Miscellaneous Legal Rhetoric articles and research for MS of Chicago husband killing and the new unwritten law
Marianne Constable, Professor
Rhetoric
Applications for Spring 2025 are closed for this project.
Chicago Husband-Killing and the New Unwritten Law is a book-length manuscript concerned with a particular defense known as the new unwritten law, which supposedly exonerated women accused of killing their husbands in Chicago at the beginning of the twentieth century. The point of the book is to explore the rhetoric of law and the rhetoric of history. Given that law and history privilege writings as evidence and as sources of authority, how can one write a history of unwritten law?
Most of the research and writing is done, but I would like the two apprentices to:
1) read and comment on drafts of the project to get up to speed on status of ms; reformat notes of last 3 chapters
2) help fill holes regarding particular cases or their contexts, largely having to do with Chicago history (1867 to 1930's, especially 1920s), women's rights, women's cases, Prohibition. Mainly search in newspapers and secondary sources. Some are available as Berkeley online materials, but others require interlibrary use and access.
3) Coordinate putting some data in visual form (graphs or figures). Some tabulation and re-organization is needed which builds on the work of past research apprentices.
4)I'm also looking for someone with roughly same qualifications to help with some other in-progress articles involving unwritten law more broadly and formatting of book reviews I am writing in legal history, legal anthropology, etc
Role: Specific role:
- meet w/ me and the apprentice who began in Fall 24 (and possibly anohter research assistant) regularly (at set time) every 2 or 3 weeks (preferably in person)
- read, comment, format drafts
- bibliographic searches, formatting, summary memos
- some quantitative material turned into visuals
Open for 1 or 2 units depending on student
Qualifications: Good writing, reading, editing, thinking;
Interest in rhetoric, law, philosophy, history;
Able to both grasp big picture and focus on details of a text; comfortable working independently yet asking for help when stymied; able to meet with me (and with another ug RA) in-person about getting the work done.
Familiarity with UCB libraries and commitment to searching far beyond google and wikipedia and in govt docs and newspapers;
In your application, please describe how you are qualified and which aspects of the project you are most interested and prepared for, rather than simply asserting that you are! Give examples of things you have done or classes you have taken that you think can carry over into this work.
Day-to-day supervisor for this project: No research supervisor except me, but there will be another UG RA to coordinate with
Hours: 6-8 hrs
Off-Campus Research Site: May need some on-campus errands (books etc from office to library) and will meet on campus or nearby, but as long as work gets done, hours and location are flexible.
Arts & Humanities Social Sciences