F: Gender: Theory and History (Convenor: Prof Louise Haywood)听听
The mini-seminars on 鈥楪ender: Theory and History鈥� are designed to equip you with the critical and research tools needed to develop your research on gender issues across a variety of fields, genres, and languages. They will offer an exploration into the notion and category of 鈥榞ender鈥� and its relevance across the centuries (from the Medieval times to the present) and across different contexts, traditions, subjects, and disciplines.
It will allow students to explore the various meanings, understandings and implications of gender, its uses in the construction of 鈥榠dentities鈥�, and its representation, across literature, history, art, cinema, and language. It will provide students with a critical and theoretical knowledge of gender that includes also feminist theory, queer theory, transgender/trans* theory, and critical sexuality studies.
The nature and scope of the 鈥楪ender: Theory and History鈥� mini-seminars is to offer students both the option of in-depth investigation into gender-related issues and topics, and to transcend linguistic, national, and chronological divisions to pose broader comparative questions. Students interested in the subject will be able to create a Gender pathway within the MPhil, by taking also the module 鈥楢pproaches to Gender鈥� taught during Lent term, as well as focusing on gender-related topics within other modules.
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Some preliminary readings:
Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge
Butler, J. (2004). Undoing Gender. New York and London: Routledge
De Beauvoir, S. (2010) [1949]. The Second Sex, transl. C. Borde and S. Malovany-Chevallier. New York: Alfred A. Knopf
Firestone, S. (1970). The Dialectic of Sex. NY: Bantam Books
Foucault, M. (1976). History of Sexuality: An Introduction, vol. I.听 Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Freidan, B. (1963). The Feminist Mystique. NY: WW Norton
Halberstam, J. (2005). In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York: NYU Press
Hall, D., and A. Jagose (eds) (2013). Routledge Queer Studies Reader. Abingdon: Routledge, Ch. 1, 2, 3 (by E. Kosofsky Segwick, J. Butler, J. Prosser)
Hill Collins, P. (1990.) Black Feminist Thought. London: Unwin Hyman
Hufton, O. (1996). The Prospect Before Her: A History of Women in Western Europe, Vol. 1, 1500-1800 (London: HarperCollins), Ch. 1 and 2
Mill, J. S. (1970) [1869]. The Subjection of Women, ed. Alice S. Rossi. Chicago: UCP
Laqueur, Thomas, 鈥楧estiny is Anatomy鈥�, (chap. 2), in his Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (海角社区, MA: Harvard UP, 1992), pp. 26鈥�62
Lugones, M. (2016). 鈥楾he Coloniality of Gender鈥�, in The Palgrave Handbook of Gender and Development: Critical Engagements in Feminist Theory and Practice, ed. Wendy Harcourt, Basingstoke: Palgrave, pp. 13-33
Millett, K. (1970). Sexual Politics. NY: Doubleday
Rose, S. O. (2010). What is Gender History?. 海角社区: Polity, Ch. 1
Tong, R. (2008). Feminist Thought: A More Comprehensive Introduction. Powell鈥檚 Books: Oregon.
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Session 1: 鈥淕ender, Sexuality and Other 鈥楺ueer鈥� Concepts: A Theoretical Introduction鈥� (Dr Lauren Wilcox). Week 2.
This session rehearses and reviews basic concepts of 鈥済ender鈥�, 鈥渟ex鈥� and 鈥渜ueerness鈥� and, more pointedly, sets its sights on the insistence and insufficiency of binary categories in the conceptualization, experience and performance of gender and sexuality, themselves at times bundled together and at times separated. It does so by following an intersectional approach that at once privileges and queries the signifier and concept 鈥渜ueer,鈥� with its twists, bends, turns, windings and drifts. Critical questions will be addressed throughout the session, including the consideration of a historical approach to queerness and gender; the relevance of intersectional thinking (at the crossroads of gender, sexuality, class, race); the problematic dynamics between privileging and erasing sexuality in queer studies; the theoretical 鈥渢urns鈥� within the study of gender and sexuality (antisocial turn, temporal turn, spatial turn, archival turn, ecocritical turn, etc.); the impact of HIV/AIDS in the shaping of queer theory; the promiscuous identitary possibilities of trans*; and the problematic fixation of concepts such as gender or queer in the (Anglo-centric) global academia.
