Dr. Dana Rabin

Biography

Dana Rabin specializes in the history of eighteenth-century Britain with an emphasis on crime, law, gender, and race. Her book, Identity, Crime and Legal Responsibility in Eighteenth-Century England (Palgrave, 2004), examined the language of mental states in the English courtroom. Her recent book, Britain’s Internal Outsiders: Rule of Law in the Eighteenth Century (Manchester University Press, 2017), analyzes the intersection of metropolis and colony through a study of legal events involving criminal trials, lawsuits, legislation, and riots that unfolded in London during the latter half of the eighteenth century. Featuring six case studies, including the Jewish Naturalization Act and the Gordon Riots, the book uses legal events as a prism to examine the complexities wrought by empire and the laws that created, delineated, and maintained categories of difference. Rabin's current project, 'Jews, Suffrage, and the Color Line in the British Empire, 1740-1858,' examines Jewish civil rights in the British Empire from the passage of the Naturalization Act in 1740 to the 'Jewish Emancipation' of 1858 when Jews received the right to vote in Britain. This multi-sited project takes into account the Empire's metropole and colonial spaces, exploring how definitions of race and religion shaped the lives of Jews and the definitions of Jewishness and whiteness.

Research Interests

Awards