Criminal in body and soul. Penal histories in 19th Century Cuba

The present research explores penal experiences centred on the criminal as a "subject" in nineteenth-century Cuba, contrasting these experiences with penitentiary and correctional notions focused on the construction of spaces for the "amendment of the guilty". Specifically, its analyses focus on: (1) the conception of the "beast-man" in the first decades of the century; (2) the phrenological studies of 1840-1860, (3) the psychiatric discourse on monomania and its transition to degenerationism; and, finally, (4) the emergence of figures of criminal anthropology such as "the professional type" and the atavistic delinquent.