Chapter 7 gender (original) (raw)
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The Crisis of Gender and Sexuality
New Woman Fiction, 2000
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Sex and "Unsex": Histories of Gender Trouble in Eighteenth-Century North America
This article argues that residents of late eighteenth-century North America had access to a wide vocabulary for describing and experiencing variation in sexual behavior and self-presentation. Building on work in eighteenth-century science studies, this article reminds us that gender, a term that was used during the eighteenth century to describe groups of either sex, was increasingly understood as a way of characterizing men and women along specific behavioral or taxonomic lines. The article makes three claims: first, that the enormous body of scholarship on the relationality and contingency of eighteenth-century gender has not yet coalesced into an overarching narrative within eighteenth-century studies that reflects this understanding of the instability of gender during this period; second, that to center a historical narrative of the instability of eighteenth-century gender in our scholarship and teaching, we must center studies of gender that are theorized intersectionally (the history of gender in Caribbean colonies, rather than metropolitan spaces; the history of gender in working-class communities, rather than ruling-class communities; and so on) because this scholarship takes the relationality of gender as fundamental; and finally, that theorizing transhistorical ''similarity'' (as distinct from continuity) bears important potential as a framework for imagining a historically rigorous relationship between the politics of gender in the eighteenth century and the politics of gender today.
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How has the study of the built environment changed the historiography of gender? This paper analyzes the shifts in the historiography of women and gender in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century American history. It examines the evolution from a metaphorical concept of spheres to a more complex understanding of the interactions between space and gender. In the 1960s, feminist historians introduced the concept of ‘separate spheres’ as a way to understand the history of women in the nineteenth century. When historians, in the 1970s and 1980s, began to study actual spaces it became clear that the relationship of gender and space was more complex than the dichotomies of public and private, male and female, urban and suburban, which reinforced the idea of separate spheres. The study of actual spaces demonstrates that the boundaries of everyday life were more porous than those idealized by separate spheres and spaces. Further, scholars in the 1990s were able to show how the design,...
Now more than ever, we need working theories of gender and greater understandings about gender identities in our world today. This is evident from media coverage on a variety of topics associated with interpreting gendered identities. As such, intellectuals, especially those who specialize in gender studies, have, in my view, an obligation to convey their knowledge about gender and its social constructions to the public at large. This is obvious for various reasons. Today, for example, there are ongoing public discussions about the LGBT (Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender) community concerning such issues as Gay marriage rights and transgendered individuals' use of public restrooms. Moreover, there are other equality issues in the public sphere about women's rights, especially those associated with reproductive rights-women's ownership over their bodies and reproduction-and equal pay-fair income for both women and men.
Intro to Women and Gender Studies, Hunter College Spring 2015
This course is designed to provide an introductory overview of the histories, debates and political stakes in the study of gender and sexuality. We will examine sex and gender as modes of social organization in which sexed, gendered, and desiring individuals and groups are placed at the intersections of power, privilege, work, reproduction, and the creation of "self" through sexual identity. We will always keep in mind the effects of race, gender, class, economics, public policy, and the political climate on expressions and interpretations of gender and sexuality. Students will be expected to critically and respectfully engage with a variety of materials on human sexualities and develop a working understanding of the modes of study of gender sexuality in order to push back against commonly held, damaging notions on the "nature" of gender and sexuality.
Gender, Sexuality, and Political Culture
"Looking at the revolutionary period through the lens of gender and sexuality has not only deepened our understanding of the construction of democracy, but also changed how we define its most basic figure: the individual. This chapter touches upon two paradigms that are equally valid for the history of masculinity: sexualist paradigm and patriarchal paradigm. Bringing light to bear on them allows us to understand not only why the French Revolution had such an asymmetrical effect on the rights of men and of women, but also how historiography has dealt with this inequality. (...)"
Revue d'études américaines. American Studies Journal, 2022
“Blinded by the Sunbonnet: The Long Shadow of the Pioneer Myth on American Womanhood.” The presentation explored white womanhood in the United States in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and its impact on white feminists and activists. Paula Read presented the sunbonnet myth, the ideal pioneer woman on the frontier: a cheerful, civilized and civilizing woman, also known as the Madonna of the Prairies. Read insisted on the fact that in the United States the myth was created retroactively and passed on though cultural contents such as stories, novels or TV series, for example the famous Little House on the Prairie, that shaped childhood memories across the territory. She then underlined the necessity of de-centering the history of white women pioneers and of expanding the vantage points, something that still needs to be done.