Gender, Sexuality, and History (321-0-20)
Topic
Gender, War, and Revolution in the 20th Century
Instructors
Tessie P Liu
467/491-3150
Harris Hall Room 327
Meeting Info
Willard Hall B72: Mon, Wed, Fri 11:00AM - 11:50AM
Overview of class
Catastrophic events in the twentieth century (two world wars, the Russian Revolution, world economic depression, the Nazi counter-revolution and Holocaust, and threat of nuclear war) set into clear relief key terms we hear bantered in the news today. What does fascism mean? What is socialism? Is capitalism inherently democratic? Through the lens of gender and sexuality studies, these regimes take on an extraordinary clarity, differentiating along distinct family and gender ideals, sexual freedom, reproductive rights, and personal expressions. Most importantly, these rival regimes developed dynamically in relation to each other and as responses to the crisis of total war. During World War One, military strategy and technology blurred the boundaries between war zones and home fronts. Not only did civilian populations become military targets, but the strains of war also exposed them to food shortages, fuel rationing, forced evacuations, and violent death. At the same time, disillusioned soldiers and veterans saw their war experiences through the threat of gender inversions. During the war, women had been mobilized to do men=s work. In the 1920s and >30s, the "new woman" of the century B building on the beginnings of legal equality and the vote B enjoyed greater economic, political, intellectual, and sexual freedoms than their nineteenth century grandmothers and great-grandmothers. If conventional warfare was defined by (and reinforced) traditional notions of heterosexuality, did the disruption of those norms mean emancipation for women? Did wars invite utopian hopes for alternate gender and sexual alignments and identities? Through novels, memoirs, primary documents, films, and propaganda art, we study the individual and collective biographies of people who struggled and thrived through these changes. Despite the much-touted return to happy domesticity after the half century of total war and revolutions, could the genie of sexual malcontent be ever fully re-contained?
Class Attributes
Historical Studies Foundational Discipline
Historical Studies Distro Area
Global Perspectives on Power, Justice, and Equity