[H] = Hinchy, Jessica. Governing Gender and Sexuality in Colonial India: the Hijra, c. 1850–1900. Cambridge University Press, 2020. ISBN: 9781108716888.
[W] = Ware, Susan. Why They Marched: Untold Stories of the Women Who Fought for the Right to Vote. Belknap Press, 2020. ISBN: 9780674248298.
| SESS # | TOPICS | READINGS AND VIDEOS |
|---|---|---|
| Week 1: Hello and Welcome | ||
| 1 | Introduction and course overview | No readings or videos assigned |
| 2 | What is history and how does it work? |
Read Andrews, Thomas, and Flannery Burge. “What Does It Mean to Think Historically?” Perspectives on History, January 1, 2007. Taub, Amanda, and Max Fisher. “If Only Quoting Women Were Enough,” New York Times, February 9, 2018. |
| Week 2: Key Questions in Gender(ed) History | ||
| 3 | The role of agency in historical explanation: Why do people use skin lighteners? |
Read Thomas, Lynn M. “Historicising Agency.” Gender & History 28, no. 2 (2016): 324–39. |
| 4 | Why do we have Women’s & Gender Studies departments and when did they come into existence? |
Read Gordon, Linda. “‘Intersectionality’, Socialist Feminism and Contemporary Activism: Musings by a Second‐Wave Socialist Feminist.” Gender & History 28, no. 2 (2016): 340–57. |
| 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? |
Read one of two secondary sources below. We will then compare the accounts in class. [W] Chapter 2: Sojourner Truth Speaks Truth to Power. [W] Chapter 7: Ida Wells-Barnett and the Alpha Suffrage Club. Bederman, Gail. “‘The White Man’s Civilization on Trial’: Ida B. Wells, Representations of Lynching, and Northern Middle Class Manhood.” Chapter 2 in Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917. University of Chicago Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780226041391. Reference Ida B. Wells Timeline. Timetoast. View “A Passion For Justice….Ida B. Wells.” YouTube. “Allison K. Lange | Schlesinger Library - Suffrage School || Radcliffe Institute.” YouTube. |
| 6 | How do we read primary sources to deepen our understanding? | Students will each read two essays by Ida B. Wells or examine six visual sources (photos, short films, political cartoons). Write a short 1–2 page analysis of your primary sources. See the Assignments section for more detail. |
| 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? |
Read [W] “Prologue: A Walk through Suffrage History.” [Preview with Google Books] [W] Chapter 1: The Trial of Susan B. Anthony and the ‘Rochester Fifteen’. View “Corinne T. Field | Schlesinger Library - Suffrage School || Radcliffe Institute.” YouTube. *Note: We will stage a mock version of the trial using documents from Famous Trials. See the Assignments section for more detail. |
| 8 | Guest lecturer: Dr. Susan Ware |
Read [W] Chapter 3: Sister-Wives and Suffragists. [W] Chapter 4: Alice Stone Blackwell and the Armenian Crisis of the 1890s. [W] Chapter 15: ‘Bread and Roses’ and Votes for Women Too. Optional reading Yaeger, Lynn. “The African-American Suffragists History Forgot.” Vogue, October 21, 2015. Edwards, Rebecca. “Early Women’s Rights Activists Wanted Much More than Suffrage.” History. April 1, 2019. View “Susan Ware | Schlesinger Library - Suffrage School || Radcliffe Institute.” YouTube. Suggested viewing “The Vote.” American Experience. PBS. 2020. Useful website for 1st wave feminism Women’s Suffrage Movement. Montana State University Billings Library. |
| Week 5: A Global History of 1919 | ||
| 9 | Guest lecturer: Prof. Mona Siegel, California State University, Sacramento |
Read Siegel, Mona. “Prologue: The Closing Days of the First World War.” In Peace on Our Terms: The Global Battle for Women’s Rights After the First War. Columbia University Press, 2020. ISBN: 9780231195102. [Preview with Google Books] ———. “A New Year in Paris: Women’s Rights at the Peace Conference of 1919.” Chapter 1 in Peace on Our Terms: The Global Battle for Women’s Rights After the First War. Columbia University Press, 2020. ISBN: 9780231195102. |
| 10 | How does it feel to be “a colored woman in a white world”? |
Read Siegel, Mona. “Timeline of International Women’s Activism in 1919.” In Peace on Our Terms: The Global Battle for Women’s Rights After the First War. Columbia University Press, 2020. ISBN: 9780231195102. [Preview with Google Books] ———. “Winter of Our Discontent: Racial Justice in a New World Order.” Chapter 2 in Peace on Our Terms: The Global Battle for Women’s Rights After the First War. Columbia University Press, 2020. ISBN: 9780231195102. Suggested podcast NBn World Affairs: Mona L. Siegel, “Peace on Our Terms: The Global Battle for Women’s Rights After the First World” (Columbia UP, 2020). Apple Podcasts Preview. |
| 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? |
Read one of the following articles Roberts, Dorothy E. “Race, Gender, and Genetic Technologies: A New Reproductive Dystopia?” Signs 34, no. 4 (2009): 783–804. Briggs, Laura. “Debating Reproduction. Birth Control, Eugenics, and Overpopulation in Puerto Rico, 1920–1940.” Chapter 3 in Reproducing Empire: Race, Sex, Science, and U.S. Imperialism in Puerto Rico. University of California Press, 2002. ISBN: 9780520232587. [Preview with Google Books] |
