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HIST3600 GLOBAL WOMEN’S HISTORY 2019 WEEKLY GUIDE

Date Topic Presented

By

Module 1: Early European

Women's History
1 27 Feb The im/possibility of women's Nancy This course has lectorials each
history Cushing Wednesday from 9 – 11. See
weekly guide for set readings and
focus questions

2 6 Women in the ancient world Hugh

March Lindsay

3 13 Women and work in medieval Nancy

March Europe Cushing

4 20 Witches in the early modern By this week, you should have

March period submitted your first executive
summary. Each is due the day
before the class on the related
topic. 10%

Module 2: Women of the East

and Global South
5 27 Chinese women's history and Nancy
March footbinding Cushing

6 3 April Material evidence of women’s Gillean Excursion to Senta Taft-Hendry

history in the South Pacific Shaw Museum in the University Gallery,
9:30 start

The executive summary is due this

week only by Friday (5 April).

7 10 Middle Eastern women, the Hans Lukas

April harem and the mosque Kieser

Mid Semester Break

8 1 May Caribbean women, slavery and By this week, you should have
entrepreneurialism submitted your second executive
summary. Each is due the day
before the class on the related
topic. 10%
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Module 3: Women in “new”

worlds
9 8 May Nancy Research essay due, Friday 10 May
Modern women's minds and Cushing by midnight, 40%
bodies

1 15 May Relations between Aboriginal Victoria

0 and settler colonial women in Haskins
Australia

1 22 May Western women's Lyndall Ryan

1 emancipation and second
wave feminism

1 29 May Women and the Anthropocene Nancy By this week, you should have
2 Cushing submitted your third executive
summary. Each is due the day
before the class on the related
topic. 10%

1 5 June Final test In lectorial period, 60 minutes, 30%

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The content of this course ranges widely across global women’s history, from the Ancient
Mediterranean world through China and the Middle East, to modern Europe and its
maturing colonies. As we treat each topic, we will reflect on the commonalities and
differences in women’s experiences in these settings and how historians of women have
made sense of them.

Being a good citizen of this course:

To make the most of the course, students are encouraged not only to complete all of the
assessment tasks on time and to the best of their ability, but to be active participants in the
course from week to week. In previous offers, students were required to lead a tutorial
discussion. This has been removed from the assessment schedule, but your leadership is
still needed. It is anticipated that all students will:
 attend the lectorials having completed the weekly readings
 contribute to the group activities and discussions
 raise key themes or debates that developed as a result of the reading
 identify other key points to share with a group or the whole class.
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In order to be able to do this, you should take notes based on the focus questions and to
bring along hard or e copies of the weekly readings to the lectorials. Active participation in
lectorials will advance your understanding of the course material, prepare you for the final
test and help you to hone the oral communication and argumentation skills so valued by
employers.

Assessment Schedule

1. Executive summaries (30%)

Rationale: Much of the work in history courses revolves around class readings and
discussion. Critical engagement with primary and secondary source material, clear written
and oral communication and demonstrating an understanding of differing perspectives and
interpretations of historical material are vital skills of the historian. In this course these skills
are acknowledged through the writing of three executive summaries.

Length: 500 words each, 1500 words in total

Due Date: The day before the topic is treated in class – that is, Tuesdays by 11.59pm (except
for Week 6, Museum visit when the assignment is due on the Friday). One per four week
module.
Submission: Submit via Turnitin submission portal.
Weighting: 3 x 10% = 30%

Executive summaries are found at the beginning of commissioned reports and provide the
busy executive with a short version of investigations undertaken, how they were done and
the key conclusions reached. Preparing an effective executive summary demonstrates your
critical understanding of the assigned readings and helps you to prepare for lectorial
discussions. If there is more than one secondary source for the week you have chosen, you
should compare and contrast the readings. Who are the authors, what sources have they
used and what is their main argument? What key points are raised to make the argument?
How do the sources “speak” to one another – do they take similar positions or contradictory
ones?

As students are not expected to go beyond the required readings for these tasks there is no
need to footnote, except when providing a direct quotation. This should be kept to an
absolute minimum for such short assignments, but if used, quotation marks and a footnote
in Chicago style are required.

Detailed instructions for assessment:

 Students are to submit three executive summaries based on the required lectorial
readings for that topic. Reports should be written in formal prose, not using dot
points or conversational language.
 One executive summary is required for each of the 3 modules of the course. That is,
submit one for a lectorial during Weeks 1 – 4; one for any of Weeks 5 – 8; and one
for any of Weeks 9 to 12. Each executive summary is to be 500 words in length (3 x
500 words = 1,500 words in total).
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 The executive summary is to be submitted online via Blackboard’s Turnitin

submission portal on the day before the corresponding lectorial.

Grading: A rubric is available on Blackboard. Executive summaries will be graded on their

demonstrated knowledge of the lectorial readings, capacity for critical engagement with the
readings and capacity for clear and concise communication. Marked work will be returned
within three weeks of the due date for that topic.

