Gender: Historical Perspectives

Calendar

SESS #	TOPICS	DUE DATES
Week 1: Hello and Welcome
1	Introduction and course overview
2	What is history and how does it work?
Week 2: Key Questions in Gender(ed) History
3	The role of agency in historical explanation: Why do people use skin lighteners?	Post 1–2 questions (written or a short video) for the week’s readings on the class website
4	Why do we have Women’s & Gender Studies departments and when did they come into existence?
Week 3: Ida B. Wells and the Crusade against Lynching
5	How have race and gender intersected around the issue of lynching in US history?	Post 1–2 questions (written or a short video) for the week’s readings on the class website
6	How do we read primary sources to deepen our understanding?	Analysis of Ida B. Wells primary sources due
Week 4: Happy 100th Birthday to the 19th Amendment!
7	Why did the trial of Susan B. Anthony create a national sensation in 1873–74? During this session, we will stage a mock version of the trial.	Post 1–2 questions (written or a short video) for the week’s readings on the class website
8	Guest lecturer: Dr. Susan Ware
Week 5: A Global History of 1919
9	Guest lecturer: Prof. Mona Siegel, California State University, Sacramento	Post 1–2 questions (written or a short video) for the week’s readings on the class website General topic for research paper due
10	How does it feel to be “a colored woman in a white world”? A visit from Ece Turnator, Humanities and Digital Scholarship Librarian, MIT Libraries
Week 6: Demographic Engineering or the Many Lives of Birth Control
11	Whose birth is being controlled and who is trying to do the controlling?	Be prepared to present one of the articles for this session in class. (For reference, see the readings in session 11 in the Readings and Videos section.)
12	Gender and climate change	By this session, meet with Ece Turnator for final research paper preparation
Week 7: Work on your long papers and presentation of your questions
13	Paper topic preliminary presentations Students will present sources, questions, some secondary materials on their paper topics. Everyone should be prepared to listen closely and give helpful feedback.
Week 8: Recovering Native Histories and its Gendered Discontents
14	When is the personal political and historical?	Post 1–2 questions (written or a short video) for the week’s readings on the class website
15	Guest lecturer: Prof. Jennifer Nez Denetdale, University of New Mexico
Week 9: Regulating Queerness in India and Iran
16	Is it a good thing that in Iran the government pays for sex-change surgeries for transpeople?	Post 1–2 questions (written or a short video) for the week’s readings on the class website
17	Why and how did the British try to eliminate third-gender/trans-women in India?
Week 10: Uses and Abuses of Wartime Sexual Violence against Women
18	Why do the pictures of violated women and children mobilize men into war and the general public into “humanitarian giving”?	Post 1–2 questions (written or a short video) for the week’s readings on the class website
19	When and how did genocidal rape become an international crime?
Week 11: Political Masculinity and Leadership in Historical Context
20	How do masculine performances prove useful to populist leaders?	Students will find and list three ways that Teddy Roosevelt and Vladimir Putin each used masculinity as a political strategy to improve their visibility and political standing. (For reference, see the readings in session 20 of the Readings and Videos section.)
21	How is masculinist populism playing out today?	Students will choose one article from “Charting the Waters: Populism as a Gendered Phenomenon” and report on its key features to the class
Week 12: Gender and the State in the U.S. Today
22	How have US leaders displayed their own machismo?
23	How has the US responded to COVID-19 and what are the gender, race, and class implications?	Students will find and post at least two news articles on the gender, class and race dimensions of the fight against COVID-19. Students should be ready to discuss their selections in class in terms of why they chose these particular pieces. (For reference, see the readings in session 23 of the Readings and Videos section.)
Week 13: Student Presentations
24	Student presentations
25	Student presentations cont’d
Week 14
26	View and discuss Left on Pearl. Directed by Susan Rivo. Color and black & white, 55 min. 2017. (Trailer)	Research papers due