| 12 | Gender and climate change |
Read Doctress Neutopia. “Review: Joni Seager, Earth Follies: Coming to Feminist Terms with the Global Environmental Crisis.” Utopian Studies 7, no. 2 (1996): 328–30. Gengenbach, Heidi, Rachel A. Schurman, Thomas J. Bassett, et al. “Limits of the New Green Revolution for Africa: Reconceptualizing Gendered Agricultural Value Chains.” Geographical Journal 184, no. 2 (2018) 208–14. |
| Week 7: Work on your long papers and presentation of your questions | ||
| 13 | Paper topic preliminary presentations | No readings or videos assigned |
| Week 8: Recovering Native Histories and its Gendered Discontents | ||
| 14 | When is the personal political and historical? |
Read Denetdale, Jennifer Nez. “Introduction.” Chapter 1 in Reclaiming Diné History: The Legacies of Navajo Chief Manuelito and Juanita. University of Arizona Press, 2015. ISBN: 9780816532711. [Preview with Google Books] ———. “The Imperial Gaze: Portraits of Juanita and Manuelito, 1868–1902.” Chapter 4 in Reclaiming Diné History: The Legacies of Navajo Chief Manuelito and Juanita. University of Arizona Press, 2015. ISBN: 9780816532711. [Preview with Google Books] |
| 15 | Guest lecturer: Prof. Jennifer Nez Denetdale, University of New Mexico |
Read Denetdale, Jennifer Nez. “Chairmen, Presidents, and Princesses: The Navajo Nation, Gender, and the Politics of Tradition.” Wicazo Sa Review 21, no.1 (2006): 9–28. |
| 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? |
Read [H] “Glossary.” [Preview with Google Books] [H] “Introduction.” [Preview with Google Books] [H] Chapter 2: An Ungovernable Population. [Preview with Google Books] View Be Like Others. Directed by Tanaz Eshaghian. Color, 74 min. 2008. |
| 17 | Why and how did the British try to eliminate third-gender/trans-women in India? |
Read [H] Chapter 6: Hijra Life Histories |
| 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”? |
Read Gullace, Nicoletta F. “Sexual Violence and Family Honor: British Propaganda and International Law during the First World War.” American Historical Review 102, no. 3 (1997): 714–47. Torchin, Leshu. “Ravished Armenia: Visual Media, Humanitarian Advocacy, and the Formation of Witnessing Publics.” American Anthropologist 108, no. 1 (2006): 214–20. View Clips from “Ravished Armenia.” YouTube. |
| 19 | When and how did genocidal rape become an international crime? |
View (A documentary about ICTY’s (International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia) prosecution of wartime sexual violence) “Sexual Violence and the Triumph of Justice.” YouTube. Suggested viewing (Choman Hardi reading from her poetry book Considering the Women) “Hardi Considering the Women.” YouTube. |
| Week 11: Political Masculinity and Leadership in Historical Context | ||
| 20 | How do masculine performances prove useful to populist leaders? |
Read Bederman, Gail. “Theodore Roosevelt: Manhood, Nation, and ‘Civilization’.” Chapter 5 in Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880–1917. University of Chicago Press, 1996. ISBN: 9780226041391. Wood, Elizabeth A. “Hypermasculinity as a Scenario of Power: Vladimir Putin’s Iconic Rule, 1999–2008.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 18, no. 3 (2016): 329–50. |
| 21 | How is masculinist populism playing out today? |
Read Sofos, Spyros A. “Charting the Waters: Populism as a Gendered Phenomenon.” January 27, 2020. Open Democracy. (Articles on populism and gender.) |
| Week 12: Gender and the State in the U.S. Today | ||
| 22 | How have US leaders displayed their own machismo? |
Read Ferree, Myra Marx. “The Crisis of Masculinity for Gendered Democracies: Before, During, and After Trump.” Sociological Forum 35, no. S1 (2020): 898–917. |
| 23 | How has the US responded to COVID-19 and what are the gender, race, and class implications? |
Read three of the following articles Enloe, Cynthia. “Femininity and the Paradox of Trust Building in Patriarchies during COVID-19.” Signs. Hammonds, Evelynn M. “A Moment or a Movement? The Pandemic, Political Upheaval, and Racial Reckoning.” Signs. Altschuler, Sari, and Priscilla Wald. “COVID-19 and the Language of Racism.” Signs. Chen, Mel Y. “Feminisms in the Air.” Signs. Patton, Cindy. “White Men Spitting.” Signs. Ticktin, Miriam. “Building a Feminist Commons in the Time of COVID-19.” Signs. Optional reading Noppert, Grace A. “COVID-19 Is Hitting Black and Poor Communities the Hardest.” JSTOR Daily, April 14, 2020. Claire, Manisha. “The Latent Racism of the Better Homes in America Program.” JSTOR Daily, February 26, 2020. Allers, Kimberly Seals. “COVID-19 Restrictions on Birth & Breastfeeding: Disproportionately Harming Black and Native Women.” March 27, 2020. Women’s eNews. Garling, Dr. K. Ashley. “Shelter-in-Place: How it Impacts Sexual Violence.” March 26, 2020. Women’s eNews. |
| Week 13: Student Presentations | ||
| 24 | Student presentations | No readings or videos assigned |
| 25 | Student presentations cont’d | No readings or videos assigned |
| Week 14 | ||
| 26 | View and discuss Left on Pearl. Directed by Susan Rivo. Color and black & white, 55 min. 2017. (Trailer) | No readings or videos assigned |
