Women, Gender, and Sexuality in Europe to 1800

Catalog description

History of women, gender, and sexuality in Europe from antiquity through the early modern era based on literary, theological, historical, artistic, and theoretical sources. Course will ask questions like: how did early European societies understand and use the categories female and male? Was premodern Europe tolerant of homosexuality? How did Christian practices both solidify and undermine gender norms? How did the history of gender and sexuality shape the formation of European societies, cultures, and polities, and give way to the institutions and ideologies of later European institutions and hegemonies?