Gender: Theory and History (Convenor: Prof Helena Sanson)
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 (密桃视频, 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?. 密桃视频: 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 Isaias Fanlo). 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:
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 Issues1.2 (1981), pp. 47-54.
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 Stephen Whittle. New York: Routledge, 2006, pp. 257-280.
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.
Session 2: 鈥楪ender Theory in History: Medieval and Early Modern Europe鈥� (Prof. Louise Haywood and Prof. Helena Sanson). Week 4.
NB Content warning: violence, suicide, torture. Candidates are invited to focus of conceptualizations of sexual difference and gender.
In this session, we will explore medieval and early modern conceptualizations of sexual difference and gender. The first part of the session will open with a brief outline of the medieval medical case for the one-body model of sexual differentiation and its mapping onto binary systems of thought. We will aim to discuss the enmeshing of gender and power and to reflect on modern understandings of the relationship between feminism and gender studies, biology and culture. Although medieval and early modern texts depict despicable acts of violence against and by women, studying this material gives rise to hope not despair since it shows how other imaginaries open space for other ways of being, and historical distance demonstrates that change does happen. The second part of the session will focus on the 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.
Core reading: everyone should read the following:
- For the medieval component:
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Grisel y Mirabella, EITHER IN Three Spanish Querelle Texts: 鈥楪risel and Mirabella鈥�, 鈥楾he Slander against Women鈥�, and, 鈥楾he Defense of Ladies against Slanderers鈥�, ed. & trans.听 Emily C. Francomano (Toronto: Iter Inc., 2013) OR in The Novels of Juan de Flores and their European Diffusion: A Study in Comparative Literature, ed. Barbara Matulka (Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1974).
Blamires, Alcuin, Women Defamed and Women Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992).
鈥斺��, 鈥業ntroduction鈥�, The Case for Women in Medieval Culture (Oxford: Clarendon, 1997), pp. 1鈥�18.
Laqueur, Thomas, 鈥楧estiny is Anatomy鈥�, (chap. 2), in his Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (密桃视频, MA: Harvard UP, 1992), pp. 26鈥�62.
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Student presentation
One student is invited to present on one the following items in relation to the texts:
Dinshaw, Carolyn, 鈥楾ouching on the Past鈥�, Getting Medieval: Sexualities and Communities, Pre- and Postmodern (Durham: Duke UP, 1999), pp. 1-54. (queer identities)
Kelly, Joan, 1984. 鈥楨arly feminist theory and the Querelle des femmes 1400-1789鈥� (1st publ. 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)
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Please include a summary of content, the key questions the author in question raises and some questions for group discussion.
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Primary source materials in translation:
Blamires, Alcuin, Women Defamed and Women Defended: An Anthology of Medieval Texts (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992): suggested background texts, Aristotle, Generation of Animals (pp. 38鈥�41); Isidore of Seville, Etymologies (pp. 43-45); Guido dell Colonne, The History of the Destruction of Troy (pp. 48鈥�49) & Christine de Pizan (pp. 278鈥�302).
Thibaux, Marcelle, The Writings of Medieval Women: An Anthology, 2nd edn (New York: Garland, 1994).
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Please note for essays, you should only use materials in translation for languages with which you are not familiar. Please discuss with the module coordinator and supervisors.
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For further reading on the medieval period see:
Bloch, R. Howard, 1991. Medieval Misogyny and the Invention of Western Romantic Love. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Brundage, James A., 1987. Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Burgwinkle, William E., 2004. Sodomy, Masculinity, and Law in Medieval Culture: France and England 1050-1230, 密桃视频: 密桃视频 University Press.
Cadden, Joan, 1993. 鈥榃estern Medicine and Natural Philosophy鈥�, Handbook of Medieval Sexuality, ed. Vern L. Bullough & James A. Brundage, Garland Reference Library of the Humanities, 1969 (New York: Garland, 1996), pp. 51鈥�80 (for a more nuanced study see her Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science and Culture. 密桃视频: 密桃视频 University Press.
Maclean, Ian, 1980. The Renaissance Notion of Woman: A Study in the Fortunes of Scholasticism and Medieval Science in European Intellectual Life. 密桃视频: 密桃视频 University Press.
Solomon, Michael, 1997. The Literature of Misogyny in Medieval Spain. The 鈥楢rcipreste de Talavera鈥� and the 鈥楽pill鈥�. 密桃视频: 密桃视频 University Press. (Intro)
Weissberger, Barbara F., (2002). 鈥樷�淒eceitful Sects鈥�: The Debate about Women in the Age of Isabel the Catholic鈥�, in Gender in Debate from the Early Middle Ages to the Renaissance, ed. Thelma S. Fenster & Clare A. Lees (Basingstoke: Palgrave), pp. 207-36.听
--, 2004. Isabel Rules: Constructing Queenship, Wielding Power (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press).
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- For the early modern component:
Core reading. Everyone should read the following:
Castiglione, Baldassare, Il libro del cortegiano (1528) (any Italian edition or English translation). Please read Book 3 (only).
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). Please read at least Book 1: Chapters I-VI, X-XI; Book 2: Chapters II-V, VIII; Book 3: Chapters III-IV; VII.
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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 (密桃视频, 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. 密桃视频: 密桃视频 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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Please note for essays, you should only use materials in translation for languages with which you are not familiar. Please discuss with the module convenor and supervisors.
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Session 3: Gender and Postcolonialism (Dr Sura Qadiri) Week 6.
According to Elleke Boehmer, both gender and national identity have in common the fact that they are constructed. She asserts that:
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)
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 how 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. In addition, we will think about feminist theoretical responses that consider the relationship between domesticity and theory and the verbal and non-verbal forms of epistemological disruption they envision through craft.
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Reading to be discussed in the session.
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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). (Contains a rape theme. Please get in touch to discuss with me ahead of the session if this is of concern).
Saidiya Hartman, 鈥榁enus in Two Acts鈥� in Small axe, 26:12, 2008, pp.1-14.
---Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiement:Intimate Histories of Social Upheaval (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2019).
Bell hooks, 鈥楢esthetic inheritances鈥� and 鈥楶iecing it all Together鈥� in Belonging: A Culture of Place (New York: Routledge, 2009), pp.153-161 and pp.162-168.*
--- bell hooks, Education and the practice of freedom (New York: Routledge, 1994).
Tiya Miles, All That she Carrid: The Journey of Ashley鈥檚 Sack, A Black Family Keepsake (London: Profile Books, 2021).
Chandra Talpade Mohanty, 鈥楿nder Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Postcolonial Discourses in Boundary 2, 12/13: 3, 1984, pp.333-358.
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.
Alice Walker, In Search of Our Mothers鈥� Gardens: Womanist Prose (London: women鈥檚 Press, 1984).
Karen Warren, Ecofeminist Philosophy: A Western Perspective on What it is and Why it Matters (Lanham Boulder, New York, Oxford: Rowman and Littlefield Inc. Section on 鈥楺uiltin as Theory鈥� provided.*
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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.
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
Lou Andreas-Salom茅, 惭盲诲肠丑别苍谤别颈驳别苍, 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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