HIST/WMST 725 (Graduate seminar)

Gender History and the History of Masculinity in Comparative Perspective 

Karen Hagemann

Writing on the history of women and gender has undergone remarkable expansion and change since it began in the late 1960s as a feminist project. Not only have the questions become more varied and complex, there has also been an increasing emphasis on writing the history of women as part of a broader history of gender. Women’s history still continues to flourish alongside gender history but the focus of research has increasingly shifted from women to gender. This shift of emphasis acknowledges the assertion that gender is not only a constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes, but also a primary way of signifying relationships of power. Moreover, gender is of crucial importance for the creation of meaning in social and political life. Far from referring only to men and women, gender constructions are used to give meaning to many other fields of the economy, society, and politics, and even everyday life. And here, too, they constitute relations of asymmetry and hierarchy. This understanding of gender has made it possible to make men and masculinity objects of historical research too.

In the first part of the course we will prepare the workshop "What is the Future of Feminist/Gender History?“, which will take place on Friday and Saturday, 8 - 9 February 2008 at the UNC Institute for the Arts & Humanities. The aim of the workshop is after more than thirty years of research a critical stocktaking of the theoretical and methodological developments in the field of feminist history and women's and gender history. We would like to discuss the following three questions

1. What are the implications of using gender and other categories of differences for historical research today and in the future?
2. Has the integration of gender as a category of analysis caused a de-radicalization of the feminist agenda in women’s and gender history?
3. Where is the field going, what are the key questions of the future?

Well known feminist/gender historians like Joan W. Scott (Institute for Advanced Study), Alice Kessler-Harris (Columbia University), Sarah Deutsch (Duke University), Marcus Collins (Emory University), Mrinalini Sinha (Penn State University) will respond to these questions in their presentations. For the preparation we will read and discuss their recent publications.

The second part of the course will introduce in the history of masculinity, one of the most recent approaches in gender history, in a comparative perspective. We will read monographs and anthologies, which influenced the development of the field. The reading will be structured along important categories of analysis for the history of masculinity. We will ask:

1. How is masculinity constructed in different societies, historical periods and social/cultural contexts?
2. How did categories of difference like class, race, ethnicity and sexuality form different concepts of masculinity?
3. In which ways hierarchies and asymmetries between different groups of men were constructed and maintained?
4. How did men learn to become men and act as  ‘men’ in their everyday live? What formed their self-identity and their experience in different historical contexts?

Course Format

This course is intended to acquaint students with some of the major theoretical and methodological approaches to the history of gender and masculinity. We will seek both to understand some of the theories that have been particularly useful, and we will explore how they have been and can be put to practical use in historical research and writing. The heart of the seminar is the discussion in class. The success of this discussion depends on the preparedness of all students. Everyone should have read the week’s assigned readings before class. The sessions will center on their discussion. The course will be a collaborative endeavor in which we investigate theories and methodologies in the field of women’s and gender history because we hope to enhance our own work.