Poststructuralism and the Concept of Gender
Core Readings
, Preface to the 1990 edition, Preface to the 1999 edition, and Chapter 1: Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire
, Introduction
Further Readings
Antoinette Burton, Gender History: A Very Short Introduction (2024)
Kimberle Crenshaw, 'Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence against Women of Color', Stanford Law Review (1991)
Reginal Kunzel, 'The Power of Queer History,' American Historical Review (2018)
Downs, L. L., 鈥楩rom Women鈥檚 History to Gender History鈥�, in S. Berger, H. Feldner and K. Passmore (eds), Writing History: Theory and Practice (2003), pp. 261-82.
bell hooks, Ain鈥檛 I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1982).
Cherr铆e Moraga and Gloria Anzald煤a, This bridge called my back: writings by radical women of color (1981 [2021]
Seminar / Essay Questions
1. Is gender a useful category of historical analysis?
2. What is the relationship between gender history and poststructuralism?
3. What is the relationship between gender history and feminism?
3. To what extent have queer and intersectional approaches changed how historians think about 鈥渨omen鈥� and 鈥済ender鈥�?
Gobbet Questions
1. "We need a refusal of the fixed and permanent quality of the binary opposition, a genuine historicization and deconstruction of the terms of sexual difference." (Joan Scott, 'Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis', 1986, p. 1065)
2. "There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very "expressions" that are said to be its results." (Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, p. 34).