The aim of this module is to explore the different ways in which authors and thinkers have engaged with questions of gender and female equality through four centuries of Hispanic culture. This will be done initially by focusing on controversies surrounding women’s access to education and the ‘querelle des femmes’, which represented the major context for feminist debate in the early modern period, before analysing how those controversies are developed and expanded in the Enlightenment and the long nineteenth century. Students will analyse how the presentation of these issues varies not only by period but also by genre, and will study a variety of different kinds of text, from fiction and drama to poetry and the treatise. Emphasis will be placed throughout on the detailed analysis of primary texts within their own cultural contexts, allowing students to see how these fundamental questions have been engaged with in different ways over time.