University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Department of History History/WMST 730 (graduate course) (Cross-listed with the Department of Women’s Studies) FEMINIST AND GENDER THEORY FOR HISTORIANS: A Theoretical and Methodological Introduction SPRING 2018 DRAFT SYLLABUS Instructor: Karen Hagemann Time of the Course: Wednesday, 5:30 – 8:00 pm Location of the Course: HM 425 Office Hours: Tuesday 1-3 pm or by appointment Office: Hamilton Hall 562 Email: [email protected] SHORT DESCRIPTION After more than forty years of research, it is time for a critical stocktaking of the theoretical and methodological developments in the field of women's and gender history. The course will therefore acquaint students with the major development of the field since the 1970s and consider the texts of authors such as Judith Bennett, Gisela Bock, Judith Butler, Kathleen Canning, R.W. Connell, Natalie Z. Davis, Evelyn Brooks Higginbottam, Joan Kelly, Gerda Lerner, Joan W. Scott, Sonya O. Rose, and John Tosh, in a chronological and systematical order, to understand how and why the theoretical and methodological debates developed in a specific direction. AIMS AND AGENDA OF THE COURSE Recovering the lives of women from the neglect of historians was the goal of women's history from its inception. Its methodology and interests have evolved over time as it has become established as an academic discipline. From its early origins in cataloguing great women in 15 September 2017 2 history, in the 1970s it turned to recording ordinary women's expectations, aspirations and status. Then, with the rise of the feminist movement, the emphasis shifted in the 1980s towards exposing the oppression of women and examining how they responded to discrimination and subordination. In more recent times women's history has moved to charting female agency, recognizing women's strategies, accommodations and negotiations within a male dominated world. Although it developed out of the feminist agenda, gender history has somewhat different objectives. Recognizing that femininity and masculinity are to some extent social constructs, it investigates how institutions are gendered and how institutions gender individuals. In a short space of time gender has become an indispensable category for historical analysis alongside class and race. This shift of emphasis acknowledges the assertion that gender is – to follow Joan Scott - not only a constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes, but also a primary way of signifying relationships of power. Moreover, gender is of crucial importance for the creation of meaning in social and political life. Far from referring only to men and women, gender constructions are used to give meaning to many other fields of the economy, society, and politics, and even everyday life. And here, too, they constitute relations of asymmetry and hierarchy. If we define gender as a socially and politically contested form of knowledge about sexual difference, which is constructed and acquires meaning only in historically variable and specific contexts, then the central importance of gender for the signification and articulation of power relations, of powerful meanings of difference in social and political life far beyond gender, is obvious. This understanding of gender has made it possible to make men and masculinity objects of historical research. Traditionally, men – conceptualized as un-gendered – have been the main actors in the historiography of politics, the military, and war. They were the protagonists of the “endless adventure” of political and military life that historical studies have long recounted. The rise of the historical study of masculinity over the last few years has started to make clear that constructions of masculinity are crucial for an understanding of history in general and the histories of politics, the military, and war in particular. But a history with a focus on masculinity can also help us to understand other fields of historical development much better if we place the history of masculinity squarely within the field of gender history. THE READING We will read mainly articles and book chapters. I organized our reading chronologically and systematically. After an introduction into the gendered development of history as a discipline and the historiography the first part of the course will give an overview over the development of the theoretical and methodological debates since the 1970s. In the second part we will read texts that focus on specific categories of women’s and gender history. A brief introduction into the themes and the development of the scholarship provide: • Downs, Laura Lee. Writing Gender History. London and New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2010. • Rose, Sonya. What is Gender History? Cambridge: SAGE, 2010. 3 I recommend to read at least one of them (I personally prefer the 208-page short book by Rose), before the course, if you never had a class on women’s and gender history before. The following books will be part of our core reading. We will read chapters of them: • Butler, Judith. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge, 1990. • Butler, Judith, and Elizabeth Weed, eds. The Question of Gender: Joan W. Scott's Critical Feminism. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2011. • Canning, Kathleen. Gender History in Practice: Historical Perspectives on Bodies, Class, and Citizenship. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 2006. • Lerner, Gerda The Majority Finds its Past: Placing Women in History. New York, 1979, 2nd edn., Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2005. • Scott, Joan W. Gender and the Politics of History. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. • Scott, Joan W. ed. Feminism and History. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. • Scott, Joan W. The Fantasy of Feminist History. Durham: Duke University Press, 2012. • Smith, Bonnie G., ed. Women’s History in Global Perspective. Vol. 1. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004. I recommend to buy them used. Most of them will be available at the UNC Textbook Store. You will find all articles and book chapters for the required reading on Sakai. ASSIGNMENTS Class Participation and Preparation: 25 % of the final grade Two Book Reports (20 % each): 40 % of the final grade Literary Review: 35 % of the final grade Class participation and preparation (25 % of the final grade) Preparation of and Leading a Class Discussion Because we will train how to lead an academic discussion and stimulate an interesting exchange of ideas, students will be asked to prepare one or two class discussions (this depends on the number of students), preferably together with another student from their working group (see below). For the preparation they should prepare a presentation of the week’s reading that introduces into the discussion, and they should chair the discussion. More information you will find in the guide on Sakai. The introductory presentation of all readings in class should not be longer than 20-25 minutes together. Students should in the introduction briefly discuss the main theme of the class, i.e. present the main problems related to this theme and its academic and historiographical context in the development of the field, and then summarize the readings by focusing on the authors’ main question(s)/interest(s), the authors’ main thesis and arguments used in support of it and any bias which the authors have. Afterwards their presentation should 4 discuss whether the texts responds to each other and to other texts that we have read earlier in the class and what the response is; and it should touch on how other scholars responded to these texts. For the discussion they should prepare some questions they would like to discuss, but it is recommended to start the discussion of the reading with a more open question about first reading impressions and afterwards go into a more detailed discussion. It is usually advisable to split up the time for introductory presentation. Start with the presentation of the main problems related to the theme of the class and its academic and historiographical context in the development of the field, and the introduction of the first author and reading. Then have a discussion of this text. Later introduce the second and third text and discuss it. Please keep in mind that you have to cooperate with the students who are responsible for presentations of the related books report(s). They should be systematically integrated in the class to avoid any iteration in the presentation. Please try to stay in the assigned time during class. For the presentation in class they should prepare a handout with short bios of all authors and abstracts of all readings for the class and the main questions they would like to discuss. The short bios of the authors should have a length of 15-20 lines (including their current position, the main fields of research, and their 4-5 most important publications, and their website). The abstract should also be no longer than 15-20 lines. Please add to each reading a five keywords that summarize the text and a paragraph on the historiographical context of the reading. The handout should also include the suggestions for the schedule of the class. The handouts must be handed latest until Sunday evening at 6 pm preceding the class by email to the instructor and the students. Students must select the reading, which they would like to prepare by signing up in the first two sessions of the course. Two Book Reports (20 % of the final grade each) The book report has the function to present important monographs and anthologies, which use theories and methodologies in historical practice, to the class. The proposed books thereby add an important dimension to class discussion. The book report should be approx. 1500-2000 words (6-8 pages) long and be typed, double-spaced on standard size paper with one-inch margins.