2. Research Essay (40%)

Rationale: Research essays allow students to explore an area of interest in greater depth, to
demonstrate their level of understanding about a specific topic or issue and to showcase
their capacity for independent research, thinking, and insight, as well as their ability to
communicate ideas in a scholarly fashion.

Length: 2500 words

Due Date: Friday 10 May 2019 by 11.59pm
Submission: Submit via Turnitin submission portal

Other Information:
 This essay should be fully referenced throughout using footnotes in Chicago style
citation in adherence with academic integrity standards and a bibliography should be
included with the submission. A guide to Chicago citation can be found on
Blackboard. Footnotes are included in the word count but the bibliography is not.
 A rubric for this essay can be found on Blackboard under the ‘Assessment’ tab.
 Sources listed under the related topics in the Weekly Guide are a starting point for
research. One of the key skills of the historian, expected in this 3000 level course, is
independent research and the capacity to discern the appropriateness, relevance
and reliability of source material. There is a direct correlation between the quantity
and quality of sources used and the level of sophistication, depth and insight in a
scholarly argument, so make sure you plan enough time to research and read widely.

Research Essay Questions:

You can choose to write your major essay focussing on any one of the following:

1. Write an essay on the life of one woman who lived in a time and place treated in this
course. Your essay should focus on the question: “In what ways did your subject
accommodate or resist her ascribed role as a woman at that time?” and should include a
discussion of the historical context with regard to women’s role in society in her time and
place.

2. Judith Bennett wrote that:

There was no golden age or paradise from which women descended with the advent of
modernity; nor was there ‘real loss’ for women as the economy changed; there was,
instead, exceptional continuity. (Bennett, 2006: 86).
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Examine the use of the idea of the ‘patriarchal equilibrium’ with regard to one the groups of
women we are studying this semester. Is the patriarchal equilibrium a useful concept? Why
or why not?

3. Joan Kelly argued in her 1977 essay “Did women have a Renaissance?” that events
identified as central to men’s histories often had less impact, or at least different effects, for
women. How did war affect the opportunities available to women in ancient Rome?

4. Consider women as workers in the Medieval period in England. What were the factors
which opened particular types of work to women and what were the limits on their
participation. You can answer this question in general, or looking at a particular industry
where sources permit.

5. How was witchcraft, its alleged practice and its prosecution used both by and against
women in the early modern period in Europe? You may examine one country or region, or
provide a wider survey.

6. Outline the history of footbinding in China. How and why did the practice spread and
why did it continue to be practised for so long?

7. Select one women’s artifact or type of artifacts from the Senta Taft-Hendry Museum.
Research its manufacture and use, and explain how it reflects women’s role in its originating
society.

8. ‘The West, and its historians, artists, writers and poets have constructed the imperial
harems ‘as a sexualized, secluded, feminine domain … centrally premised on a crude
principle of sensual pleasure that was supposed to regulate the “private” lives of imperial
women and men.’ (Lal 2004:593). How does this compare with the historical evidence about
women in harems?

9. Recent scholarship has demonstrated a perhaps unexpected economic niche for free
women of colour in the Caribbean in the late 1700s and early 1800s. How were these
women able to navigate the considerable obstacles against them to achieve personal and
financial success?

10. In stark contrast with the irrational claims of Mary Toft, leading female intellectuals
were making arguments about, as well as demonstrating, women’s rationality during the
Enlightenment. Investigate the career of one such scholar, drawing upon her own writings,
and indicate how her ideas were received. Possible subjects include Lady Mary Wortley
Montague (1689-1762), Catherine Macaulay (1731-1791) and Mary Wollstonecraft (1759-
1797).

11. The colonisation of Africa, North America, Asia and Australasia by Europeans set up new
types of relations between Indigenous and settler women. Explore this relationship in one
of these settings over a period of several decades. How were settler women implicated in
the process of colonisation?
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12. Discuss the concept of the Anthropocene and how it has begun to affect women’s lives.
Are there grounds to expect that this new phase of human history might be more
favourable to women?

13. Explore the political activism and writings of one female historian who was part of the
Second Wave of Feminism. How did her lived experience affect her writing of history?

14. You are welcome to devise a topic of your own based on your own interest in women’s
history; however you must submit your proposed question to me in writing and receive
approval to undertake that topic (of course, you’re welcome to see me as well and discuss
the topic). Proposals should be sent to nancy.cushing@newcastle.edu.au no later than the
end of Week 6 for approval.

3. In-Class Test (30%)

Rationale: The scholarship of teaching and learning suggests that students learn and retain
information according to their level of involvement with their work. The inclusion of a final
test is intended to encourage the involvement of students with the key themes of the
course rather than just with specific individual research areas, and to encourage synthesis.

Date: The test will take place in the lecture period in Week 13 on 5 June.

Form: This 60 minute test will be comprised of a choice of short-response questions based
upon lectorial topics of which two must be answered (7.5 points each) and one longer essay
style response (15 points). Both will be based on the general themes of the course as
explored in lectorials.

