Poststructuralism and the Concept of Gender
Core Readings
Judith Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (1990), Preface to the 1990 edition, Preface to the 1999 edition, and Chapter 1: Subjects of Sex/Gender/Desire
C. Riley Snorton, Black on Both Sides: A Racial History of Trans Identity (Minneapolis, 2017), Introduction
Further Readings
Antoinette Burton, Gender History: A Very Short Introduction (2024)
Kimberle Crenshaw, 'Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics and Violence against Women of Color', Stanford Law Review (1991)
Reginal Kunzel, 'The Power of Queer History,' American Historical Review (2018)
Downs, L. L., ‘From Women’s History to Gender History’, in S. Berger, H. Feldner and K. Passmore (eds), Writing History: Theory and Practice (2003), pp. 261-82.
bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman: Black Women and Feminism (1982).
Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, This bridge called my back: writings by radical women of color (1981 [2021]
Seminar / Essay Questions
1. Is gender a useful category of historical analysis?
2. What is the relationship between gender history and poststructuralism?
3. What is the relationship between gender history and feminism?
3. To what extent have queer and intersectional approaches changed how historians think about “women” and “gender”?
Gobbet Questions
1. "We need a refusal of the fixed and permanent quality of the binary opposition, a genuine historicization and deconstruction of the terms of sexual difference." (Joan Scott, 'Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis', 1986, p. 1065)
2. "There is no gender identity behind the expressions of gender; that identity is performatively constituted by the very "expressions" that are said to be its results." (Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, p. 34).