Faculty Letter of Support 2

Fiction and the Law in Victorian England: the Alibi Defense (Excerpt)

I am delighted to have her working on a project that will so directly aid me in my ongoing book project. This book concerns the relationship between the novel and the law courts as two historically interconnected spaces of storytelling. The discussion of ìalibiî in popular culture forms a central part of my argument. ìAlibi,î a word which entered public discourse alongside the rise of the English novel in the eighteenth century, signifies a specific sort of exculpating story told in a courtroom, one which involves orchestrating voices and evidence, and as such ìalibiî suggestively marks a mode of novelistic narrating. My student's research into the alibi defense in the Victorian period will provide crucial historical information for the introduction and possibly the conclusion of this book; I also anticipate her work on gender and crime will also intersect at various points with sections of the book.

Most of the materials she will need are readily available at the University of Delaware, either in the stacks or on microfilm. If need be, however, I can help direct her to the collections at The Johns Hopkins University and the University of Pennsylvania libraries, both of which I may also be using to perform my research this summer.

Student Proposal