Can objects be(come) gendered? What are the motivations behind extending the use of gender constructs from animate beings to inanimate entities? How can objects be instrumentalized once they have been gendered? Do gendered materialities possess agency and, if so, how does that interact with the agency of their human counterparts?
Join us for an open class, one week in our course in Gender History, to discuss these questions and many more.
Required readings:
Katherine L. French, “Genders and Material Culture,” in The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013, 197-212.
Anne E. Lester, “Possession, Production, and Power: Reading Objects in the Material Field.” Medieval Feminist Forum: A Journal of Gender and Sexuality 56.1 (2020), 204-220.
Suggested readings:
Ivaska, Andrew M., “'Anti-Mini Militants Meet Modern Misses’: Urban Style, Gender and the Politics of ‘National Culture’ in 1960s Dar es Salaam, Tanzania,” Gender & History 14.3 (2002), 584-607.
Leora Auslander, “Deploying Material Culture to Write the History of Gender and Sexuality: The Example of Clothing and Textiles,” Clio 40 (2014), 157-178.
Sign up here to one or more of our open classes, and the readings and zoom link will be emailed to you a week in advance of the class.