HIST 232: Modern European Women’s History

Fall Semester 2004, MWF 11:10am-12pm

Acland Seminar Room

Professor Eliza Ablovatski

Office:  Seitz 5

Office Hours: M 2-4:30pm, Th 9:30am-noon, and by appointment

Email: ablovatskie@kenyon.edu

In lectures and discussion we will cover European women’s history from the 18^th century and the Enlightenment up through the late 20^th century and the questions raised by the fall of the Soviet system.  We will look at women’s participation in the work force and in revolutionary movements, their fight for political emancipation and equality, and the changing ideas of womanhood, gender and family throughout modern European history.  A major theme will be the question of if there is a western vs. an eastern European feminism and the dialogue between women across Europe.

NOTE: This class satisfies a requirement for the Women's and Gender Studies major; please contact Mary Suydam, suydam@kenyon.edu, for more information.

Assignments:

2 Portfolio Projects (described below)

Conference presentation (described below)

Midterm and Final exams

Portfolio Projects:  each student will select a theme or issue raised by the readings and then using the library’s resources, will find at least 3 scholarly articles about that theme.  Using these new articles as well as the original assignments from class, the student will write a paper (length of first 5 pages, of second 8 pages) on the topic they chose.  The entire “portfolio” will be handed in: a description of the theme with the assignments it was drawn from, copies of all of the scholarly articles, as well as the student’s own paper.

European Women’s Conference: in the final week of class we will hold a mock conference looking at issues facing European women today.  Students will work in groups and make presentations as delegates from various countries.  The conference will be divided into three general parts looking at Balkan countries and questions, post-Communism more generally and EU enlargement, as well as western European/EU issues. 

Grading:         Professionalism  (all semester)                           15%                                                     First Portfolio     (Oct.3)                                     15%                                                     Second Portfolio   (Nov. 16)                                        20%

                        Conference Presentation (final week of classes)             15%

                        Midterm           (Oct. 14)                                              15%

                        Final Exam       (Dec 16, 6:30 p.m.)                              20%

                                                TOTAL = 100%

Class Participation/Attendance: are mandatory; we are covering a wide amount of material and will be moving quickly.  In addition, students should be prepared to discuss the themes and issues raised in the readings.  Please email me if you are going to miss class or have missed a class.  Missing more than 2 classes will affect your grade.

Honor Code and Lateness Policy: All graded work must be handed in hard copy to me.  No emailed attachments will be graded.  Late work will be marked down one-third of a grade per day unless you have a valid reason and have gotten an extension from me in advance of the due-date. The midterm and final may not be postponed or rescheduled.

Please read the Kenyon College policy “Academic Honesty and Questions of Plagiarism” in the Course of Study carefully.  It is expected that all work that you turn in for this course is your own and that you will follow the general guidelines of academic honesty, as well as the norms of the historical profession for citation, when writing for this class. 

Professionalism:  Class Participation and attendance are mandatory; we are covering a wide amount of material and will be moving quickly.  In addition, students should arrive in class on time and prepared to discuss the themes and issues raised in the readings.  Students are expected to learn and follow the norms of historical scholarship, as well as the Kenyon Honor Code. They should show respect to classmates and the professor, turn in all work on time, address problems as they arise, locate the readings ahead of class or alert the library staff or professor if they have trouble finding them, and attend any out of class film screenings that we schedule.  Students should bring all assigned reading (print out a copy of online sources) with them to class to aid in discussion.

Readings:

Required texts  are available for purchase at the bookstore (the following are required unless marked otherwise):

• Renate Bridenthal, et.al., Becoming Visible: Women in European History (3^rd Edition)
• Barbara Clements, et al, Russia's Women:  Accommodation, Resistance, Transformation
• Deborah Valenze, The First Industrial Woman
• Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman
• Dezső Kosztolányi, Anna Edes
• Marion Kaplan, Between Dignity and Dispair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany
• Natalia Baranskaya, A Week Like Any Other
• Irena Vrkljan, The Silk, The Shears

Other readings will be available on-line, on reserve at Olin Library (Eres and regular reserve) and in Seitz House, or will be handed out in class.  Note that many articles are available through EJC, JSTOR, or Ebscohost, electronic databases to which Kenyon subscribes.  You can access these articles from any network computer through the LBIS website.

Library:  We will schedule an opportunity for you to meet Mary Stettner, the history department liaison in the library.  Mary’s hours at the reference desk are: Mondays -- 6pm-10pm and Thursdays -- 2pm-4pm.  You may also email her at any time for help with history resources and ask any other librarians to help you.  Mary’s email is: stettnerm@kenyon.edu.

Note: If you have a disability and therefore may need some sort of accommodation(s) in order to fully participate in this class, please let me know.  In addition, you will need to contact Erin Salva, Coordinator of Disability Services (x5145).  Ms. Salva has the authority and expertise to decide what accommodations are appropriate and necessary for you. 

