This Looks Promising

[Gary Barnett]

Probably that was meant to be a rhetorical question. But honestly, if the intention is to attract non-academics (including independent Ripper researchers), I really think a more down-to-earth and less jargony tone in the written material would have been helpful. And the omission of that implication that "revision" is what it's about. So I don't think it would have been a bad idea to ask a few more people's opinions before sending things out.

Rhetorical or sarcastic? I thought my approach so far had been positive. Has anything about this been posted on Casebook, do we know?

[Chris Phillips]

Rhetorical or sarcastic?

Both, probably.

[Gary Barnett]

Rhetorical or sarcastic? I thought my approach so far had been positive. Has anything about this been posted on Casebook, do we know?

I see a copy of the ‘call to papers’ was posted on CB and there have been a couple of responses. I wonder how the local residents and sex workers were notified.

[Chris Phillips]

I see a copy of the ‘call to papers’ was posted on CB and there have been a couple of responses. I wonder how the local residents and sex workers were notified.

Thanks. Here's the thread in case anyone's interested to look:
https://forum.casebook.org/forum/rip...on-august-2022

Actually, based on the response both here and there, as the organisers welcome "input from interested parties as to topics/themes that we might cover", perhaps they might consider:
(1) A more fundamental discussion of the different motivations and approaches of various people interested in the case, of how much scope there is for them to talk to one another, and for the best ways in which they can do so,
(2) The way in which Ripper researchers have been misrepresented and denigrated for their own reasons by various commercial interests, notably by authors pushing particular suspects or particular theories (including "revisionist" theories).

[Edward Stow]

I imagine they were notified via calling cards left in telephone boxes.

[Edward Stow]

"In recent years the academic disciplines of History and Criminology have begun to engage seriously with ‘popular’ and local histories of the Whitechapel murders and the crimes associated with the mythic character known as ‘Jack the Ripper’. However, we believe that within this emerging bank of scholarship, (which started with Feminist critiques, in the later 1980s), there remains a significant void."

My question.
What was this Feminist crique from the 1980s which added to the scholarship on the subject of the Whitechapel Murders?

[Gary Barnett]

"In recent years the academic disciplines of History and Criminology have begun to engage seriously with ‘popular’ and local histories of the Whitechapel murders and the crimes associated with the mythic character known as ‘Jack the Ripper’. However, we believe that within this emerging bank of scholarship, (which started with Feminist critiques, in the later 1980s), there remains a significant void."

My question.
What was this Feminist crique from the 1980s which added to the scholarship on the subject of the Whitechapel Murders?

Perhaps it was Trevor’s essay on lawnmower maintenance.

[Chris Phillips]

I think it's a reference to feminist protests against centenary events, discussed in the article by John Bennett (reprinted from Ripperologist):
https://www.madameguillotine.co.uk/2...-john-bennett/

[Rob Clack]

I was thinking of Judith R Walkowitz and her book City of Dreadful Delight. Which I think is early 1990s. But she did appear on the documentary 'Shadow of the Ripper' 1988 and in the early 80s wrote a book on Victorian prostitution.

[Chris Phillips]

I was thinking of Judith R Walkowitz and her book City of Dreadful Delight. Which I think is early 1990s. But she did appear on the documentary 'Shadow of the Ripper' 1988 and in the early 80s wrote a book on Victorian prostitution.

I think you're right. That makes more sense. Though looking at her publications, as you say, they began in the early 1980s, not the late 1980s, with a paper entitled "Jack the Ripper and the Myth of Male Violence" (1982).

[Rob Clack]

I think you're right. That makes more sense. Though looking at her publications, as you say, they began in the early 1980s, not the late 1980s, with a paper entitled "Jack the Ripper and the Myth of Male Violence" (1982).

I wasn't aware of that paper Chris. She wrote 'Prostitution and Victorian Society: Women, Class and the State' in 1980. I would be surprised if it does not cover anything about the Whitechapel Murders.

[Howard Brown]

Just me butting in here....Walkowitz in City of Dreadful Delight claimed that there were anti-Semitic riots in the East End during the Autumn of Terror which any non-academic who studies the case knows is false.

[Edward Stow]

So it isn't exactly a Corpus of feminist literature.

[Gary Barnett]

The FB page seems rather quiet.

[Gary Barnett]

Has anyone listened to this?

https://player.autopod.xyz/144630

Drew Gray interviewing Paul Begg and Adam Wood.