HIST3420 Gender and History

Semester 2 (2025-2026)

Lecture TimeWednesday, 10:30-12:15

VenueLai Chan Pui Ngong Lecture Theatre (LPN LT)

LanguageEnglish

Lecturer Noah SHUSTERMAN (39431765 / ncshust@cuhk.edu.hk)

Teaching Assistant JONG Woan Shieng (1155248762@link.cuhk.edu.hk)

Course Description

As the course title should make clear, this course will focus on the history of gender, and on gender history; what the title does not make clear, but what potential students should know, is that unlike in past semesters when other professors have taught History 3420, this semester’s version of the course will deal only with Western history. Its focus will be on the early modern and modern eras. Material will be covered in chronological order.

Each week will focus on one individual (most weeks, though not all, will focus on one woman). The choice of which twelve people to focus on is never perfect, but most of the people chosen were somehow representative of gender relations during their time.

Most weeks will include one primary source by or about that individual, along with one secondary source about gender relations during the period in which that person lived.

Syllabus

Week	Topic	Person	Primary Source	Secondary Source
1	Intro	Eve	Genesis 2, 3	(none)
2	Gender in Medieval Europe	Héloïse	Letters of Héloïse and Abelard	Elliott, Dyan, ‘Gender and The Christian Traditions’, in Judith Bennett, and Ruth Karras (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe.
3	Which Witch?	Jean Bodin	On the Demon-Mania of Witches, selections	Rowlands, Alison, ‘Witchcraft and Gender in Early Modern Europe’, in Brian P. Levack (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe and Colonial America.
4	The Enlightenement	Mary Wollstonecraft	A Vindication of the Rights of Women, selections	Kaplan, Cora. “Mary Wollstonecraft’s Reception and Legacies.” Chapter. In The Cambridge Companion to Mary Wollstonecraft, edited by Claudia L. Johnson.
5	Slavery	Harriet Jacobs	Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girls, selections	Berry, Daina Ramey, and Nakia D. Parker, ‘Women and Slavery in the Nineteenth Century’, in Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor, and Lisa G. Materson (eds), The Oxford Handbook of American Women’s and Gender History.
6	First Wave Feminism I	Elizabeth Cady Stanton	Address by Elizabeth Cady Stanton on Woman’s Rights September 1848	DuBois, Ellen Carol, ‘Women’s Rights, Suffrage, and Citizenship, 1789–1920’, in Ellen Hartigan-O’Connor, and Lisa G. Materson (eds), The Oxford Handbook of American Women’s and Gender History.
7	First Wave Feminism II	Charlotte Perkins Gilman	The Yellow Wallpaper	Caroll Smith-Rosenberg, “The Hysterical Woman,” Social Research 39, no. 4 (1972): 652–78.
8	Psychoanalysis	Dora (Ida Bauer)	Dora (selections)	Santos, Beatriz. “Sexuality and Knowledge in Dora’s Case.” Dora, Hysteria and Gender: Reconsidering Freud’s Case Study, edited by Daniela Finzi and Herman Westerink.
9	Hollywood	Marilyn Monroe	Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (movie)	Steinem, Marilyn: Norma Jean (selections).
10	Second Wave Feminism	Gloria Steinem	A Bunny’s Tale	Evans, S.M. (2018), ‘Generations Later, Retelling the Story’, in Maxwell, A., Shields, T. (eds), The Legacy of Second-Wave Feminism in American Politics.
11	The Civil Rights Movement	Angela Davis	Racism, Birth Control, and Reproductive Rights	Collins, Patricia Hill. “Why Collective Identities Matter.” From Black Power to Hip Hop: Racism, Nationalism, and Feminism, Temple University Press, 2006.
12	The Gay Rights Movement	Harvey Milk	“Interview with Harvey Milk”	Shilts, The Mayor of Castro Street, selections.
13	More than enough reason to worry	Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez	AOC on January 6 (videos)	(none)

Assessment & Assignments

Course requirements will include several short quizzes and some form of final project whose details are yet to be determined.

Honesty in Academic Work

Attention is drawn to University policy and regulations on honesty in academic work, and to the disciplinary guidelines and procedures applicable to breaches of such policy and regulations. Details may be found at http://www.cuhk.edu.hk/policy/academichonesty/.

With each assignment, students will be required to submit a signed declaration that they are aware of these policies, regulations, guidelines and procedures.

In the case of group projects, all members of the group should be asked to sign the declaration, each of whom is responsible and liable to disciplinary actions, irrespective of whether he/she has signed the declaration and whether he/she has contributed, directly or indirectly, to the problematic contents.
For assignments in the form of a computer-generated document that is principally text-based and submitted via VeriGuide, the statement, in the form of a receipt, will be issued by the system upon students’ uploading of the soft copy of the assignment.

Assignments without the properly signed declaration will not be graded by teachers.

Only the final version of the assignment should be submitted via VeriGuide.

The submission of a piece of work, or a part of a piece of work, for more than one purpose (e.g. to satisfy the requirements in two different courses) without declaration to this effect shall be regarded as having committed undeclared multiple submissions. It is common and acceptable to reuse a turn of phrase or a sentence or two from one’s own work; but wholesale reuse is problematic. In any case, agreement from the course teacher(s) concerned should be obtained prior to the submission of the piece of work.