Spring 2005
History 229: Gender in Modern Europe
Annemarie Sammartino
Email: annemarie.sammartino@oberlin.edu
Office: Rice 301
Office phone: 775-6572
Office Hours: Monday 10-11am; Tuesday 2-3pm; and by appointment
Course Description
In this course, we will be
looking at the history of Europe through the lens of gender. In particular, we will be looking at
how gender roles, gender expectations and the opportunities for participation
for men and women changed over the course of the 19th and 20th
centuries. In part, we will be
using gender as a way of gaining greater insight into different forms of social
and political organization. In
part we will be using these forms of social and political organization as a way
of understanding how ideologies of gender function in diverse contexts. We will look at a wide variety of
political trends from feminism to the development of the welfare state to
liberalism, communism and fascism, as well as looking at the influence of
powerful events such as the world wars on the development of gender roles in
modern Europe.
The course format is a
combination of lecture and discussion.
Prerequisites and Requirements:
This course assumes a background in European history (either through taking AP European history or History 102). If you do not have this background, please come see me as soon as possible so that we can determine if this course is right for you.
Your grade is based on a combination of several requirements that are spelled out as follows:
10% Reading Intro
10% Class Participation
25% Review Essay #1
30% Review Essay #2
25% Final Exam
All written work must be turned in to receive credit for this class.
10% of your grade is based on your reading introduction. Within the second week of class, everyone
will have to sign-up to do a reading intro. You will do this intro in pairs of two. For a reading intro, you will sign-up
to introduce the readings for a given class session. To do this, you will send reading questions to the class by
5pm two days before the readings are due (so for a discussion on Friday, you
will send them out by Wednesday, etc.).
In class, you will introduce the readings giving a five to ten minute
account of your responses to the arguments, how you think they fit together,
etc. This should not be a summary of the reading but rather an
analysis. You will also briefly
suggest a question or two for us to begin our discussion with. Prior to doing a reading intro it is
suggested (but not required) that you meet with me.
55% of your grade (cumulatively) is based on two review essays. Each essay will be 6-8 pages in length and address the literature on a specific topic in the gender history of modern Europe. You will be given several topic choices as well as suggested readings for each topic; these topics will build upon the topics we will have already addressed in class. You must analyze two sources, at least one of which must be from the list provided This review essay is intended not to summarize the books/articles you discuss, but rather to critically analyze them. If you are unsure of the distinction between the two, you should definitely come and talk to me. In any event,, we will discuss these essays in more detail over the course of the semester.
ALL late papers will be downgraded 1/3 of a grade for
every 24-hour period they are late.
25% of your grade is based on a final exam. This will be comprised of several short ids, and two longer essays. These essays will address some of the larger narratives that we have been discussing over the course of the term.
All work for this class is governed by the honor code. You must write and sign the honor code pledge at the end of each assignment. We will talk briefly about the honor code in class, but if you have further questions, please go to: http://www.oberlin.edu/students/links-life/rules-regs.html#honor.
Please follow the following citation form: http://www.oberlin.edu/faculty/svolk/citation.htm.
Readings
The following books have been ordered at the Oberlin College Bookstore (and placed on reserve).
Renate
Bridenthal, et al., Becoming Visible: Women in European History (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1998).
Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992).
Deszos Kostalyani, Anna Edes, trans. George Szirtes (New York: New Directions, 1993).
Angus McLaren, The Trials of Masculinity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997).
Joan Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard UP, 1997).
Christa Wolf, The Quest for Christa T. (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1979).
Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas (New York: Harcourt, 1963).
Additionally many readings have been placed on ERes. Readings on ERes are marked with an *.
Finally, many readings are to be found on either JSTOR, EJC (the OhioLink Electronic Journals Collection), INGENTA or other online databases.
The best way to locate journal articles is to do an Obis
search for the title of the journal (NOT the article title). You can then usually browse to find the
specific issue you need.
Schedule of Lectures & Readings
February 7 Introduction
February 9 What
is Gender History?, pt. 1
Recommended (but NOT required):
*Gisela Bock, Womens History and
Gender History: Aspects of a Debate, Gender and History, vol.1, no. 1 (1989), pp. 7-30.
Joan Scott, Gender: A Useful
Category of Analysis, American Historical Review, Vol. 91, No. 5.
(Dec., 1986), pp. 1053-1075. Available
on JSTOR.
*John Tosh, What Should
Historians Do with Masculinity, in Gender and History in Western Europe, eds., Robert Shoemaker and Mary Vincent,
65-85.
February 11 What
is Gender History?, pt. 2
Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas
Reading
Intro #1
February 14 Catching
Up on Early Modern Womens History
February 16 French
Revolution, pt. 1
February 18 French
Revolution, pt. 2
Lynn Hunt, The Family Romance of the French Revolution,
Reading Intro #2
February 21 French
Revolution, pt. 3
*Carole Pateman, The Fraternal Social Contract, in The Fraternal
Social Contract, Stanford
UP, 1989: 33-57.
Joan Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer, Chapter 2
Darline Gay Levy & Harriet Applewhite, A Political Revoltuion for
Women? The Case of Paris, Becoming Visible (henceforth=BV), 265-294
Reading Intro #3
February 23 Separate
Spheres/Domestic Ideology
February 25 Industrialization
& Class, pt. 1
Laura Frader, Doing Capitalisms
Work: Women in the Western European Industrial Economy, BV, 295-326
February 28 Industrialization
& Class, pt. 2
*Leonore Davidoff, Class and
Gender in Victorian England: The Case of Hannah Cullwick and A. J. Munby, Worlds Between: historical perspectives on gender
and class,
Routledge, 1995: 103-150.