Core texts to read ahead of the session:
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Butler, Judith 鈥楪ender in Translation: Beyond Monolingualism鈥�, PhiloSOPHIA, 9(1) (2019) pp. 1鈥�25.
Crenshaw, Kimberl茅. 鈥淒emarginalizing the Intersection of Race and Sex: A Black Feminist Critique of Antidiscrimination Doctrine, Feminist Theory and Antiracist Politics.鈥� University of Chicago Legal Forum 1.8 (1989): 139-167. Available at:http://chicagounbound.uchicago.edu/uclf/vol1989/iss1/8
Davis, Oliver, Tim Dean. 鈥淒oes Queer Studies Hate Sex?鈥� Hatred of Sex. Lincoln, U of Nebraska P, 2022, pp. 45-86. (Read 45-64 at least.)
De Lauretis, Teresa. 鈥淨ueer Theory: Lesbian and Gay Sexualities. An Introduction.鈥� Differences: A Journal of Feminist Cultural Studies, 3.2 (1991), pp. iii-xviii.
Eng, David, Jack Halberstam, and Jos茅 Esteban Mu帽oz. 鈥淲hat鈥檚 Queer About Queer Studies Now?鈥� Social Text, Vol. 23 (3-4), 2005, pp. 1-17.
Lugones, Mar铆a. 鈥淭he Coloniality of Gender.鈥� The Palgrave Handbook of Gender and Development: Critical Engagements in Feminist Theory and Practice. Ed. Wendy Harcourt. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016, pp. 13-33.
Puar, Jasbir K and Amit Rai. 鈥淢onster, Terrorist, Fag: The War on Terrorism and the Production of Docile Patriots.鈥� Social Text 20.3 (2002): pp. 117-148.
Stryker, Susan, 鈥楳y Words to Victor Frankenstein Above the Village of Chamounix: Performing Transgender Rage鈥�, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 1.3 (1994) pp. 237鈥�54.
Wittig, Monique.听 鈥淭he Straight Mind.鈥� Feminist Issues 1.1 (1980), pp. 103-111. AND 鈥淥ne is Not Born a Woman.鈥� Feminist Issues 1.2 (1981), pp. 47-54.
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Further readings:
Anzald煤a, Gloria, and Cherr铆e Moraga (eds.). This Bridge Called My Back. Writings by Radical Women of Color. Fourth Edition. New York: SUNY Press, 2015 [1981]. Introductory chapter.
Beauvoir, Simone de. The Second Sex (any edition, especially, first three chapters: "Biological Data", "The Psychoanalytical Point of View" and 鈥淭he Point of View of Historical Materialism")
Butler, Judith. 鈥淚mitation and Gender Insubordination.鈥� Inside/Out: Lesbian and Gay Theories. Ed. Diana Fuss. London: Routledge, 1991, pp. 13-31
Butler, Judith.听 鈥淕ender is Burning: Questions of Appropriation and Subversion.鈥澨� Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of 鈥楽ex鈥�.听 New York: Routledge, 1993, pp. 121-140.
Foucault, Michel. (1978) The History of Sexuality, Vol. 1: An Introduction. New York: Pantheon Books, 1978. [We Other Victorians and Scientia Sexualis: pp. 3-13, 53-73]
Gill-Peterson, Jules. Histories of the Transgender Child. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2018
Gill-Peterson, Jules. A Short History of Trans Misogyny. London: Verso, 2024
Halberstam, Jack. 鈥淭he Transgender Look.鈥� In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives. New York: New York UP, 2005, pp. 76-96.
Halberstam, Jack. 鈥淚ntroduction: Low Theory.鈥� The Queer Art of Failure. Durham: Duke UP, 2011, pp. 1-25.
Mu帽oz, Jos茅 Esteban. 鈥淨ueerness as Horizon. Utopian Hermeneutics in the Face of Gay Pragmatism.鈥� Cruising Utopia. The Then and There of Queer Futurity. New York and London: NY UP, 2009, pp. 19-32.
Preciado, Paul. 鈥淭he Pharmacopornographic Era.鈥� Testo Junkie. Sex, Drugs, and Biopolitics in the Pharmacopornographic Era. New York: The Feminist Press, 2013, pp. 23-54.
