Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies

Social and Sexual Transgressions in Late Medieval and Early Modern European Literature (1200‒1700)

mlillywhite@middlebury.edu — Fri, 20 Jan 2023 14:40:45 +0000

Social and Sexual Transgressions in Late Medieval and Early Modern European Literature (1200‒1700) CMLT0030 / GSFS 0030 mlillywhite@mi… Fri, 01/20/2023 - 09:40 Tutorials Comparative Literature Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies Autumn 2023 Autumn 2024 Autumn 2025 Spring 2023 Spring 2024 Spring 2025 Spring 2026

The literature of late medieval and early modern Europe is replete with social and sexual transgressors who have often been overlooked by scholars. This course explores a range of characters on the margins of social and sexual acceptability in order to re-evaluate preconceptions held about matters of gender, sexuality, and social roles in the period 1200–1700. It places particular emphasis on issues of homosexual desire, sexual trickery and seduction, and progressive female characters and writers. Students may choose to study a selection of literary texts in the areas of prose, the short story, poetry, and drama.

Sample topics:

Saints and Sinners in Alfonso X’s Songs of the Virgin Mary.
Sexual Escapades in Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron.
The Outspoken Wife of Geoffrey Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales.
Forthright Women in Gil Vicente’s Farce of Inês Pereira.
Sexual Seduction and Trickery in Juan Ruiz’s The Book of Good Love.
Go-Betweens and Sorceresses in Fernando de Roja’s Celestina.
Transgenderism and Transvestism in António Ferreira’s Bristo.
Sexual Misbehaviour and Deceptions in Marguerite de Navarre’s Heptameron.
Homosexual Desire in Richard Barnfield’s The Affectionate Shepherd and Cynthia.
The Female Rogue of Francisco López de Úbeda’s The Lives of Justina.
Swindlers and Tricksters in Francisco de Quevedo’s The Swindler.
Immorality Exposed in Francisco de Quevedo’s Dreams and Discourses.
Female Agency in María de Zayas’s Amorous and Exemplary Tales.
The Strong-Willed Nun of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz’s The House of Trials

These texts are available in English translations. However, if you do have some of the relevant language skills then the course can also be taught using the original texts: contact the Senior Tutor to discuss this.

Women & Literature in the Middle Ages

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 20:20:53 +0000

Women & Literature in the Middle Ages LITS 0130 / GSFS 0130 / ENAM 0130 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/13/2020 - 16:20 Tutorials English & American Literature Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies Literary Studies Autumn 2022 Autumn 2023 Autumn 2024 Autumn 2025 Spring 2023 Spring 2024 Spring 2025 Spring 2026

This course brings together diverse genres and texts in order to examine how women were represented in Western European Medieval Literature, and particularly to introduce a rich array of writing by women. The place of women in European society throughout the Middle Ages was often in direct relation to biblical texts, which frequently emphasised primacy of men over women, and balanced understanding of femininity between the absolute archetypes of Eve and the Virgin Mary. Nonetheless some women exercised remarkable degrees of power in religious, political and domestic realms, both working within and against legal limitations. Women often made practical choices between marriage and taking the veil as a nun or anchoress, but in some cases and alternative way seems to have been found, such as the extraordinary travelling life of Margery Kempe. Women’s writing is frequently composed in the vernacular, whether French, Middle English, German, etc, and often that which survives is written by wealthier or noble individuals. As required this course may also incorporate historical and archaeological sources in order to better trace the lives of ordinary women, who frequently lived and died without leaving a textual record.

This course explores a mixture of genres, which might include hagiography, life-writing, mystical spiritualism, lyrics, letters, homilies and dream vision, ranging across poetry, prose and, if desired, drama. Texts will be read in translation from Anglo Norman, French, Middle English, and Latin, with some opportunity to get to grips with the original language in consultation with your tutor.