March 2 The
Revolutions of 1848
March 4 Nineteenth-Century
Feminism
Joan Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer, Chapter 3-5.
Karen Offen, Contextualizing the
Theory and Practice of Feminism in Nineteenth-Century Europe (1789-1914), BV,
327-356
Reading
Intro #4
March 7 Criminality
& Deviance: Prostitution
March 9 Criminality
& Deviance, pt. 2
*Patricia O'Brien, The Kleptomania Diagnosis: Bourgeois Women and Theft in Late Nineteenth Century France Journal of Social History 1983 17(1): 65-77
Angus McLaren, The Trials of Masculinity, Part 2.
Reading Intro #5
March 11 Criminality & Deviance, pt. 3
March 14 Imperialism
Margaret Strobel, Gender, Race,
and Empire in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Africa and Asia, BV, 389-416
*Lora Wildenthal, Race, Gender and Citizenship in the German Colonial Empire, Tensions of Empire
Ann Stoler, Sexual Affronts and
Racial Frontiers: European Identities and the Cultural Politics of Exclusion in
Colonial Southeast Asia, CSSH, vol. 34,
no. 3 (July 1992), 514-551. Available on JSTOR.
Reading Intro #6
March 16 Sexuality
at the Fin de sicle
March 18 Sexuality,
pt. 2
Angus McLaren, The Trials of Masculinity, Part 3.
Reading
Intro #7
March 21 World
War I and Womens Agency
March 23 World
War I & Trauma
Ruth Harris, The Child of the Barbarian: Rape, Race and Nationalism in France during the First World War, Past and Present 141 (November 1993): 170-206. Available on JSTOR.
*Elaine Schowalter, Rivers and Sassoon: The Inscription of Male Gender Anxieties, Behind the Lines: Gender in the Two World Wars, ed. Higonett, pp. 61-69.
Joanna Bourke, Effeminacy, Ethnicity and the End of Trauma: the Sufferings of Shell-shocked Men in Great Britain and Ireland, 1914-39, Journal of Contemporary History 35(2000): 57-69. Available on INGENTA.
Reading Intro #8
March 25 NO
CLASS—BUT FIRST PAPER DUE, 1:30PM
SPRING BREAK
April 4 Revolution
in Europe
Deszos Kostalyani, Anna Edes
Recommended: Richard Stites, Women
and the Revolutionary Process in Russia, BV, 417-438
Reading Intro #9
April 6 Post-War
& Revolutionary Crisis
April 8 The New Woman in Germany and France
Mary Louise Roberts, Samson &
Delilah Revisited: The Politics of Womens Fashion in 1920s France, American
Historical Review, vol. 89, no. 3 (1998),
657-684. Available on JSTOR.
Film: Pandoras Box (1928), screening:
April 7 7-9pm, location: tba
Reading
Intro #10
April 11 Post-World
War I Crisis and Male Anxieties
April 13 Fascism
& Gender
Claudia Koonz, The Woman Question in Authoritarian Regimes, BV, 463-492
April 15 DAY
OFF
April 18 Fascism
& Sexuality
Patricia Szobar, Telling Sexual Stories in the Nazi
Courts of Law: Race Defilement in Germany, 1933 to 1945 Journal
of the History of Sexuality 11 no. 1-2
(April 2002): 131-163. Available
on EJC.
Stefan Michler, Homophobic Propaganda and the Denunciation of Same-Sex Desiring Men under National Socialism, Journal of the History of Sexuality 11 no. 1-2 (April 2002): 105-130. Available on EJC.
Reading Intro #11
April 20 World
War II
April 22 World
War II
*Paula Schwartz, Redefining Resistance: Womens Activism in Wartime France, Behind the Lines: Gender in the Two World Wars, ed. Higonett, pp. 141-153.
Elizabeth Harvey, We Forgot All
About Jews and Poles: German Women and the Ethnic Struggle in Occupied
Poland, Contemporary European History
vol 10, no. 3, 447-461. Available on EJC.
Annette Timm, Sex with a Purpose: Prostitution, Venereal Disease, and Militarized Masculinity in the Third Reich, Journal of the History of Sexuality 11 no. 1-2 (April 2002):223-255. Available on EJC.
Reading Intro #12
April 25 Gender
& The Holocaust
April 27 Post-War
Crisis
April 29 The
1950s in Western Europe & Normality
*Dagmar
Herzog, Desperately Seeking Normality: Sex and Marriage in the Wake of the
War, in Richard Bessel and Dirk Schumann (eds.), Life after Death:
Approaches to a Cultural and Social History of Europe during the 1940s and
1950s (Cambridge, UK:
Cambridge University Press, 2003): 161-192.
*Pat Thane, Family Life and Normality in Postwar British Culture, in Richard Bessel and Dirk Schumann (eds.), Life after Death: Approaches to a Cultural and Social History of Europe during the 1940s and 1950s (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2003): 193-210.
Reading Intro #13
May 2 Gender
under Communism: Paradigms and Models
ESSAY #2 DUE AT THE START OF CLASS
May 4 Gender
under Communism: Experiences
Christa Wolf, The Quest for Christa T.
Reading
Intro #14
May 9 Youth
Rebellion in Western Europe
*Dagmar Herzog,
Pleasure, Sex, and Politics Belong Together: Post-Holocaust Memory and the
Sexual Revolution in West Germany, in Critical Inquiry 24/2 (Winter 1998): 393-444
Film: Quadrophenia (1979)—screening,
May 8, 2-4pm, location tba
Reading Intro #15
May 11 Decolonization
& Immigration
Film: Angst Essen Seele Auf (Ali, or Fear Eats the Soul)
(1974)—screening May 10, 7-9pm, location tba
May 13
Final
Exam Review