Schedule of Classes:

Week   1:  The Study of Women in History/Early Modern Europe

Monday, August 29:  Introduction – What does it mean to study women’s history?  Where is Europe?  East vs. West? Brief introduction to Kenyon LBIS resources.

Wednesday, Aug. 31:

· “Introduction,” to Becoming Visible (1-13)

· Joan Wallach Scott, “Gender:  A Useful Category of Analysis,” American Historical Review 91/5 (Dec. 1986), 1053-1075, available online, [JSTOR].

· Gisela Bock, “Women’s History and Gender History: Aspects of a Debate,” Gender and History, vol.1, no. 1 (1989), pp. 7-30.  (on Eres)

Friday, September 2:

· Susan C. Karant-Nunn, "The Reformation of Women," in Becoming Visible (BV)

· Mary Wiesner, “Nuns, Wives and Mothers: Women and the Reformation in Germany,” in Sherrin Marshall, ed., Women in Reformation and Counter-Reformation Europe: Public and Private Worlds (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989), 8-28. (on Reserve)

Week 2:  Women in Pre-Industrial Society:  Social Roles, Households, and Work

Monday, Sept. 5:

· Malleus Maleficarum, “Concerning Witches Who Copulate With Devils." (online at: http://www.malleusmaleficarum.org/part_I/mm01_06a.html)

· Carolyn Matalene, “Woman as Witch,” International Journal of Women’s Studies (Nov./Dec 1978): 573-587. (on Eres)

· Valerie Kivelson, “Through the Prism of Witchcraft: Gender and Social Change in Seventeenth-Century Muscovy” in Russia’s Women: Accommodation, Resistance, Transformation

Wednesday, Sept. 7: 

· Merry E. Wiesner, “Spinning Out Capital:  Women’s Work in Pre-industrial Europe,” Becoming Visible (BV).

· Deborah Valenze, The First Industrial Woman – Chapter 2: “Economies of Survival: Laboring Women and Agricultural Change 1750-1800”

Friday, Sept. 9:

· Olwen Hufton, “Women and the Family Economy in Eighteenth-Century France, French Historical Studies, vol. 9, no. 1 (Spring l975), 1-22,  available online,  [JSTOR]

· Deborah Valenze, The First Industrial Woman – Chapter 4: “The Quarrel with Women’s Work: Spinning and the Displacement of Female Labor”

Week   3:  Enlightenment, French Revolution and the Question of Rights

Monday, Sept. 12:

· Dena Goodman, “Women and the Enlightenment,” in Becoming Visible. (BV)

· Londa Schiebinger, “Skeletons in the Closet:  The First Illustrations of the Female Skeleton in Eighteenth-Century Anatomy,” Representations 14 (Spring, 1986), 42-82, available online, [JSTOR]

Wednesday, Sept. 14:

· Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman, Chaps. 1-4, 9.  (Skim Chap. 5 for argument).

· Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Emile, Book Five, “Sophie, Or the Wife”  (available online: http://www.ilt.columbia.edu/pedagogies/rousseau/Contents2.html) – read about 15-20 pages

Friday, Sept. 16:

· Darlene Levy and Harriet Applewhite, “A Political Revolution for Women? The Case of Paris?” (BV)

· Olympe de Gouges, “Declaration of the Rights of Woman.” (in Levy, Applewhite and Johnson, Women in Revolutionary Paris, 1789-1795, Section II: document 10 (on Reserve)

FILM: Sunday, Sept. 18: “Danton” (Andrzej Wajda)

Week  4: Revolution in Politics and Society/Science?

Monday, Sept. 19:

· Darlene Gay Levy, Harriet Branson Applewhite, and Mary Durham Johnson, eds., Women in Revolutionary Paris, 1789-1795: read the general introduction, the introductions to each of the six sections, and the conclusion; then read the following documents:

o Section I: 1, 3, 4,

o Section II: 1, 2, 8

o Section III: 3

o Section IV: 1, 6, 7, 8, 21

o Section V: 2, 7, 11, 13

o Section VI: 9, 11

Wednesday, Sept. 21:

• David L. Ransel, “Infant-Care Cultures in the Russian Empire,” in Russia's Women:  Accommodation, Resistance, Transformation

· Annette Rubinstein, “Subtle Poison: The Puerperal Fever Controversy in Victorian Britain,” Historical Studies [Australia] 20/80 (1983), 420-438.

Friday, Sept. 23:  Library Introduction with Mary Stettner – come with a paper topic written down!

Week   5: Women and Work in the Industrial Age

Monday, Sept. 26: ***Bring Articles for Portfolio to Class***

· Laura L. Frader, “Doing Capitalism’s Work:  Women in the Western European Industrial Economy,” in Becoming Visible (BV).

