humanitarian norm.
At CES, Shaw’s project will examine the contentious right to personal reputation in modern Britain c. 1750-2000. Drawing on legal reports, political commentary, gossip columns, and etiquette manuals, among other sources, her project will explore the history of Britain’s peculiar defamation laws during a time of growing freedom of speech.
This information is accurate for the time period that the visiting scholar is affiliated with CES.
Beyond sticks and stones: The strange history of reputation in modern Britain, c. 1750-2000
History
