Readings | Gender | History | MIT OpenCourseWare

[P] = Perreau, Bruno. Queer Theory: The French Response. Stanford University Press, 2016. ISBN: 9781503600447. [Preview with Google Books]

[R] = Rose, Sonya O. What is Gender History? Polity, 2010. ISBN: 9780745646152. [Preview with Google Books]

Course readings.
SES #	TOPICS	READINGS
1	Introduction to the topic	No readings assigned
2	Introduction to Gender	[R] Chapter 1: Why Gender History? Davis, Natalie Zemon. "Women's History in Transition: The European Case." In Feminism & History. Edited by Joan Wallach Scott. Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 79–104. ISBN: 9780198751694. Scott, Joan Wallach. "Gender: A Useful Category of Analysis." In Feminism & History. Edited by Joan Wallach Scott. Oxford University Press, 1996, pp. 152–80. ISBN: 9780198751694.
3	The Ideological Work of Gender	Poovey, Mary. "The Ideological Work of Gender." Chapter 1 in Uneven Developments: The Ideological Work of Gender in Mid-Victorian England. University of Chicago Press, 1988. ISBN: 9780226675305. Rubin, Gayle. “The Traffic in Women: Notes on the ‘Political Economy’ of Sex.” Chapter 3 in The Second Wave: A Reader in Feminist Theory. Edited by Linda Nicholson. Routledge, 1997. ISBN: 9780415917612. [Preview with Google Books]
4	Sex, Gender, and the Body	[R] Chapter 2: Bodies and Sexuality in Gender History. Martin, Emily. "The Egg and the Sperm: How Science has Constructed a Romance Based on Stereotypical Male-Female Roles." Section 3.5 in Feminist Theory and the Body: A Reader. Edited by Janet Price and Margrit Shildrick. Routledge, 1999. ISBN: 9780415925662. Roberts, Dorothy. “The Dark Side of Birth Control.” Chapter 2 in Killing the Black Body: Race, Reproduction, and the Meaning of Liberty. Vintage, 1998. ISBN: 9780679758693. ———. “Race, Gender, and Genetic Technologies: A New Reproductive Dystopia?” Signs 34, no. 4 (2009): 783–804. Recommended reading Fausto-Sterling, Anne. “The Five Sexes: Why Male and Female Are Not Enough.” The Sciences 33, no. 2 (1993): 20–24. Recommended viewing Be Like Others. Directed by Tanaz Eshaghian. Color, 74 min. 2008.
5	Gender and Intersectionality Guest speaker: Professor Sally Haslanger, MIT, Linguistics and Philosophy Department	[R] Chapter 3: Gender and Other Relations of Difference. Crenshaw, Kimberle. “Intersectionality and Identity Politics: Learning from Violence Against Women of Color.” Chapter 10 in Reconstructing Political Theory: Feminist Perspectives. Edited by Mary Lyndon Shanley and Uma Narayan. Pennsylvania State University Press, 1997. ISBN: 9780271017259. Haslanger, Sally. “Gender and Race: (What) Are They? (What) Do We Want Them To Be?” Noûs 34, no. 1 (2000): 31–55. Jenkins, Katharine. “Amelioration and Inclusion: Gender Identity and the Concept of Woman.” Ethics 126, no. 2 (2016): 394–421. Young, Iris. “Five Faces of Oppression.” In Theorizing Feminisms: A Reader. Edited by Elizabeth Hackett and Sally Haslanger. Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN: 9780195150094.
6	Gender and the State	Connell, R.W. “The State, Gender, and Sexual Politics: Theory and Appraisal.” Theory and Society 19, no. 5 (1990): 507–44. Fraser, Nancy. “Rethinking the Public Sphere: A Contribution to the Critique of Actually Existing Democracy.” Chapter 5 in Habermas and the Public Sphere. Edited by Craig Calhoun. MIT Press, 1993. ISBN: 9780262531146. [Preview with Google Books] Mansbridge, Jane, and Shauna L. Shames. "Toward a Theory of Backlash: Dynamic Resistance and the Central Role of Power." Politics & Gender 4, no. 4 (2008): 623–34. Recommended Young, Iris Marion. “Impartiality and the Civic Public: Some Implications of Feminist Critiques of Moral and Political Theory.” Chapter 3 in Feminism as Critique: Essays on the Politics of Gender in Late-Capitalist Societies. Edited and introduced by Seyla Benhabib and Drucilla Cornell. University of Minnesota Press, 1987. ISBN: 9780816616367.
