Second Year Module
Module Leader: Dr Louise Carter
Rationale and Content:
The past thirty years has witnessed the rapid advancement of several new approaches to history. As our own society evolves we increasingly want to ask new questions of the past. We want to understand and interpret the past in fresh and innovative ways that shed light on how we arrived at the society we know today. Gender history has been at the forefront of these new approaches and has provided us with a wealth of new insights into our past. This course offers students the opportunity to explore this new scholarship and to study the role of gender in the lives of British men and women over the past five hundred years. Questions to be considered will include: Why were women seen as the more lusty sex in the early modern period? Why was the concept of honour so central to early modern masculinity? When did the idea of men and women as separate sexes emerge? Does the eighteenth century deserve its reputation as 'the century of sex'? Why was the breadwinner ideal so important to working class men? How did women engage in politics prior to the suffrage movement? Why was male adultery not seen as grounds for divorce until 1923? In addition to considering the position of men and women in relation to each other, students will also be encouraged to consider the variety of experiences within the categories of male and female, and the relationship between gender and other markers of identity such as class, race, age and sexuality.
The module will take a chronological path from the early modern period through to contemporary society, examining the evolving nature of ideas about gender and the impact that this has had on men and women's involvement in family life, sex, work, politics, culture, crime and much more. It will question whether there is any difference between the concepts of 'sex' and 'gender' and will query how historians might use such categories as tools of historical analysis. The course will consider the degree of continuity or change in our understandings of masculinity or femininity across the past five-hundred years, how gender constructions have shaped men and women's lives and what this might tell us about who we are today.
Learning and Teaching Strategies:
This module will be delivered through weekly lectures and seminars plus tutorial support. Where appropriate supporting resources will also be made available online. Seminar sessions will be designed to encourage student participation and will support students in strengthening their skills of presentation, discussion,argument and debate,and in evaluating,interpreting and using secondary and primary sources.
Assessment:
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Module
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Mode
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Weighting %
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Length
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Submission Date
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Gender since 1500
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Essay
Essay
Individual oral presentation (with handouts)
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45%
45%
10%
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2,500 words
2500 words
10 minutes and handouts of not less than 2 sides of A4
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Week 6
Week 12
As scheduled
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Recommended introductory reading:
R. Shoemaker, Gender in English Society 1650-1850: The Emergence of Separate Spheres?, (1998).
Susan Kingsley Kent, Gender and Power in Britain 1640-1990, (1999).
Further Reading:
Early Modern 1500-1700
S.D. Amussen, An Ordered Society: Gender and Class in Early Modern England, (1988).
A. Fletcher, Gender, Sex and Subordination in England 1500-1800, (1995).
E.A. Foyster, Manhood in Early Modern England, (1999).
Alexandra Shepard, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England, (2003).
Bernard Capp, When Gossips Meet: Women, Family and Neighbourhood in Early Modern England, (2003).
S. Mendelson and P. Crawford, Women in Early Modern England, 1550-1720 (1998).
David Cressy, Birth, Marriage and Death: Ritual, Religion and the Life-Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England, (1999).
Modern 1700-1900
Hannah Barker and Elaine Chalus, (eds.), Women's History: Britain, 1700-1850, (2005).
June Purvis, Women's History: Britain, 1850-1945, (1996).
Philip Carter, Men and the Emergence of Polite Society in Britain 1660-1800, (2000).
Kathryn Gleadle, British Women in the Nineteenth-Century, (2001).
Hannah Barker, and Elaine Chalus, (eds.), Gender in Eighteenth Century England, (1997).
T. Hitchcock and M. Cohen, English Masculinities 1660-1800, (1999).
L. Davidoff and C. Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1750-1850 (1987).
Amanda Vickery, The Gentleman's Daughter, (1998).
John Tosh, A Man's Place: Masculinity and the Middle Class Home in Victorian England, (1999).
Twentieth Century and Contemporary
Sue Bruley, Women in Britain since 1900, (1999)
Jane Lewis, Women in Britain since 1945, (1992)
Ina Zweiniger-Bargielowska (ed.), Women in Twentieth-Century Britain: Social, Cultural and Political Change, (2001).
M. Collins, Modern Love: An Intimate History of Men and Women in Twentieth Century Britain, (2003).
Lesley Hall, Hidden Anxieties: Male Sexuality 1900-1950, (1991).
Nickie Charles, Gender in Modern Britain, (2002).