Sample Syllabus

A selection of anonymous Marian devotional lyrics
Marie de France, Lais
Ancrene Wisse
The Katherine Group and the Wooing Group
The Life of Christina of Markyate
The Paston Letters
Margery Kempe, The Book of Margery Kempe
Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies
Julian of Norwich, Shewings or Revelations of Divine Love
Guillaume Lorris/Jean de Meun, Roman de la Rose (likely paired with Christine de Pizan, Epistre au Dieu d’Amours)
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Wife of Bath’s Prologue and Tale; The Clerk’s Tale; The Merchant’s Tale; The Miller’s Tale

Gender & History

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 20:20:53 +0000

Gender & History HIST 0700 / GSFS 0700 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/13/2020 - 16:20 Tutorials Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies History Autumn 2022 Autumn 2023 Autumn 2024 Autumn 2025 Spring 2023 Spring 2024 Spring 2025 Spring 2026

This course explores gender and modern history. Recent scholars have increasingly made a gendered reading of history; this course samples and assesses the success of these approaches while exploring the nature, development and contestation of societies’ gender norms, leading models of change, and key methodological issues. Issues include work, political change, religion, culture and sexuality, with a focus on the modern world.

Gender and Sexuality in Medieval Europe

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 20:20:53 +0000

Gender and Sexuality in Medieval Europe HIST 0133 / GSFS 0133 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/13/2020 - 16:20 Tutorials Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies History Autumn 2022 Autumn 2023 Autumn 2024 Autumn 2025 Spring 2023 Spring 2024 Spring 2025 Spring 2026

This course explores questions of gender and sexuality in western Europe during the middle ages, from around the fall of the western Roman Empire in the fifth century, until the fifteenth century. Christianity was a perennial element shaping attitudes and practices, but was a complex package, constantly re-interpreted in changing historical circumstances. Gender and sexuality need to be located in economic, cultural and social context. This course draws on primary sources (in English translation), ranging from Augustine of Hippo to Christine de Pizan, informed by the work of modern scholars such as Peter Brown, Julia H.M. Smith, and John Boswell.

Sample topics:

Augustine of Hippo

Better to marry than to burn?

Monasticism and clerical celibacy

Same sex desire

Masculinities

Women’s writing

Sex, gender, and medieval orientalism

The Virgin Mary

Gender and Sexuality in Modern Britain

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 20:20:53 +0000

Gender and Sexuality in Modern Britain GSFS 0470 / HIST 0470 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/13/2020 - 16:20 Tutorials Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies History Autumn 2022 Autumn 2023 Autumn 2024 Autumn 2025 Spring 2023 Spring 2024 Spring 2025 Spring 2026

Since the late eighteenth century, Britain has seen profound changes in attitudes and practices surrounding gender and sexuality. For example, the social and legal status of women has altered dramatically, attitudes to same-sex relationships continue to shift, the insights of feminism have had a profound intellectual impact, while masculinities have been examined time and again. These changes have interacted with other trends, including religious life, social class, economic activity, and Britain’s relationship with the empire and the wider world. This tutorial examines these changes through sources including polemics, history, fiction, film, and theoretical writings. These range from Mary Wollstonecraft’s ‘A Vindication of the Rights of Women’ (1792), to modern British cinema.

Women & Literature, 1660-1800

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 20:20:53 +0000

Women & Literature, 1660-1800 ENAM 0250 / GSFS 0250 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/13/2020 - 16:20 Tutorials English & American Literature Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies Autumn 2022 Autumn 2023 Autumn 2024 Autumn 2025 Spring 2023 Spring 2024 Spring 2025 Spring 2026

Eighteenth-century Britain has traditionally been thought of in terms of a male monopoly over cultural and political power, yet it was also a time in which increasing literacy and the availability of cheap print brought new voices – and especially those of women – to prominence. The period saw the creation of circulating libraries, the rise of sentimental and Gothic novel-writing, and the appearance of the first female actors. This course looks at both celebrated and neglected female writers of poetry, prose and dramatic works. It explores the ways in which women participated in the literary sphere, and the ways in which they created new spaces for themselves in discussions of politics, religion, art, philosophy and science. We will also engage with their strategies for the presentation of traditionally ‘feminine’ ideals such as domesticity, maternity and motherhood, chastity and fidelity. The course allows us to place contemporaneous and modern criticism alongside close readings of women’s writing from the period of the civil war to the aftermath of the French Revolution.