7	“The Woman Question” Guest speaker: Karen Offen, Ph.D., Stanford University, The Clayman Institute for Gender Research.	Offen, Karen. “Before Beauvoir, Before Butler: ‘Genre’ and ‘Gender’ in France and the Anglo-American World.” Chapter 1 in “On ne naît pas femme: on le devient…”: The Life of a Sentence. Edited by Bonnie Mann and Martina Ferrari. Oxford University Press, 2017. ISBN: 9780190608811. [Preview with Google Books] ———. “Depopulation, Nationalism, and Feminism in Fin-de-Siècle France.” American Historical Review 89, no. 3 (1984): 648–76. ———. “How the International Women’s Organizations and their Allied Affiliates ‘Entered’ the War, 1914-1915.” In Debating the Woman Question in the French Third Republic, 1870-1920. Cambridge University Press, 2018. ISBN: 9781107188044. Yan, Chen, and Karen Offen. “Women’s History at the Cutting Edge: A Joint Paper in Two Voices.” Women’s History Review, December 3, 2016.
8	Men and Masculinity Guest speaker: Professor Betul Eksi, Northeastern University Humanities Center	[R] Chapter 4: Men and Masculinity. Eksi, Betul. “The Myth of the Tough Men’s Burden: Reproducing a Hegemonic Masculinity at the Turkish National Police.” NORMA: International Journal for Masculinity Studies 12, no. 1 (2017): 5–22. Wood, Elizabeth A. “Hypermasculinity as a Scenario of Power: Vladimir Putin’s Iconic Rule, 1999-2008.” International Feminist Journal of Politics 18, no. 3 (2016): 329–50. Recommended Janiewski, Dolores E. “Gendered Colonialism: the ‘Woman Question’ in a Settler Society.” Chapter 3 in Nation, Empire, Colony: Historicizing Gender and Race. Edited by Ruth Roach Pierson and Nupur Chaudhuri. Indiana University Press, 1998. ISBN: 9780253211910. [Preview with Google Books]
9	Gender and War Guest speaker: Professor Christopher Capozzola, MIT, History Department	Capozzola, Christopher. “A Rough Draft: Selective Service in the Women’s History Classroom.” Journal of Women’s History 17, no. 4 (2005): 148–53. Cohn, Carol. “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals.” In Feminist Theory in Practice and Process. Edited by Micheline R. Malson, Jean F. O’Barr, Sarah Westphal-Wihl, et al. University of Chicago Press, 1991. ISBN: 9780226502946. Recommended viewing My Home: Your War. Directed by Kylie Grey. Color, 52 min. 2007.
10	Gender and Genocide	“Background Information on Sexual Violence used as a Tool of War.” United Nations. Ben-Sefer, Ellen. “Forced Sterilization and Abortion as Sexual Abuse.” Chapter 10 in Sexual Violence against Jewish Women during the Holocaust. Edited by Sonja M. Hedgepeth and Rochelle G. Saidel. Brandeis, 2010. ISBN: 9781584659051. Ekmekcioglu, Lerna. "A Climate for Abduction, a Climate for Redemption: The Politics of Inclusion during and after the Armenian Genocide." Comparative Studies in Society and History 55, no. 3 (2013): 522–53. MacKinnon, Catharine A. "Rape, Genocide, and Women's Human Rights." Harvard Women's Law Journal 17 (1994): 5-16. Viewing International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). “Sexual Violence and the Triumph of Justice.” December 7, 2012. YouTube. Women, War & Peace, Ep. 1: I Came To Testify. Directed by Gini Reticker. Color, 52 min. 2011.