· Deborah Valenze, The First Industrial Woman, chapter 5, “A New World of Work: Female Labor and the Factory System”

Wednesday, Sept. 28:

• Deborah Valenze, The First Industrial Woman, chapter 9, “The Other Victorian Woman: The Domestic Servant in the Industrial Age.”
• Dezső Kosztolányi, Anna Edes – first half

Friday, Sept. 30:

• Dezső Kosztolányi, Anna Edes – second half

Week   6: Gender, Class, and Race in the Women’s Movements

Monday, Oct. 3: ***1^st Portfolio Due ***

• Karen Offen, “Contextualizing the Theory and Practice of Feminism in Nineteenth-Century Europe,” Becoming Visible (BV)
• Mária M. Kovács, "The Politics of Emancipation in Hungary", in Andrea Pető and Mark Pittaway, eds., Women in History - Women's History: Central and East European Perspectives, History Department Working Paper Series 1, CEU 1994, 81-85 (on Eres)

Wednesday, Oct. 5:

• “The Women’s Rebellion,” in George Dangerfield, The Strange Death of Liberal England  (Part II: Chapter 4) (on Reserve)

Friday, Oct. 7:

· Cynthia Paces, “Rotating Spheres: Gendered Commemorative Practice At The 1903 Jan Hus Memorial Festival In Prague,” Nationalities Papers 28/3  (Sept. 2000), 523 – 539, available online through CONSORT/Ebscohost

· J. Malečková, “Nationalizing Women and Engendering the Nation: the Czech National Movement,” in Blom, Hagemann, Hall, Gendered Nations. (NY: Berg, 2000) (on Eres)

Week   7:  Imperialism, Nationalism and Women

Monday, Oct. 10:  ***NO CLASSES!   Reading Day***

Wednesday, Oct. 12: 

• Margaret Strobel, “Gender, Race, and Empire in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Africa and Asia,” in Becoming Visible.
• Antoinette M. Burton, "The White Woman's Burden," in Nupur Chaudhuri, ed., Western Women and Imperialism, pp. 137-57 (on Reserve and as e-Book).

Friday, Oct. 14: ***MIDTERM in class***

FILM: Sunday, Oct. 16: “Passage to India” (selections)

Week   8:  Feminism and Socialism

Monday, Oct. 17:

• Charles Sowerwine, “Socialism, Feminism, and the Socialist Women’s Movement from the French Revolution to World War,” in Becoming Visible

• Clara Zetkin, “Only in Conjunction With the Proletarian Woman Will Socialism Be Victorious” (1896) http://www.marx.org/archive/zetkin/1896/10/women.htm
• August Bebel, excerpts from “The Communist Kitchen,” “Revolution in Domestic Life,” and “Woman in the Future” in Woman and Socialism (1879), available at: http://www.marx.org/archive/bebel/1879/woman-socialism/index.htm
• Rosa Luxemburg, “Women’s Suffrage and the Class Struggle” http://www.marx.org/archive/luxemburg/1912/05/12.htm

Wednesday, Oct. 19:

• Richard Stites, “Women and the Revolutionary Process in Russia,” in Becoming Visible
• Alexandra Kollontai, “Communism and the Family”

http://www.marx.org/archive/kollonta/works/1920/communism-family.htm

• Alexandra Kollontai, “Prostitution and Ways of Fighting it”

http://www.marx.org/archive/kollonta/works/1921/prostitution.htm

• Alexandra Kollontai, “Sexual Relations and the Class Struggle”

http://www.marx.org/archive/kollonta/works/1921/sex-class-struggle.htm

Friday, Oct. 21: (AWAY?)

• Alexandra Kollontai, “Sisters”

http://www.marx.org/archive/kollonta/works/great/ch02.htm

• Kollontai, “The Loves of Three Generations”

http://www.marx.org/archive/kollonta/works/great/ch03.htm

FILM: Sunday, October 23, “Rosa Luxemburg” (Margarethe von Trotta)

Week   9:  War and Revolution

Monday, Oct. 24:

• Elizabeth Waters, “The Female Form in Soviet Political Iconography, 1917-32,” Russia's Women
• Wendy Goldman, “Women, Abortion, and the State, 1917-36,” Russia's Women

Wednesday, Oct. 26:

• Ruth Harris, “The ‘Child of the Barbarian’: Rape, Race and Nationalism in France during the First World War,” Past and Present 141 (Nov. 1993), 170-206, available online through [JSTOR].
• Melissa Stockdale, “‘My Death for the Motherland Is Happiness’: Women, Patriotism, and Soldiering in Russia's Great War, 1914-1917,” American Historical Review 109/1 (Feb. 2004), 78-116. Available online through Ebscohost/CONSORT.