Prosser, Jay.听 鈥淛udith Butler: Queer Feminism, Transgender, and the Transubstantiation of Sex.鈥澨� The Transgender Studies Reader.听 Eds. Susan Stryker and Stephern Whittle. New York: Routledge, 2006, pp. 257-280.
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Session 2: Gender and Postcolonialism (Dr Sura Qadiri) Week 4.
According to Elleke Boehmer, both gender and national identity have in common the fact that they are constructed. She asserts that:
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Far from being a biological or a cultural given, a nation operates as a fiction, uniting a people into a horizontally structured conglomerate into which they imagine themselves. As with the nation, so too, for gender. Although experienced as natural, as a fundamental category of identity based on innate difference, gender as the construction of sexual orientation, too, is discursively organised relationally derived, and culturally variable. (Boehmer, 2005, p.107)
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For Boehmer, the nation is an 鈥榚ngendered鈥� space. Its construction involves a defining of gender roles and identities within the new nation state. In this seminar, we will consider the ways in gender and national identity are configured in a range of colonial and postcolonial texts. We will think about the ways in which colonial regimes sought to consolidate their hold over colonised communities through the disruption of local gender norms, and how these same norms were also reconfigured as part of the struggles for independence, creating complex tensions and multivalencies surrounding changes to gender roles and identities and their relationship to postcolonial national identity. Our focus will be literary, theoretical and artistic works from the intertwined contexts of France and Algeria, ranging from the late colonial period to the present. These will include Assia Djebar鈥檚 novel Loin de M茅dine (Far From Madina), Frantz Fanon鈥檚 鈥楢lgeria Unveils鈥� and听 Kader Attia鈥檚 photo series 鈥楾he Landing Strip.鈥� We will also look at readings of E.M. Forster鈥檚 A Passage to India, and discuss examples of postcolonial feminisms from around the world. These approaches will be an opportunity for you to consider the connections between specific gender identities and the broader collective sense of self that they are deemed to espouse in other settings and the implications of challenging or subverting such identities.
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Reading
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Elleke Boehmer, Stories of Women: Gender and Narrative in the Postcolonial Nation (Manchester, New York: Manchester University Press, 2005).
Assia Djebar, Far From Madina, translated by Dorothy S. Blair, (London: Quartet, 1994).
Frantz Fanon, 鈥楢lgeria Unveiled鈥� in A Dying Colonialism, translated by Haakon Chevalier (New York: Grove Press, 1965).
E.M. Forster, A Passage to India (London: Penguin, 1967).
Joan Scott, Sex and Secularism (Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018).
Jenny Sharpe, Allegories of Empire: The Figure of Woman in the Colonial Context (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), particularly chapter 5.
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Session 3: 鈥楪ender in Early Modern Europe: Prescriptions and Descriptions鈥� (Prof. Helena Sanson). Week 6.
In this session, we will explore early modern conceptualizations of 鈥済ender鈥� in the Early modern period, with particular attention being given to the rich production of conduct texts for and about women, as well as the so called Querelle des femmes. The focus will be above all on Italy, but students are encouraged to extend their readings to other cultural and linguistic traditions they are familiar with.
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Core reading. Everyone should read the following:
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Kelly, Joan, 1984. 鈥楨arly Feminist Theory and the Querelle des femmes 1400-1789鈥� (1st publ.l. Signs, 1982), in ed. Catharine R.听Stimpson, Women, History and Theory: The Essays of Joan Kelly. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 65-109. (querelle and feminism)
Vives, Juan Luis, 2000 [1538]. The Education of a Christian Woman: A Sixteenth-Century Manual, ed. by Charles Fantozzi. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press (original Latin, De Institutione foeminae Christianae (鈥�) libri tres).
Castiglione, Baldassare, Il libro del cortegiano (1528) (any Italian edition or English translation), Book III (only)
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Student presentation: students are invited to present on a text of their choosing after consulting the bibliography in this text (see which texts exist in modern edition for the sake of convenience):
Kelso, Ruth, 1956. Doctrine for the Lady of the Renaissance. Urbana: University of Illinois Press (also 1978).
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For further reading see:
Murphy, Jessica, 2015, Virtuous Necessity: Conduct Literature and the Making of the Virtuous Woman in Early Modern England. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
St. Clair William and Maassen Irmgard (eds), 2000. Conduct Literature for Women 1500-1640. London: Pickering & Chatto.