Assessment: The tests will be marked based on the demonstration of an understanding of

course materials and themes, evidence of critical thinking and the capacity to formulate an
argument in response to the set questions. They will not be returned. If any student would
like to discuss their test with the course coordinator, an appointment should be made.

Preparation: Throughout the course, we will maintain a table of key themes in women’s
history your knowledge of which will be examined on the test. This will help to structure
your revision.
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Module 1: Early European Women’s History

Week 1: 27 February

The Im/possibility of Women’s History

Readings:
Bailey, Dr Joanne (New Hall, Cambridge) ‘Is the rise of gender history ‘hiding’ women from
history once again?’ History in Focus, 8: Gender.
http://www.history.ac.uk/ihr/Focus/Gender/articles.html
Bennett, Judith M. History Matters. Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism. Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2006: 1-5.
De Beauvoir, Simone. ‘Introduction’, The Second Sex. translated and edited by H.M.
Parshley. London: Picador Classics/Pan Books, 1949. Any edition – including
https://uberty.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/1949_simone-de-beauvoir-the-
second-sex.pdf

Focus Questions:
1. Despite the age of the piece, de Beauvoir sets out the problem of women and history with
clarity. Consider the question: What is a ‘woman’? Then reflect on her claim that ‘women
have no history’ – what does she mean?
2. According to Bennett, what is the ‘patriarchal equilibrium’? Do you agree with her that
‘women’s history’ is shorthand for ‘women’s history and gender history’?
3. In her short article Bailey explains the differences between women’s and gender history
as she sees them. What are they?
4. Is women’s history necessary?

Further Reading:
Cova, Anna. Comparative Women's History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2006.
Historians on History, John Tosh, ed. London: Pearson Longman, 2009, Gender, 133 – 55.
The Houses of History: A Critical Reader in Twentieth-century History and Theory,
edited by Anna Green and Kathleen Troup. Manchester: Manchester University
Press, 1999, Ch. 10, “Gender and History”. (This chapter is on Google Books with
two pages omitted).
Hughes-Warrington, Marnie, Fifty Key Thinkers on History. London: Routledge, 2014, Sheila
Rowbotham and Joan Wallach Scott.
Leboeuf, C. “‘One is not born, but rather becomes, a woman’: The Sex-Gender Distinction
and Simone de Beauvoir’s Account of Woman: The Second Sex” in K. Smits and S.
Bruce (eds.). Feminist Moments: Reading Feminist Texts. London: Bloomsbury
Academic, 2016, 139–146. Ebook.
Lochrie, Karma. Heterosyncrasies: Female Sexuality When Normal Wasn’t. Minnesota:
University of Minnesota Press, 2005.
Kelly, Joan, Women, History and Theory : the essays of Joan Kelly. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1984, ch. 2 Did Women Have a Renaissance?
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Week 2: 6 March
Women in the Ancient World
Hugh Lindsay

Required Reading:
Fantham, Elaine. Women in the Classical world: Image and text. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1995. Chapter 9, Republican Rome II, Women in a Wealthy Society,
260 – 79. Ebook.

Richlin, A. Arguments with Silence: Writing the History of Roman Women. Ann Arbor:
University of Michigan, 2014, Introduction. Ebook.

Focus Questions:
1. How do we know about the lives of women in Ancient Rome? What sources are
available? How have scholars of women’s history used these sources?

2. Why does Richlin say that it is not possible to speak about “Roman women”?

3. How did marriage empower and disempower women in this society?

4. What was the role of women in the Roman economy?

Further reading:

A Companion to Women in the Ancient World, SL James and S. Dillon, eds. Chichester: Wiley-
Blackwell, 2012: see especially Brennan, T.C. ‘Perceptions of Women’s Power in the
Late Republic’, 354-366.

Bauman, Richard A. Women and Politics in Ancient Rome, Routledge, 1994. Ch. 2 Women in
the Conflict of the Orders. Ebook

Carp, Teresa, “Two matrons of the late republic”, Women's Studies, 8, 1 & 2 (1981): 189 -
201.

Coontz, Stephanie, “The world historical transformation of marriage”, Journal of Marriage

& Family, 66, 4 (2004): 974-979.

Culham, P. ‘Women in the Roman Republic’, in H.I. Flower (ed.) The Cambridge Companion
to the Roman Republic, Cambridge: University Press, 2004: 139-159.

Dixon, S. Reading Roman Women: Sources, Genres and Real Life, London: Duckworth, 2001,
Ch. 1 & 2.

Dixon, Suzanne, “Exemplary Housewife or Luxurious Slut? Cultural representations of

women in the Roman economy”, in Women’s Influence on Classical Civilization.
Fiona McHardy and Eireann Marshall, eds. London: Routledge, 2004.

Hallett, J.P. “Women as Same and Other in Classical Roman Elite”, Helios 16 (1989): 59-78.

Hallett, J.P. Fathers and Daughters in Roman Society. Princeton: University Press, 1984.
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Kleiner, D.E.E. & Matheson, S.B. (eds.) I Claudia. Women in Ancient Rome, New Haven: Yale
University Art Gallery, 1996.

