The Economic History of Work and the Family

3-0-9 units · Graduate

Explores the changing map of the public and the private in pre-industrial and modern societies and examines how that map affected men's and women's production and consumption of goods and leisure. The reproductive strategies of women, either in conjunction with or in opposition to their families, is another major theme. Subject asks how an ideal of the "domestic" arose in the early modern west, and to what extent did it limit the economic position of women; and how has that idea been challenged, and with what success in the post-industrial period. Focuses on western Europe since the Middle Ages and on the United States, but also examines how these issues have played themselves out in non-Western cultures. Graduate students are expected to pursue the subject in greater depth through reading and individual research.