The papers of Julia and Herman Schwendinger

We are delighted to announce that John Jay College of Criminal Justice now holds the papers of Herman (1926-2022) and Julia Schwendinger (1926-2013) in the Special Collections Archive of the Lloyd Sealy Library.

Link to the Papers of Julia Schwendinger and Herman Schwendinger

Born in Queens in NYC, Julia Schwendinger attended Queens College, CUNY as an undergraduate before going on to study for a master's degree in social work at Columbia University. Herman (Hi) Schwendinger was also a CUNY graduate having received his BA from City College before he too received a master's in social work from Columbia University. In the late 1950s they moved to Los Angeles and began their two-decade-long association with UCLA, Berkeley School of Criminology. Hi began a Ph.D. on the study of adolescent social networks and youthful delinquency, completing it in 1963. As a child, he had been in foster care in the Bronx, and his own teenage involvement in gang activity, and later position as a social outreach worker with street gangs in New York City, provided the foundation, and inspiration, for his research. He began teaching at the Berkeley School of Criminology in 1967. Julia founded the first anti-rape group in the US, Bay Area Women Against Rape (BAWAR) with Oleta “Lee” Abrams, in 1971, which became the model for many anti-rape initiatives both nationally and internationally (Shank, 2013). She completed her Ph.D. at Berkeley in 1975 on “The Rape Victim and the Criminal Justice System.

Selected Bibliography

Schwendinger, H. & Schwendinger, J. (1974) The Sociologists of the Chair: A Radical Analysis of the Formative Years of North American Sociology (1883–1922). New York: Basic Books.

Schwendinger, J. & Schwendinger, H (1983 ) Rape and Inequality. Beverly Hills, California: Sage.

Schwendinger, J. & Schwendinger, H. (1985) Adolescent Subcultures and Delinquency. New York: Praeger.

Schwendinger, J & Schwendinger, H. (2014) Who Killed the Berkeley School?: Struggles Over Radical Criminology, New York: Punctum Books

Schwendinger, J & Schwendinger, H. (2016) Homeland Fascism: Corporatist Government in the New American Century, New York: Punctum Books

Schwendinger, H., & Schwendinger J. (1974), Rape myths: In legal, theoretical, and everyday practice, Crime and Social Justice, No. 1, pp. 18-26

Schwendinger, H., & Schwendinger, J. (1970). Defenders of order or guardians of human rights. Issues in Criminology, 5(2), 123-158.

Schwendinger, H., & Schwendinger, J. (1977). Social class and the definition of crime, Crime and Social Justice, No, 7, pp. 4-13

Schwendinger, H., & Schwendinger, J. (1972). The continuing debate on the legalistic approach to the definition of crime. Issues in Criminology, 7(1),71-82.

Schwendinger, H., & Schwendinger, J. (1971) Sociology's Founding Fathers: Sexists to a Man,

Journal of Marriage and Family, Nov.,Vol. 33, No. 4, pp. 783-799

Schwendinger, H., & Schwendinger, J. (1997) Charting subcultures at a frontier of knowledge
The British Journal of Sociology , Mar., Vol. 48, No. 1, pp. 71- 94

Schwendinger, H., & Schwendinger, J. (2013) Looking back: reflecting on the birth of radical criminology at Berkeley, Journal of Crime and Justice, 36:2, pp. 148-152,