Gender, War, and Revolution in the 20th Century (340-0-20)
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?
Learning Objectives
This class fulfills the Historical Studies Foundational Discipline and Global Perspective Overlay on power, justice, and equity. For the Global Perspective overlay, students will learn: 1. How and why gender identities and sexual norms changed during the upheavals of war and regime change over the course of the 20th century in Europe, the Russian subcontinent, and the United States. 2. How the toppling European imperial hegemony in World War One created three competing systems: Socialism, Fascism, and Consumer Capitalism, locked in international competitions that sparked further warfare and conquest. 3. How each of these ideological systems articulated their social ideals through new gender, sexual, racial, class, and family norms. 4. How governments enforced these ideals through legal codes, policing, and social and cultural institutions. 5. About the lives of ordinary people caught up in these turmoils: why some thrived as privileged citizens while others perished or barely survived under banishment. How did normative ideals compare with actual lives. For the Historical Studies Foundational Discipline: 1. Course materials focus on primary sources such as memoirs, contemporary novels, political speeches, pamphlets, laws, propaganda posters, films, newsreels. Students will learn to analyze these sources critically with the aid of secondary sources such as scholarly articles and book chapters. 2. Develop skills of historical analysis in understanding change over time and understand how to evaluate individual and group behavior in historical and cultural context. 3. Express the results of historical investigation in essays with guided prompts. Students will have the opportunity to debate their interpretations with each other in group discussions led by the instructor.
Evaluation Method
exams, essays, group work, attendance.
Class Notes
Concentrations: Americas, European
Class Attributes
Historical Studies Foundational Discipline
Historical Studies Distro Area
Global Perspectives on Power, Justice, and Equity