Bornstein, Diane, 1978 (ed.). Distaves and Dames: Renaissance Treatises for and about Women. Delmar, New York: Scholars鈥� Facsimiles and Reprints.
Bornstein, Diane, 1980 (ed.). The Feminist Controversy of the Renaissance. Delmar, New York: Scholars鈥� Facsimiles and Reprints.
Hufton, Owen, The Prospect Before Her: A History of Women in Western Europe, Vol. 1, 1500-1800 (London: HarperCollins, 1996), Chapters 1, 2.
King, Margaret, 1991. Women of the Renaissance. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press.
Laqueur, Thomas, 鈥楧estiny is Anatomy鈥�, (chap. 2), in his Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (海角社区, MA: Harvard UP, 1992), pp. 26鈥�62.
Maclean, Ian, 1980. The Renaissance Notion of Woman: A Study in the Fortunes of Scholasticism and Medieval Science in European Intellectual Life. 海角社区: 海角社区 University Press.
Sanson, Helena, 2016. 鈥榃omen and Conduct in the Italian Tradition, 1470-1900: An Overview鈥�, in Conduct Literature for and about Women in Italy, 1470-1900: Prescribing and Describing Life, ed. Helena Sanson and F. Lucioli (Paris: Classiques Garnier), pp. 9-38.
Zimmermann, Margarete,鈥�The Querelle des femmes as a cultural studies paradigm鈥�, in Time, Space, and Women's Lives in Early Modern Europe, eds Anne Jacobson Schutte, Thomas Kuehn, Silvana Seidel Menchi.
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Session 4: 鈥楽ex and the Body鈥� (Dr Charlotte Woodford), Week 8. How does what we call knowledge of the body become accredited as such? Are not the supposed 鈥榝acts鈥� of biology also the product of culture? This session enquires into knowledge of the body and its regulation within the structures of power in society, and the implications of this for individual subjectivity. The core readings investigate the historically and socially contingent nature of science-based knowledge, drawing links between contemporary theory and conceptualisations of the body around 1900.
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Student presentations connected to the MT theory essay are very welcome in this session, on any subject linked to the set readings.
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Core readings for discussion:
Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (2004), Ch. 1 and 2
Anne Fausto-Sterling, Sexing the Body: Gender Politics and the Construction of Sexuality (2000)听
Thomas Laqueur, 鈥極rgasm, Generation, and the Politics of Reproductive Biology鈥�, from The Making of the Modern Body: Sexuality and Society in the Nineteenth Century, ed. Catherine Gallagher and Thomas Laqueur (1987)
Londa Schiebinger, The Mind Has No Sex? Women in the Origins of Modern Science (1989)
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Further readings:
Ivan Crozier, 鈥楤odies in History - the Task of the Historian鈥�, in A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Modern Age (2010)
Elizabeth Grosz.听Volatile Bodies: Toward a Corporeal Feminism (1994)
Thomas Schlich, 鈥楾he Technological Fix and the Modern Body: Surgery as a Paradigmatic Case鈥�, in A Cultural History of the Human Body in the Modern Age (2010)
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Literature and autobiography around 1900
N.O. Body, Memoirs of a Man鈥檚 Maiden Years, tr. Deborah Simon (Philadelphia 2006), orig. N.O. Body, Aus eines Mannes M盲dchenjahren, first publ. 1907
See [Memoirs of a Man鈥檚 Maiden Years].听German Life and Letters,听68(3) (2015), 38-405
N. O. Body,
Memoirs of a Man鈥檚 Maiden Years, tr. Deborah Simon, Philadelphia 2006
N. O. Body,
Memoirs of a Man鈥檚 Maiden Years, tr. Deborah Simon, Philadelphia 2006
N. O. Body,
Memoirs of a Man鈥檚 Maiden Years, tr. Deborah Simon, Philadelphia 2006
Lou Andreas-Salom茅, M盲dchenreigen, in Menschenkinder, first publ. 1898 (MedienEdition Welsch 2016); in translation: Maidens' Roundelay, in The Human Family by Lou Andreas-Salom茅
See Marti M. Lybeck, 鈥楨xperiments in Female Masculinity: Sophia Goudstikker鈥檚 Masculine Mimicry in Turn-of-the-Century Munich鈥�, in Desiring Emancipation: New Women and Homosexuality in Germany 1890-1933 (2014), pp. 49-82
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