Annotation
The course introduces students to gender history. We will explore the analytical conceptual apparatus of gender studies, look at various definitions of gender and employ gender as a socio-cultural organizing principle, a category of difference and an axis of power.
We will discuss the debate between constructivist and essentialist approaches to gender history and explore the so called turn to intersectionality. We will therefore look at how the category of gender intersects with other categories of social structure.
We will pay attention to the broader developments of gender history and study such themes as the pre-modern domestic violence, the "world upside down" theme, advice literature for household heads, manuals for midwives, gendered visual and textual representations, early modern forms of masculinity etc. There will be special focus on the historical material and examples from Central and East-Central European contexts.
We will also explore how the gender sensitive perspective is utilized in various subfields of history, such as textual history, labour history, material culture history etc. The main emphasis will be on reading and discussing texts.