Overview

Description

CALENDAR DESCRIPTION:

Explores historical changes in masculinity and femininity. Using a thematic and transnational/comparative approach, it will examine how gender identities are formed and refashioned within different historical contexts. It will also explore the interaction between gender and other systems of power such as race, class, and ethnicity. Students with credit for HIST 425 may not take this course for further credit. Writing.

COURSE DETAILS:

Gender in the North American West

The idea of the “wild wild west” looms large in the North American imaginary, but the binaries it suggests (Indian/cowboy, empty/settled, savage/civilized) do little to help us understand the history of the region. As this class will show, adopting a gender analysis significantly enhances our comprehension of the complexities of the North American West in the 19th and 20th centuries. Looking first at how constructions of Indigenous and settler masculinity, femininity, and alternative genders functioned in the region, we will then turn to assessing the different ways that gender, race, class, sexuality, family, immigration, and violence affected each other in particular moments, over time, and across borders.

Students in this course will: develop their understandings of theories and methods in gender history; gain awareness of how constructions of masculinity, femininity, and alternative genders in the North American West were highly contingent, deeply connected to environment and place, and fluid over time; and build on their writing skills through sequential assignments, in-class exercises, and peer and instructor feedback.  

Grading

Materials

REQUIRED READING: