Associate Professor of History Michael Matthews has published an essay that examines the sensational 1891 murder trial of Enrique Rode, a middle-class English professor who killed his wife in Mexico City.
Associate Professor of History Michael Matthews has published an essay that examines the sensational 1891 murder trial of Enrique Rode, a middle-class English professor who killed his wife in Mexico City.
“Deadly Words, Deadly Deeds: Honor, Sexuality, and Uxoricide in Porfirian Mexico,” published by Oxford University Press’ “Journal of Social History,” explores how gender and sexuality shaped (and reshaped) the concept of honor, a concept that embedded itself in the emerging fields of psychology and criminology. It focuses on how medical and legal experts, as well as the press, discussed the transgression of normative boundaries of sexuality and used it to excuse or condemn Rode’s killing of his new wife, Amelia Zornosa.
The essay argues that the highly gendered and sexualized language of honor embedded itself in the foundation of the emerging scientific fields of psychology and criminology, revealing the cluttered and contentious context that gave rise to Mexican criminology.
The article, which published Aug. 26, is available here.