Key authors include the poet, dramatist and political radical Aphra Behn; the aristocrat, pioneering traveller and social commentator Mary Wortley Montagu; the immensely popular poet and member of the Bluestocking group, Hannah More; playwright and abolitionist Fanny Burney; Scottish pastoral writer Joanna Baillie; intellectual and prominent dissenter Anna Laetitia Barbauld; educationalist and novelist Maria Edgeworth; gothic pioneer Ann Radcliffe; fervent nationalist poet Felicia Hemans; and the passionate and politically-astute Mary Wollstonecraft, one of the most controversial literary figures of her time. We will also spend time reading the poetry, letters, autobiographies and diaries of lesser-known women whose works reward critical attention.

Women & Literature in the English Renaissance

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 20:20:53 +0000

Women & Literature in the English Renaissance ENAM 0245 / GSFS 0245 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/13/2020 - 16:20 Tutorials English & American Literature Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies Autumn 2022 Autumn 2023 Autumn 2024 Autumn 2025 Spring 2023 Spring 2024 Spring 2025 Spring 2026

This course examines women writers of the English Renaissance, placing them in a wider European context, and studying them in their roles as translators and adaptors of a wide range of humanist texts, alongside their roles as poets, dramatists and political polemicists. The course provides an opportunity to study the manuscript and print culture of a distinctive group of writers too often excluded from early-modern literary studies.

Aristocratic writing, especially that surrounding the English court, is one setting for the growth of female authorship. The works of Anne Askew, Margaret Tyler and Mary Sidney were celebrated (and defended) within their period, as well as appreciated by later readers. Many of these writings are surprising in their authorial confidence: their writing is invested in a presentation of female influence, erudition and poetic skill, and enters fully into the literary and political debate of their male counterparts. We will cover poetry, prose, allegory, fantasy, philosophy, theology and drama. The utopian fictions of Mary Wroth and Mary Sidney reward attention as early examples of the genre we now call ‘science fiction’, as well as being read as Christian allegories and as radical political treatises. Further radical discussions surrounding the morality of female authorship came to head in a series of controversies in which women, often publishing pseudonymously and anonymously, defended themselves from the ridicule and hostility of male pamphleteers.

The study of women writers gives us a unique vantage point from which to approach the print culture and reading habits of the English Renaissance.

The Making of Europe

Anonymous — Thu, 13 Aug 2020 20:20:53 +0000

The Making of Europe CLAS / ENAM / HIST / GSFS / HARC / LITS / MUSC / PHIL / PSCI / RELI 2499 Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 08/13/2020 - 16:20 Research Classics Comparative Literature Economics English & American Literature Film & Media Culture Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies History History of Art & Architecture Literary Studies Philosophy Political Science Religion Theatre Autumn 2022 Autumn 2023 Autumn 2024 Autumn 2025

The autumn semester Research Course occupies the first five weeks of the program. This will allow you to research a topic of your choice from any area of European history or culture in the period up to c.1750. You will identify a text or image, object or building you wish to explore (or a small group: for instance a selection of poems by a given author). You will formulate a question and write a 6,000 word essay. Some classes and field trips will help to get you thinking. Once you have identified the area you wish to work on, you will have weekly one-to-one meetings with an individual supervisor, who will also read and comment on your final draft. This project will help you with your tutorial writing later in our programme. It will also help you develop the research and writing skills needed for senior theses, graduate work, and similar challenges ahead.

There is no obligatory preparatory reading for this course. Anything written in Europe before c.1750 that captures your imagination would be worth looking at. Working with texts in translation is expected: many students work with translations from Latin and other languages. If you do wish to work in a language other than English that is welcome, to, but this will not automatically receive a higher grade. There is no textbook for this course, and you will not be under any obligation to purchase any volumes (although you may wish to do so). The resources of the Bodleian Library, Keble College Library, and the Feneley Library will almost always suffice.