Hidden from History
tutor: Liz Egan
The women鈥檚 liberation movement and gay liberation movements of the 1970s and 1980s provided an important political impetus to history-writing, as people began to want to 鈥榝ind鈥� themselves in the past. Women鈥檚 history and gay history first emerged as significant fields (both inside and outside academia) in this period, with historians seeking to uncover a history of women and gay people that had previously been 鈥榟idden鈥� by the elite white male bias of the discipline. Soon, however, feminist and gay historians began to question whether their task was simply to reveal what had been obscured, and whether it really was possible to find people 鈥榣ike them鈥� in the past. As poststructuralism gained in influence in the 1980s and 1990s, gender history and queer history began to develop – approaches which focused more on tracing how modern sexualities and gendered identity categories had come into being.
Seminar questions:
- Why and how had women and/or sexuality been excluded from traditional history writing, and deemed inappropriate topics for 'serious' historians?
- Why was history so important for the women鈥檚 and gay liberation movements?
- What is the difference between women鈥檚 history and gender history? What does it mean to write feminist histories?
- What is the difference between gay history and queer history?
- What are the political implications of historians approaching gender identity as socially constructed and historically contingent rather than fixed, innate and natural?
Core readings:
Sheila Rowbotham, Introduction to Hidden From History: 300 Years of Women's Oppression and the Fight Against It (1975)
George Chauncey, Jr., Martin Duberman & Martha Vicinus, 鈥業ntroduction鈥�, in Martin Duberman, Martha Vicinus & George Chauncey, Jr. (eds.), Hidden from History: Reclaiming the Gay and Lesbian Past (1991)
Joan Scott, 鈥楾he Evidence Of Experience鈥� Critical Inquiry 17:4 (Summer, 1991), 773-797
Additionally, please also take a look at either of the following to think about what it means to write a feminist history. You do not need to read these in detail but think about the position of the historian/s and how they reflect on this in their writing:
Catherine Hall, White, Male and Middle Class: Explorations in Feminism and History (Routledge, 1992), Ch 鈥淔eminism and Feminist History鈥�
or
Further Readings:
H.G. Cocks and Matt Houlbrook, The Modern History of Sexuality (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006) [a useful overview for the whole module]
G. Bock, 鈥榃omen鈥檚 History and the History of Gender: Aspects of an International Debate鈥�, Gender and History, 1 (1989)
J. Scott, Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis鈥�, The American Historical Review, 91:5 (Dec, 1986), 1053-1075
L.L. Downs, 鈥楩rom Women鈥檚 History to Gender History鈥�, in S. Berger, H. Feldner and K. Passmore (eds.)., Writing History: Theory and Practice (2003)
Jeffrey Weeks, Coming Out: Homosexual Politics in Britain from the Nineteenth Century to the Present (1977)
Leslie Feinberg, Transgender Warriors: Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Rodman (1996)
Susan Striker, 鈥楳y Words to Victor Frankenstein above the Village of Chamounix鈥�, GLQ 1:3 (1994)
Joanne Meyerowitz鈥檚 How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States (2002)
Deborah G. White, Ar鈥檔鈥檛 I a Woman: Female Slaves in the Plantation South (1985)
Glenda Gilmore, Gender and Jim Crow: Women and the Politics of White Supremacy in North Carolina (1996)
Catherine Clinton, The Plantation Mistress (1982)
Mrinalini Sinha, Colonial Masculinity: The 鈥楳anly鈥� Englishman and the 鈥楨ffeminate鈥� Bengali in the Late Nineteenth Century (Manchester University Press, 1995)
Cathy Cohen, The Boundaries of Blackness: AIDS and the Breakdown of Black Politics (1999)