Marshall, A.J., “Roman Women and the Provinces”, Ancient Society 6 (1975): 109-207.

Marshall, A.J.,‘Roman Ladies on Trial: The Case of Maesia of Sentinum’ Phoenix 44 (1990):
46-59.

Milnor, Kristina. Gender, Domesticity, and the Age of Augustus: Inventing Private Life,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005. Ebook.

Pomeroy, Sarah B. Goddesses, Whores, Wives and Slaves, Women in Classical Antiquity.
New York: Schocken Books, 1995, Ch. VIII, The Roman Matron of the Late Republic
and Early Empire. Ebook.

Shaw, Brent D. “Agrarian economy and the marriage cycle of Roman women”, Journal of
Roman Archaeology, 10 (1997): 57 – 76.

Spongberg, Mary. Writing women's history since the Renaissance. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2002, Ch. I The Classical Inheritance.
Women writers of ancient Greece and Rome: An Anthology, IM Plant, ed. Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 2004.
Woodhull, Margaret L., “Matronly Patrons in the Early Roman Empire, The Case of Salvia
Postuma” in Women’s Influence on Classical Civilization. Fiona McHardy and Eireann
Marshall, eds. London: Routledge, 2004.

On 10 March, the talks and ideas festival All About Women is on at the
Sydney Opera House. See https://www.sydneyoperahouse.com/all-
about-women for the program. A free satellite event featuring the
seesions on #MeToo, Arab feminism and women as leaders will be held at
our Ourimbah Campus– register here
https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/all-about-women-satellite-central-
coast-tickets-54904665332. If you can’t attend, you can join in through
the Sydney Opera House Talks and Ideas YouTube or listen on iTunes.
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Week 3: 13 March
Women and work in Medieval Europe

Required Reading:
Bennett, Judith M. History Matters. Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism. Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 2006: 54-81.
Bennett, Judith, Ale, Beer and Brewsters in England: Women’s Work in a Changing World,
1300-1600, New York, 1996. Ch. 3, New Markets, Lost Opportunities. Ebook.

Focus Questions:
1. Define ‘patriarchy’. Does ‘patriarchy’ have a history?
2. How does Bennett describe women’s relationship to patriarchy? Do you agree?
3. How were women able to become involved in the brewing industry in medieval England?
4. Discuss the ways in which the decline of the not married female brewsters illustrates the
‘patriarchal equilibrium’.

Further Reading:
Bennett Judith M., Hollister C. Warren. Medieval Europe: A short history. Boston: McGraw-
Hill, c2006.
Bennett, Judith M. Women in the medieval English countryside: Gender and household in
Brigstock before the plague. New York: Oxford University Press, 1987.
Hanawalt, Barbara A.ed., Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe, Bloomington, IN, 1986.
Holloway, Julia Bolton. Wright, Constance S. and Bechtold, Joan. Editors. Equally in God's
image: women in the Middle Ages New York: P. Lang, c1990.
Illuminated lives [videorecording] : a brief history of women's work in the Middle Ages
Canada : National Film Board, c1989 909.07 ILLU CCC An animated film re-creates
scenes of women at work in the meadows, markets and castles of the Middle Ages.
The women of all classes performed a variety of tasks and played a dynamic role in
society.
Kumin, Beat and Tlusty, B. Ann, eds, The World of the Tavern: Public Houses in Early Modern
Europe, Aldershot, 2002.
Labarge, Margaret Wade, Women in Medieval Life, A Small sound of the trumpet. London:
Hamish Hamilton, 1986.
Shahar, Shulamith, The Fourth Estate: A history of women in the Middle Ages, translated by
Chaya Galai. London: Methuen, c1983, 1990.
Wiesner, Merry E. Working Women in Renaissance Germany. New Brunswick: Rutgers
University Press, 1986.
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Week 4: 20 March
Witches in the Early Modern Period

Required Reading:
Briggs, Robin, Witches and Neighbours: The Social and cultural context of European
Witchcraft, 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 2002, ch. 7 “Men against Women: The
Gendering of Witchcraft”.
Larner, Christina, “Who were the witches?”, Witches of the Atlantic World, A Historical
Reader and Primary Sourcebook, Elaine G. Breslaw, ed. London: New York University
Press, 2000.

Focus Questions:
1. What was the Malleus Maleficarum? Go to the online Medieval Sourcebook
http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/witches1.html and read the excerpt there. How
were witches to be examined?
2. Define a ‘witch’.
3. Why were those accused and killed mainly women?
4. How did women use the anxiety around witchcraft for their own ends?