11	Gender and the Welfare State	Folbre, Nancy. “The Milk of Human Kindness.” Chapter 1 in The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values. New Press, 2002. ISBN: 9781565847477. ———. “The Care Penalty.” Chapter 2 in The Invisible Heart: Economics and Family Values. New Press, 2002. ISBN: 9781565847477. Fraser, Nancy, and Linda Gordon. "A Genealogy of Dependency: Tracing a Keyword of the U.S. Welfare State." Signs, 19, no. 2 (1994): 309–36. Nelson, Barbara J. “The Origins of the Two-Channel Welfare State: Workmen’s Compensation and Mothers’ Aid.” Chapter 5 in Women, the State, and Welfare. Edited by Linda Gordon. University of Wisconsin Press, 1990. ISBN: 9780299126643. [Preview with Google Books] Recommended Crittenden, Ann. “The Welfare State Versus a Caring State.” Chapter 10 in The Price of Motherhood: Why the Most Important Job in the World is Still the Least Valued. Picador, 2010. ISBN: 9780312655402. Fraser, Nancy. "Women, Welfare, and the Politics of Need Interpretation." Chapter 7 in Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory. Polity Press, 1990. ISBN: 9780745603919. ———. "Struggle over Needs: Outline of a Socialist-Feminist Critical Theory of Late Capitalist Political Culture." Chapter 8 in Unruly Practices: Power, Discourse and Gender in Contemporary Social Theory. Polity Press, 1990. ISBN: 9780745603919. Hero, Rodney E., and Robert R. Preuhs. “Multiculturalism and Welfare Policies in the USA: A State-Level Comparative Analysis.” Chapter 4 in Multiculturalism and the Welfare State: Recognition and Redistribution in Contemporary Democracies. Edited by Keith Banting and Will Kymlicka. Oxford University Press, 2007. ISBN: 9780199289189. Kessler-Harris, Alice. In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th-Century America. Oxford University Press, 2003. ISBN: 9780195158021. [Preview with Google Books]
12	The State and Gender Policies	Ekmekcioglu, Lerna. “Afterlife of Armenians in Post-Genocide Turkey: An Introduction.” In Recovering Armenia: The Limits of Belonging in Post-Genocide Turkey. Stanford University Press, 2016. ISBN: 9780804797061. ———. “Can Feminists Survive a Nation?” Chapter 2 in Recovering Armenia: The Limits of Belonging in Post-Genocide Turkey. Stanford University Press, 2016. ISBN: 9780804797061. Wood, Elizabeth A. “Identity and Organization: Creating the Women’s Sections of the Communist Party.” Chapter 3 in The Baba and the Comrade: Gender and Politics in Revolutionary Russia. Indiana University Press, 2000. ISBN: 9780253214300. [Preview with Google Books]
13	Student Presentations	No readings assigned
14	Queer Theory Guest speaker: Professor Bruno Perreau, MIT, Global Studies and Languages Department	[P] Chapter 1: Who’s Afraid of “Gender Theory”? [P] Chapter 3: Transatlantic Homecomings. [P] Chapter 4: The Specter of Queer Politics.

Miscellaneous Extra Readings

Beckwith, Karen. “A Common Language of Gender?” Politics & Gender 1, no. 1 (2005): 128–37.

Burns, Nancy. “Finding Gender.” Politics & Gender 1, no. 1 (2005): 137–41.

Hawkesworth, Mary. “Engendering Political Science: An Immodest Proposal.” Politics & Gender 1, no. 1 (2005): 141–56.

Htun, Mala. “What It Means to Study Gender and the State.” Politics & Gender 1, no. 1 (2005): 157–66.

Adams, Julia. “Defending Modernity? High Politics, Feminist Anti-Modernism and the Place of Gender.” Politics & Gender 1, no. 1 (2005): 166–82.

The above essays grew out of an organized roundtable at the 1997 Annual Meetings of the American Political Science Association in Washington, DC, titled “The Concept of Gender: Research Implications for Political Science.”

Davins, Anna. “Imperialism and Motherhood.” History Workshop 5 (1978): 9–65.

Zajicek, Anna M., and Toni M. Calasanti. “Patriarchal Struggles and State Practices: A Feminist, Political-Economic View.” Gender & Society 12, no. 5 (1998): 505–27.