portrait

Associate Professor

SSH 3236

Research Focus

Early modern Germany; social and cultural history; crime, deviance, and marginality; microhistory; history of daily life; history of gender

Publications

Stuart, K. (2023) Suicide by Proxy in Early Modern Germany: Crime, Sin and Salvation (World Histories of Crime, Culture and Violence) (Palgrave Macmillan). (Paperback, February 2, 2024)

Stuart, K. (2009) Melancholy murderers: Suicide by proxy and the insanity defense, in Ideas and Cultural Margins: Essays in Honor of H.C. Erik Midelfort, edited by Robin Barnes and Marjorie Plummer (Eds.), Aldershot, Hambleton: Ashgate.

Stuart, K. (2008) Unehrliche Berufe. Status und Stigma in der frühen Neuzeit am Beispiel Augsburgs (Augsburg: Wißner Verlag, 2008). (German translation of Defiled Trades).

Stuart, K. (2008) Suicide by proxy: The unintended consequences of public executions in eighteenth-century Germany, Central European History, 41, 413-445.

Stuart, K. (2007) Pozornaia shuba, ili Neprednamerennye effekty sotsial’nogo distsiplinirovaniia, in M. M. Krom, G. Al’gazi, D. Sabean, (Eds.) Istoriia i antropologiia: Mezhdistsiplinarnye issledovaniia poslednikh let. St. Petersburg: Aletheia. (Russian Translation of Chapter 5, Defiled Trades)

Stuart, K. (2000) Defiled Trades and Social Outcasts: Honor and Ritual Pollution in Early Modern Germany, Cambridge University Press. Winner Hans Rosenberg Biennial Book Prize, 2001. Paperback, 2006.

Stuart, K. (1998) Dishonore, contaminazione e guistizia criminale ad Augusta nella prima eta moderna, Quaderni Storici, 99, 677-706.

Interviews & Podcasts

New Books Network, Suicide by Proxy in Early Modern Germany, December 13, 2023

‘Unfold,’ Episode 5: ‘Murder, Suicide and the Macabre,’ October 26, 2021

NPR This American Life, Episode 472, “Loopholes,” August 24, 2012

Awards

ASUCD Excellence in Education Award for the Division of the Social Sciences (2011)

Hans Rosenberg Biennial Article Prize (2010)         

University of California President’s Fellowship in the Humanities (2007-2008)           

Hans Rosenberg Biennial Book Prize (2001)

Historical Advisor

Consultant to filmmakers Veronika Franz and Severin Fiala on their feature film The Devil's Bath (Des Teufels Bad). The film had its world premiere at the Berlinale, the Berlin Film Festival, on February 20, 2024. The film was awarded a Silver Bear for "outstanding artistic contribution." Learn more about the film here.

Teaching

Lecture Classes: History 4B: "European History from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment." History 132: "Crime and Punishment in Early Modern Europe." History 125: "The European Witch-Hunt." History 102D Seminars: "Demonic Possession from Classical Antiquity to the Present;" "Satan or a Disordered Spleen? The Experience of Madness in Early Modern Europe;" "Problematic Passions: History of the Emotions in Early Modern Europe;" "The Dead and the Undead, 1348-1800;" "Body, Gender, and Sexuality in Early Modern Europe."

Summer Abroad Program: "Vienna, At the Crossroads of Central Europe." 

Tags

Early Modern Europe