Further Reading:
Behringer, Wolfgang. Witches and Witch-hunts: A Global history. Polity Press, 2004.
Breslaw, Elaine G., (ed), Witches of the Atlantic World. A Historical Reader and Primary
Sourcebook. New York: New York University Press, 2000.
de Blecourt, W., ‘The Making of the Female Witch. Reflections on Witchcraft and Gender in
the Early Modern Period’, Gender & History 12:2, 2000: 287-309.
Nenonen, Marko. “The Dubious History of the Witch-Hunts” in Writing Witch-Hunt
Histories, Challenging the Paradigm, Marko Nenonen and Raisa Maria Toivo. Leiden:
Brill, 2014.
Elmer, Peter, Witchcraft, Witch-Hunting, and Politics in Early Modern England. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2016. Ebook.
Goodare, Julian. The Scottish witch-hunt in context. Manchester, UK: Manchester University
Press, 2002.
Heinemann, Evelyn, Witches. A Psychoanalytical Exploration of the Killing of Women, Free
Association Books, 2000.
Hester, M., Lewd Women and Wicked Witches: A Study of the Dynamics of Male
Domination, 1992.
Hester, Marianne, ‘Patriarchal reconstruction and witch-hunting’, chapter 11 of J. Barry et al
(eds) Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe, CUP, 1996.
Hodgkin, Katharine, ‘Gender, mind and body: feminism and psychoanalysis’, in J. Barry and
O. Davies (eds), Palgrave Advances in Witchcraft Historiography, Palgrave, 2007:
182-202.
Jolly, Karen, Catharina Raudvere and Edward Peters. Witchcraft and magic in Europe. Vol. 3,
The Middle Ages, London: Athlone, 2002.
Levack Brian P. The witch-hunt in early modern Europe. London: Longman, 1995.
Levack, Brian (ed.), The Witchcraft Sourcebook, Routledge, 2003.
Purkiss, Diane, The witch in history: early modern and twentieth-century representations ,
London: Routledge, 1996, especially Chapter 1 ‘The myth of the Burning Times’.
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Roper, Lyndal, Oedipus and the Devil: witchcraft, sexuality, and religion in early modern
Europe, New York : Routledge, 1994.
Rowlands, Alison, ‘Seduction, poison and magical theft: gender and contemporary fantasies
of witchcraft’, chapter 5 of her book Witchcraft Narratives in Germany: Rothenburg,
1561-1652 Manchester University Press, 2003.
Shahar, Shulamith. The Fourth Estate: A history of women in the Middle Ages. translated by
Chaya Galai London; New York: Methuen, c1983, 1990. Chapter 8.
Sharpe, James, Witchcraft in early modern England. Harlow: Longman, 2001 Pt.1.
Witchcraft in Early Modern England.
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Module 2: Women of the East and Global South

Week 5: 27 March

Chinese Women’s History and Foot-binding

Required Reading:
Ko, Dorothy ‘The Body as Attire: The Shifting Meanings of Footbinding in Seventeenth-
Century China,’ The Journal of Women’s History 8 (Winter, 1997) 4: 8-27.
Wang, Ping. Aching for Beauty: Footbinding in China. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2000: 29-37. Ebook.

Focus Questions:
1. What is footbinding?
2. When did footbinding originate? Why is this not a straightforward question?
3. Why did Chinese women bind their feet? What does Ko suggest are its multiple
meanings?
4. Why has footbinding been a powerful symbol of China both internally and when viewed
from elsewhere?

Sources on Foot-binding:
Brain, Robert. The Decorated Body. London: Hutchinson, 1979. Ch. 4.
Brown, Melissa J., Laurel Bossen, Hill Gates and Damian Satterthwaite-Phillips, “Marriage
Mobility and Footbinding in Pre-1949 Rural China: A Reconsideration of Gender,
Economics, and Meaning in Social Causation”, Journal of Asian Studies 71,4
(2012):1035-1067.

Chew, Shirley “'Double Binds Around My Feet': The Enormity of the Everyday in Women's
Writing and Writing about Women”. Journal of Gender Studies. Vol 14(2) Jul 2005,
137-146.

Dworkin, Andrea "Gynocide: Chinese Footbinding" in Woman Hating NY: New American
Library, 1974.
Feng Jicai The three-inch golden lotus translated from the Chinese by David Wakefield ;
general editor, Howard Goldblatt, Honolulu : University of Hawaii Press, c1994.
Gordon, Richard. Kline, Kathy. Sipe, Daniel. Producers Small happiness: women of a Chinese
village [videorecording] directed by Carma Hinton, Richard Gordon ; produced by;
written by Carma Hinton. Canberra, ACT : Ronin Films c1984.
Hong, Fan, Footbinding, Feminism and Freedom (Taylor and Francis, 2013). Ebook.
Ko, Dorothy. Cinderella’s sisters: a revisionist history of footbinding. California, 2005. Ebook.
Ko, Dorothy. Every Step a Lotus: Shoes for Bound Feet. Berkeley: Bata Shoe Museum and
University of California Press, 2001.
Ko, Dorothy. Teachers of the inner chambers: women and culture in seventeenth-century
China Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1994.
Levy, Howard S. Chinese footbinding: the history of a curious erotic custom. London:
Spearman, 1970.
Yung, Judy. Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1995.
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Week 6: 3 April
Material evidence of women’s history in the South Pacific
Gillean Shaw

No lecture or readings for this week

In place of a lectorial, we will visit the Senta Taft-Hendry Museum in the University Gallery.
Start time for this week only is 9:30

This museum holds a collection of artifacts from Papua New Guinea, West Papua (Irian
Jaya), Micronesia, Polynesia and remote Australian communities. Our focus will be on how
women’s history can be informed by material artifacts made or used by women, portraying
women or which tell women’s stories. The visit will include a talk and tour by the curator
Gillean Shaw and time to view the collection independently.