Friday, Oct. 28:

• Maureen Healy, “Becoming Austrian: Women, the State and Citizenship in World War I,” Central European History 35/1 (2002), 1-35.  Available online through Ebscohost/CONSORT
• Ute Daniel, “The Politics of Rationing versus the Politics of Subsistence: Working Class Women in Germany, 1914-1918” in Bernstein to Brandt: A Short History Of German Social Democracy, Roger Fletcher, ed. (on Reserve)
• Karen Hagemann, “Men’s Demonstrations and Women’s Protests” Gender and History 5/1 (1993),101-19 (Reserve).

Week   10:  Fascism, Racism, Gender

Monday, Oct. 31:

• Claudia Koonz, “The Woman Questions in Authoritarian Regimes,” BV
• Spanish Civil War reading TBA

Wednesday, Nov. 2:

• Victoria DeGrazia, “The Nationalization of Women,” and “Motherhood,” in How Fascism Ruled Women (1-17, 41-76) Available as eBook through Consort.

Friday, Nov. 4:

• Marion Kaplan, Between Dignity and Dispair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany, Chapter 2: “In Private: The Daily Lives of Jewish Women and Families, 1933-1938,” Chapter 3: “Jewish and ‘Mixed’ Families,” and Chapter 5: “The November Pogrom and its Aftermath”

Sunday, November 6: FILM, “Rosenstrasse” (Margareta von Trotta)

Week   11:  Women in WWII and the Holocaust

Monday, Nov. 7:

• Readings on Film “Rosenstrasse” from H-German discussion list

(http://www.h-net.org/~german/discuss/Rosenstrasse/Rosenstrasse_index.htm)

Wednesday, Nov. 9:

• Marion Kaplan, Between Dignity and Dispair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany, Chapter 6: “War and the Worsening Situation of Jews,” and Chapter 7: “Forced Labor and Deportations.” Recommended: Chapter 8 and Conclusion.

Friday, Nov. 11: 

• Film in class, “Passenger” (Andrzej Munk) in class

Week   12:  Post-WWII Europe (State Socialism East and West?)

Monday, Nov. 14:

• Lisa Kirschenbaum, “Gender, Memory, and National Myths: Ol'ga Berggol'ts and the Siege of Leningrad.” Nationalities Papers 28/3 (Sept. 2000), available online through Consort/Ebscohost.
• Andrea Pető, “Memory and the narrative of rape in Budapest and Vienna in 1945,” in Richard Bessel and Dirk Schumann (eds.), Life after Death: Approaches to a Cultural and Social History of Europe during the 1940s and 1950s (Reserve).

Wednesday, Nov. 16: *** 2^nd PORTFOLIO DUE ***

• Film in class, “Daisies” (Vera Chytilová) plus documents about film.

Friday, Nov. 18:  ***Assign Countries for Conference***

• Barbara Einhorn, “The Great Divide? Women’s Rights in Eastern and Central Europe Since 1945,” BV
• Readings in Gender Politics and Post-Communism and Reproducing Gender (exact articles TBA, both books on Reserve).

Week  13:  THANKSGIVING VACATION (Read Baranskaya/Vrkljan)

Week   14: Post-Communist Feminism – A New Cold War?

Monday, Nov. 28:

• A Week Like Any Other or The Silk, The Shears

Wednesday, Nov. 30: Guest Speaker: Courtney Brkic

• Readings from Brkic’s Stillness and other articles (on Reserve and in Seitz)

Friday, Dec. 2: ***3 Conference Resolutions Due***

• Jane Jenson, “Friend or Foe? Women and State Welfare in Western Europe,” BV
• Jane Jenson and Rianne Mahon, “Representing Solidarity: Class, Gender and the Crisis in Social-Democratic Sweden” New Left Review 201 (Sept/Oct 1993), online: http://www.newleftreview.org/IssueI197.asp?Article=08

Week   15: Last class and European Women’s Conference 2005

Monday, Dec. 5:

• Renate Bridenthal, “Women in the New Europe,” BV
• Šiklová, “Are Women in Central and Eastern Europe Conservative?” in Nanette Funk and Magda Mueller, eds., Gender Politics and Post-Communism: Reflections from Eastern Europe and the Former Soviet Union (on Reserve)
• Eva Hauser, “Mind the Gap! Women from Post-Communist Countries: Conservatism or Progressivism?” in Women: a Cultural Review 3/3 (1992) (on Eres)

Wednesday, Dec. 7 - European Women’s Conference

• Part I:  Post-Communist countries/issues

Friday, Dec. 9 - European Women’s Conference

· Part II:  Women in the EU

Week   16:  European Women’s Conference Last Day

Monday, Dec. 12:  Part III:  the Balkans, ethnicity, war

FINAL EXAM: Friday, December 16, 6:30 p.m.