Women and the History of Sexuality

This thematic seminar will prepare PhD students for research and teaching in the fields of women's history and the history of sexuality. The class is shaped by three lines of inquiry: first, we will position the category "woman" as a question, asking, for example, how ideas about race and class have shaped that category across time and place. Second, we will follow select lines of historical inquiry that begin with "woman" as well as "sex" "sexuality" and "gender" (topics include histories of the family, reproduction, violence, state and governance, aesthetics, feminism). Finally, we will trace the intertwined historiographic and institutional co-evolutions of the fields of women's history, the history of sexuality, and gay and lesbian history. While this class is concerned primarily with history, students will gain some limited exposure to key texts in feminist theory.