WOMEN'S AND GENDER HISTORY

The discipline belongs to the core educational activities of the Master’s Degree Programme in History from the Middle Ages to Present. Those activities prepare students to specialize in history in and outside Europe, acquiring a specific understanding of the fundamental epistemologies of a historian’s practice and of the methodology of investigation of primary and secondary sources.
Attendance and active participation in the training activity proposed by the class and individual study will enable students to: 1) acquire knowledge of the categories, theoretical issues, and main historiographical trends in women's history and gender history; 2) deepen their understanding of the theme "Love, Sexuality and Gender in Early Modern Europe" through reading and discussion of historical essays; 3) address the course topic through direct analysis of historical sources; 4) present orally and discuss a case study; 5) prepare a written text in the form of an essay, critically comparing bibliography and analyzing a source.

The attendance and the active participation at the course and the individual study will allow the students: 1) to acquire the knowledge and the understanding of the major categories, problems, historiographical trends related to women's and gender history; 2) to acquire a deeper knowledge on the monograohic theme by reading and discussing historical essays; 3) to approach this subject through the first-hand analysis and evaluation of primary sources; 4) to give an oral presentation on a case-study; to write a paper (essay) based on a critical analysis of the scientific literature and of sources related to a case-study

Goog knowledge of the Italian language.
Knowledge of the basic events of European History in the Early Modern and Modern Age, even if the student hasn’t passed yet the specific examinations.

What is intended by "women's history" and by "gender history"? When and in which contexts "women's history" and "gender history" first emerged? Which were in the last decades the main fields of women's- and gender history? How can we use gender as "a useful category of historical analysis" (Scott 1986)?
After the introductory lessons, the first part of the course will approach methodological and historiographical questions through participative seminar activities (reading, discussions, presentations).
Second part: “Love, sex and gender in Early modern Europe”. The focus will be on the following topics: the social and cultural construction of “female” and “male”; generation and procreation; “normative” and “transgressive” sexuality; male and female omosexuality; cross-dressing and role subversion.

Students not attending the course:
1. First part: 1) Joan W Scott, Genere, Politica, Storia, a cura di I. Fazio, Roma, Viella, 2013, pp. 1-130, unitamente a Gianna Pomata, La storia delle donne: una questione di confine, in Il mondo contemporaneo. Gli strumenti della ricerca 2: Questioni di metodo. Firenze, La Nuova Italia, 1983.

2) One of the following handbooks:
- Merry E. Wiesner, Le donne nell’Europa moderna, 1500-1750. Torino, Einaudi, 2017
- Gisela Bock, Le donne nella storia d'Europa, Roma-Bari, Laterza, 2001.


3) two of the following books:

• Francesca Arena, Trouble dans la maternité. Pour une histoire des folies puerpérales, XVIIIe-XXe siècles, Presses Universitaire de Provence, 2020.

• Georgia Arrivo, Seduzioni, promesse, matrimoni. Il processo per stupro nella Toscana del Settecento, Edizioni di storia e letteratura, Roma, 2006.

• Enrica Asquer (ed.), Culture della sessualità. Identità, esperienze, contesti, «Genesis. Rivista della Società Italiana delle Storiche», XI/1.2, 2012. (pp.7-229)

• Marzio Barbagli, Comprare piacere. Sessualità e amore venale dal Medioevo a oggi, Bologna, il Mulino 2020.

• Katherine Crawford, European Sexualities, 1400-1800, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.

• Nadia M. Filippini, Tiziana Plebani, Anna Scattigno (eds.), Corpi e storia. Donne e uomini dal mondo antico all’età contemporanea, Roma, Viella, 2002.


• Laura Gowing, Common Bodies: Women, Touch, and Power in Seventeenth-Century England, New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 2003.

• Umberto GRASSI e Giuseppe MARCOCCI (eds.), Le trasgressioni della carne. Il desiderio omosessuale nel mondo islamico e cristiano (secc. XII-XX), Roma: Viella, 2015.

• Umberto GRASSI, Sodoma. Persecuzioni, affetti, pratiche sociali (secoli V-XVIII), Roma, Carocci, 2019.

• Umberto Grassi, Vincenzo Lagioia, Gian Paolo Romagnani (eds.), Tribadi, sodomiti, invertite e invertiti, pederasti, femminelle, ermafroditi…. Per una storia dell’omosessualità, della bisessualità e delle trasgressioni di genere in Italia, Pisa, ETS 2017.


• Scott Hendrix and Susan Karant Nunn (eds.), Masculinity in the Reformation Era, Sixteenth Century Essays and Studies, Kirksville Missouri, 2008.

• Thomas Laqueur, L’identità sessuale dai greci a Freud, Roma-Bari, Laterza 1990.

• Luisa Passerini e Nerina Milletti (a cura di), Fuori dalla norma: storie lesbiche nell'Italia della prima metà del Novecento, Torino, Rosenberg & Sellier, 2007.

• Laura Schettini, Il gioco delle parti. Travestimenti e paure sociali tra Otto e Novecento, Le Monnier, Firenze 2011.

• Giulietta Stefani, Colonia per maschi. Italiani in Africa Orientale: una storia di genere, Verona, Ombre Corte, 2007

• Sylvie Steinberg (ed.), Une Histoire des Sexualités, Paris, PUF, 2018.

Student attending the course: written final paper and oral exam. The active participation to the class will be evaluated too.
Students who can't attend the course: written examination on the texts indicated in the section "Referral texts" of this Syllabus (1st part: see section; 2nd part: two monographs and a handbook)

After the introductory lessons, the first part of the course will approach methodological and historiographical questions through participative seminar activities (reading, discussions, presentations).

Italian

written and oral