You can submit an executive summary analysing these material sources after the visit.
Identify them as you would other sources (authorship, date, location, etc.) In what ways
were you able to learn from them? What challenges are posed in using material sources?
For this week only, the executive summary is due on the Friday, 5 April.

Obituary of collector Senta Taft-Hendry: https://www.smh.com.au/national/tribal-art-

collector-and-ardent-adventurer-senta-tafthendry-dies-20150126-12yah9.html

Location:
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Week 7: 10 April
Middle Eastern women, the harem and the mosque
Hans Lukas Kieser

Required Reading:
El Cheikh, Nadia Maria. ‘Revisiting the Abbasid harems.’ Journal of Middle East Women's
Studies 1.3 (Fall 2005): 1 -19.
A Visit to the Wife of Suleiman the Magnificent (Translated from a Genoese Letter), c. 1550,
Modern History Sourcebook:
https://sourcebooks.fordham.edu/mod/1550sultanavisit.asp

Focus Questions:
1. What were the ‘central tropes’ of the orientalist fantasy of the harem?

2. Describe al-Muqtadir’s harem. How did it compare to western understandings of the

‘harem’?

3. What is the public/private binary in women’s history and how does the harem subvert it?

4. How does the writer portray the women’s quarters in the account of the visit to the Wife
of Suleiman the Magnificent?

Further Readings:
Dangerous Liaisons: Famous Mistresses DVD - especially Ep. 2 of 3, Mistress Of The Sultan,
Each Episode 60 mins. Date of broadcast: 10/6/2009 on SBS.
Fay, Mary Ann, Unveiling the Harem: Elite women and the paradox of seclusion in
eighteenth-century Cairo, Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2012. Ebook.
İnalcik, Halil. The Ottoman Empire; the classical age, 1300-1600, translated by Norman
Itzkowitz and Colin Imber .
Lal, Ruby. ‘Historicizing the harem: the challenge of a princess’ memoir’, Feminist Studies
30.3 (Fall 2004): 590 – 616.
Lewis, Reina. Rethinking Orientalism: Women, Travel and the Ottoman Harem. New
Brunswick: Rutgers UP, 2004.
Lytle Croutier, Alev, Harem: the world behind the veil. New York : Abbeville Press, c1989
Merriman, Roger Bigelow. Suleiman the Magnificent, 1520-1566 . New York: Cooper Square
Publishers, 1966 [c1944].
Peirce, Leslie P. The Imperial Harem. Women and Sovereignty in the Ottoman Empire, New
York/Oxford: Oxford U.P., 1993.
Penzer, N. M. The Harem: An account of the institution as it existed in the Palace of the
Turkish Sultans with a history of the Grand Seraglio from its foundation to modern
times. [1936] London: Spring Books, 1967.
When the Moors Ruled in Europe TV Documentary - 2 Episodes , Presented by Bettany
Hughes. Wildfire Television for Channel 4 UK, Each Episode: 50 mins.

Mid Semester Break

Use this time to rest and recuperate but also devote some time
to your essay, due 10 May
 16

Week 8: 1 May
Caribbean women, slavery and entrepreneurialism
Kit Candlin

Required Reading:
Bush, Barbara, “Sable venus, ‘she devil’ or drudge: British slavery and the ‘fabulous fiction’
of black women's identities, c. 1650–1838”, Women's History Review 9, 4 (2000):
761-89.

Candlin, Kit, “The Empire of Women: Transient Entrepreneurs in the Southern Caribbean,
1790-1820”, Journal of Imperial & Commonwealth History 38, 3 (2010): 351-372.
Trinidad arrivals register, 1815 (digitised images on Blackboard)

Focus Questions:
1. What were the three “fabulous fictions” about women of African descent in the
Caribbean according to Bush?
2. What evidence does Candlin provide for the independence of the refugee women from
Venezuela he studied? How do they fit with Bush’s categories?
3. How were free women of colour able to support themselves, and in some case, to gain
both wealth and influence?
4. How important was feminine kinship in the lives of these women?

Further Readings:

Beckles, Hilary, Centering Women: Gender discourses in the Caribbean. Oxford: James
Currey Publishers, 1999.

Beckles, Hilary, Natural Rebels: A Social History of Enslaved Women in Barbados. New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989.

Candlin, Kit. The last Caribbean frontier, 1795-1815. Palgrave Macmillan, 2012. Ebook.

Candlin, Kit, “Transient Women of the Southern Caribbean, 1790 – 1820”, Callaloo 33, 2
(2010): 476-497.

