Tutor: Naomi Pullin

Seminar Questions

• To what extent did a 'one-sex' model of the body dominate before the eighteenth century?
• How were gender identities constructed and controlled in premodern societies?
• How far were gender identities circumvented or resisted in premodern societies?

Core reading:

Karen Harvey, 'The Century of Sex? Gender, Bodies, and Sexuality in the Long Eighteenth Century', Historical Journal 45, no. 4 (2002), 899-916.

Thomas Laqueur, Making Sex: Body and Gender from the Greeks to Freud (Cambridge, MA, 1992), ch. 1.

Todd W. Reeser, 'How to do Early Modern Queer History', in GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies 26, no. 1 (2020), 183-196.

Further reading:

Chojnacki, Stanley, Women and Men in Renaissance Venice: Twelve Essays on Patrician Society (Baltimore, 2000)

Crawford, Katherine, European Sexualities, 1400-1800 (2007)

Dabhiowala, Faramerz, The Origins of Sex: A History of the First Sexual Revolution (2012)

Flather, Amanda, Gender and Space in Early Modern England (Woodbridge, 2007)

Gowing, Laura, Gender Relations in Early Modern England (Harlow, 2012)

Heijden, Manon van der, Women and Crime in Early Modern Holland, trans. David McKay (Leiden, 2016)

Karras, Ruth Mazo, From Boys to Men: Formations of Masculinity in Late Medieval Europe (Philadelphia, 2003)

King, Helen, The One-Sex Body on Trial: The Classical and Early Modern Evidence (Farnham, 2013)

Lidman, Satu, Gender, Violence and Attitudes: Lessons from Early Modern Europe, trans. Eva Malkki (London, 2018)

Meade, T.A., and M.E. Wiesner-Hanks, eds, A Companion to Global Gender History, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 2020) [Especially Chapters 11-22]

Miller, Naomi J., and Naomi Yavneh, Gender and Early Modern Constructions of Childhood (Burlington, VT, 2011)

Munns, Jessica, and Penny Richards, Gender, Power and Privilege in Early Modern Europe (Harlow, 2003)

Muravyeva, Marianna G., and Raisa Maria Toivo, eds, Gender in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (New York, 2013)

O'Donnell, K. and O'Rourke, M, Queer Masculinities, 1550-1800: Siting Same-Sex Desire in the Early Modern World (2006).

Poska, Allyson M., Jane Couchman, and Katherine A. McIver, eds, The Ashgate Research Companion to Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (London, 2016)

Rocke, Michael, Forbidden Friendships: Homosexuality and Male Culture in Renaissance Florence (New York, 1996)

Shepard, Alexandra, Meanings of Manhood in Early Modern England (2003), esp. chapter 6

Van Gent, Jacqueline, and Susan Broomhall, eds, Governing Masculinities in the Early Modern Period: Regulating Selves and Others (London, 2011)