Moitt, Bernard, “Freedom from bondage at a price: Women and redemption from slavery in
the French Caribbean in the nineteenth century”, Slavery & Abolition, 26, 2 (2005):
247-256.
Olsen, Marie Veisegaard, “Sexual relationships and working lives of free Afro-Caribbean
women”, Scandinavian Journal of History 41, 4/5 (2016): 565-585.

Pybus, Cassandra and Kit Candlin, Enterprising Women: Gender, Race & Power in the
Revolutionary Atlantic. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2015. Available as an
ebook.
 17

Module 3: Women in “new” worlds

Week 9: 8 May

Research essay due Friday 10 May by midnight, 40%

Modern Women’s minds and bodies: The Mary Toft, Rabbit Breeder case

Required Reading
Harvey, Karen, “Rabbits, Whigs and Hunters: Women and protest in Mary Toft's monstrous
births of 1726”, Past and Present, 238, 1 (2018): 43 – 83.
Find a newspaper article on Mary Toft in https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/ or in
another online database.

Focus Questions:
1. Who was Mary Toft and how did she enter the historical record?
2. What does her story reveal about women, their minds and their bodies in the early
Enlightenment in England?
3. How does the Mary Toft case relate to ideas of women as less rational and closer to
nature than men?
4. Did the story of Mary Toft change over time as it was retold? If so, why?

Further Readings:

Archæologica Medica. “Mary Tofts, The Rabbit Breeder”, British Medical Journal 2, 1856
(1896): 209-210.

Burns, William E. The Enlightenment. ABC CLIO 2015. Ebook.

Canning, Kathleen, “The Body as Method? Reflections on the Place of the Body in Gender
History” Gender & History 11, 3 (1999): 499–513.

Feminist moments: reading feminist texts, Susan Bruce and Katherine Smits, eds.
Bloomsbury Academic, 2016. Ebook. [This book contains several short chapters on
women writers of the Enlightenment period]

O’Brien, Women and Enlightenment in Eighteenth-century Britain. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2009. Ebook.

Shaw, Jane. “Mary Toft, Religion and National Memory in Eighteenth-Century England”,
Journal for Eighteenth-Century Studies 32, 3 (2009): 321-338.

Shepard, Alan, “The Literature of a Medical Hoax: The Case of Mary Toft, 'the Pretended
Rabbet-Breeder'”, Eighteenth-Century Life 19, 2 (1995): 59-77.

Spender, Jane. “‘The Link which Unites Man with Brutes’: Enlightenment Feminism, Women
and Animals”, Intellectual History Review, 22:3, 427-444.
 18

St. Andre, Nathanael, A short narrative of an extraordinary delivery of rabbets, perform'd by

Mr. John Howard surgeon at Guilford. Published by Mr. St. Andrè. Printed for John
Clarke, 1727. See https://archive.org/details/shortnarrativeof00sain
 19

Week 10: 15 May

Relations between Aboriginal and settler colonial women in Australia

Victoria Haskins

Required Reading
Haskins, Victoria, “ 'A Devotion I Hope I May Fully Repay': Joan Kingsley-Strack” in Anna
Cole, Victoria Haskins and Fiona Paisley, eds. Uncommon Ground: White Women in
Aboriginal History. New ed. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2005: 57-79. Ebook.
Huggins, Jackie, “Firing on in the mind: Aboriginal Women Domestic Servants in the Inter-
War Years”, Hecate 13, 2 (1987): 5 – 23.

Focus Questions:
1. Why were Aboriginal girls and young women apprenticed with white families in Australia
in the interwar period?
2. What types of relationships developed between these women?
3. Why did misunderstandings arise?
4. How did the apprenticeship system sit within the broader framework of colonialism?

Further Readings:

Gender, Sexuality and Colonial Modernities, Antoinette Burton, ed. London: Routledge:
1999. Ebook.

Besley, Joanna, “‘Speaking to, with and about’: Cherbourg women’s memory of domestic
work as activist counter-memory”, Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies
30, 3 (2016): 316-325.

Haskins, Victoria K. One Bright Spot. Basingstoke, U.K. : Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.

Huggins, Jackie and Thom Blake, “Protection or Persecution? Gender Relations in the era of
racial segregation”, in Kay Saunders and Raymond Evans, eds. Gender Relations in
Australia: Domination and negotiation. Sydney: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992.

Jebb, Mary Anne and Anna Haebich, “Across the Great Divide: Gender Relations on
Australian Frontiers” in Kay Saunders and Raymond Evans, eds. Gender Relations in
Australia: Domination and negotiation. Sydney: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992.

Tonkinson, Myma, “Sisterhood or Aboriginal Servitude? Black women and white women on
the Australian frontier”, Aboriginal History, 12, 1 & 2 (1988): 27 – 39. http://press-
files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p72051/pdf/article026.pdf

Uncommon Ground: White women in Aboriginal history, Anna Cole, Victoria Haskins & Fiona
Paisley, eds. Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2005. Ebook.

Walden, Inara, “'That Was Slavery Days': Aboriginal Domestic Servants in New South Wales
in the Twentieth Century”, Labour History, 69, 1995: 196-209.
 20

Week 11: 22 May

Western Women’s Emancipation and second wave feminism

Lyndall Ryan

Required Reading
Gordon, Linda, “’Intersectionality’, Socialist Feminism and Contemporary Activism: Musings
by a Second-Wave Socialist Feminist”, Gender & History, 28, 2 (2016): 340–357.

Ryan, Lyndall Ryan, “Mother and daughter feminists, 1969–1973, or why didn't Edna Ryan
join women's liberation?”, Australian Feminist Studies, 19, 43 (2004): 75-85.

Focus Questions:
1. What were the origins of second wave feminism?
2. How did the claims and methods of the second wave feminists differ from those of their
predecessors?
3. How do you explain the “discovery” of intersectionality as a women’s issue in the late
1980s [and its more recent adoption by activists]?
4. Why is there a strong autobiographical impulse amongst feminist historians?

Further Readings:

Curthoys, Ann, For and Against Feminism: A personal journey into feminist theory and
history. Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1988.

Bulbeck, Chilla, Living Feminism: The Impact of the Women’s Movement on three
generations of Australian women. Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1997.
Ebook.

Curthoys, Ann, “Doing it for themselves: The Women’s Movement since 1970”, in Kay
Saunders and Raymond Evans, eds. Gender Relations in Australia: Domination and
negotiation. Sydney: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992.

Document 4.3, “Women’s = Human Liberation” in Freedom Bound II, Documents on women
in modern Australia, Katie Holmes and Marilyn Lake, eds. Sydney: Allen and Unwin,
1995.
Henderson, Margaret. Marking Feminist Times: Remembering the longest revolution in
Australia. Bern: Peter Lang, 2006.

Kaplan, Gisela, The Meagre Harvest: The Australian women's movement 1950s-1990s.
Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1996.

Lake, Marilyn. Getting Equal: The History of Feminism in Australia. Sydney: Allen and Unwin,
1999, 6.

No permanent waves: Recasting histories of U.S. feminism. Nancy A. Hewitt, ed. New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2010. Ebook.
 21

Summers, Anne, “Feminism on Two Continents: The Women’s Movement in Australia and
the United States”, in Norma Grieve and Patricia Grimshaw (eds), Australian Women:
Contemporary Feminist Thought. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Summers, Anne, Damned Whores and God's Police: The colonization of women in Australia.
Melbourne: Penguin Books, 1975.

Summers, Anne, Ducks on the Pond: An autobiography, 1945-1976. Melbourne: Penguin,

2000.

Ukockis, Gail, Women's Issues for a New Generation, A Social Work Perspective. Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2013. Ch. 3, “Women’s Lib (Second-Wave Feminism) and
the Backlash” and Ch. 12, “Diversity and Intersectionality”.
 22

Week 12: 29 May

Women and the Anthropocene

Required Reading
Head, Lesley, “The Anthropoceneans”, Geographical Research 53, 3 (2015): 313-320.
Kurian, Priya, “Feminist futures in the Anthropocene: Sustainable citizenship and the
challenges of climate change and social justice”, Women's Studies Journal 31, 1
(2017): 104-107.

Simon Rosenthal, Cindy, “Reviving Municipal Housekeeping”,

https://inhabitingtheanthropocene.com/2018/02/14/reviving-municipal-
housekeeping/#more-4286.

Focus Questions:
1. What is the Anthropocene?
2. Thinking about how this new era came about, would the Manthropocene be a better
name?
3. Head argues that humans will need to find new ways of living in the Anthropocene.
Drawing upon what you have learned in this course including the concept of the patriarchal
equilibrium, how do you think this will affect women?
4. Why have women been leaders in environmental action?

Further Readings:

Bonneuil, Christophe and Jean-Baptise Fressoz, The Shock of the Anthropocene: The Earth,
History, and Us, trans. David Fernbach. London: Verso, 2016.

Ghosh, A. The great derangement. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016.

Haraway, D. “Anthropocene, capitalocene, plantationocene, chthulucene: Making kin”,

Environmental Humanities, 6 (2015), 159-165.

Kolbert, Elizabeth, The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History. New York: Henry Holt and
Co., 2014.

McNeill, JR and Erin Stewart Mauldin, eds. A Companion to Global Environmental History.
Chichester: Blackwell, 2012.

McNeill, JR and Peter Engelke, The Great Acceleration: An Environmental History of the
Anthropocene since 1945. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University
Press, 2014.

Penna, Anthony N., The Human Footprint: A Global Environmental History. Chichester:
Wiley Blackwell, 2015.

Robin, Libby, Sverker Sörlin, and Paul Warde, The Future of Nature: Documents of Global
Change (2013). New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013. Ebook.
 23

Week 13: 5 June

Final test

In-class open book test will be held in lecture time, 9:05 – 10:05, in the usual classroom. All
answers will be in essay form, with two shorter questions worth 7.5 points each and one
longer question worth 15%. Preparation is by completing class readings, attending lectorials
and participation in discussions, plus revision.
No referencing or direct quotation is required but relevant historians should be named
within answers.
Any students requiring special provisions must contact the course coordinator in writing by
22 May.