Gender, Sex and the Shaping of Modern Europe

Gender, Sex and the Shaping of Modern Europe
Author: Annette F. Timm
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2016-03-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1472583876

Through a blend of history and historiography, Gender, Sex and the Shaping of Modern Europe provides a clear and concise introduction to gender history in the region. The detailed examples and engaging language make this a useful overview for students not only of gender history, but also of European history more widely, as considerations of gender illuminate our understanding of historical change and individual experience. In six thematic chapters that cover democracy and capitalism, imperialism and war, the authors explain how gender roles were socially constructed and how they influenced political and economic developments during the period. This new edition has been thoroughly re-edited and expanded to take account of ongoing methodological innovation and recent scholarship in the field. The book also includes a brand new chapter on sexuality in the 21st century and extended material on: · Scandinavia · The Mediterranean · Alternative Sexualities · Women's history and femininity Gender, Sex and the Shaping of Modern Europe is a key text for all students of gender history and the history of modern Europe in general.

Gender, Sex and the Shaping of Modern Europe

Gender, Sex and the Shaping of Modern Europe
Author: Annette F. Timm
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 353
Release: 2016-03-10
Genre: History
ISBN: 1472583825

Through a blend of history and historiography, Gender, Sex and the Shaping of Modern Europe provides a clear and concise introduction to gender history in the region. The detailed examples and engaging language make this a useful overview for students not only of gender history, but also of European history more widely, as considerations of gender illuminate our understanding of historical change and individual experience. In six thematic chapters that cover democracy and capitalism, imperialism and war, the authors explain how gender roles were socially constructed and how they influenced political and economic developments during the period. This new edition has been thoroughly re-edited and expanded to take account of ongoing methodological innovation and recent scholarship in the field. The book also includes a brand new chapter on sexuality in the 21st century and extended material on: · Scandinavia · The Mediterranean · Alternative Sexualities · Women's history and femininity Gender, Sex and the Shaping of Modern Europe is a key text for all students of gender history and the history of modern Europe in general.

Gender, Pleasure, and Violence

Gender, Pleasure, and Violence
Author: Agnieszka Kościańska
Publisher: Indiana University Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2021-01-01
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0253053102

Behind the Iron Curtain, the politics of sexuality and gender were, in many ways, more progressive than the West. While Polish citizens undoubtedly suffered under the oppressive totalitarianism of socialism, abortion was legal, clear laws protected victims of rape, and it was relatively easy to legally change one's gender. In Gender, Pleasure, and Violence, Agnieszka Kościańska reveals that sexologists—experts such as physicians, therapists, and educators—not only treated patients but also held sex education classes at school, published regular columns in the press, and authored highly popular sex manuals that sold millions of copies. Yet strict gender roles within the home meant that true equality was never fully within reach. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, and archival work, Kościańska shares how professions like sexologists defined the notions of sexual pleasure and sexual violence under these sweeping cultural changes. By tracing the study of sexual human behavior as it was developed and professionalized in Poland since the 1960s, Gender, Pleasure, and Violence explores how the collapse of socialism brought both restrictions in gender rights and new opportunities.

The Shape of Sex

The Shape of Sex
Author: Leah DeVun
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 661
Release: 2021-05-25
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0231551363

Winner, 2024 Haskins Medal, Medieval Academy of America Winner, 2023 Margaret W. Rossiter History of Women in Science Prize, History of Science Society Winner, 2022 Award for Excellence in the Study of Religion: Historical Studies, American Academy of Religion Honorable Mention, 2023 John Boswell Prize, The Committee on Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender History (CLGBTH) Longlisted, 2022 Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Studies, Lambda Literary Awards The Shape of Sex is a pathbreaking history of nonbinary sex, focusing on ideas and individuals who allegedly combined or crossed sex or gender categories from 200–1400 C.E. Ranging widely across premodern European thought and culture, Leah DeVun reveals how and why efforts to define “the human” so often hinged on ideas about nonbinary sex. The Shape of Sex examines a host of thinkers—theologians, cartographers, natural philosophers, lawyers, poets, surgeons, and alchemists—who used ideas about nonbinary sex as conceptual tools to order their political, cultural, and natural worlds. DeVun reconstructs the cultural landscape navigated by individuals whose sex or gender did not fit the binary alongside debates about animality, sexuality, race, religion, and human nature. The Shape of Sex charts an embrace of nonbinary sex in early Christianity, its brutal erasure at the turn of the thirteenth century, and a new enthusiasm for nonbinary transformations at the dawn of the Renaissance. Along the way, DeVun explores beliefs that Adam and Jesus were nonbinary-sexed; images of “monstrous races” in encyclopedias, maps, and illuminated manuscripts; justifications for violence against purportedly nonbinary outsiders such as Jews and Muslims; and the surgical “correction” of bodies that seemed to flout binary divisions. In a moment when questions about sex, gender, and identity have become incredibly urgent, The Shape of Sex casts new light on a complex and often contradictory past. It shows how premodern thinkers created a system of sex and embodiment that both anticipates and challenges modern beliefs about what it means to be male, female—and human.

Shaping Sexual Knowledge

Shaping Sexual Knowledge
Author: Lutz Sauerteig
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 349
Release: 2009-01-13
Genre: History
ISBN: 113422088X

The history of sex education enables us to gain valuable insights into the cultural constructions of what different societies have defined as 'normal' sexuality and sexual health. Yet, the history of sex education has only recently attracted the full attention of historians of modern sexuality. Shaping Sexual Knowledge: A Cultural History of Sex Education in Twentieth Century Europe makes a considerable contribution not only to the cultural history of sexual enlightenment and identity in modern Europe, but also to the history of childhood and adolescence. The essays collected in this volume treat sex education in the broadest sense, incorporating all aspects of the formal and informal shaping of sexual knowledge and awareness of the young. The volume, therefore, not only addresses officially-sanctioned and regulated sex education delivered within the school system and regulated by the State and in some cases the Church, but also the content, iconography and experience of sexual enlightenment within the private sphere of the family and as portrayed through the media.

Reproductive Citizens

Reproductive Citizens
Author: Nimisha Barton
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 367
Release: 2020-09-15
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501749684

In the familiar tale of mass migration to France from 1880 onward, we know very little about the hundreds of thousands of women who formed a critical part of those migration waves. In Reproductive Citizens, Nimisha Barton argues that their relative absence in the historical record hints at a larger and more problematic oversight—the role of sex and gender in shaping the experiences of migrants to France before the Second World War. Barton's compelling history of social citizenship demonstrates how, through the routine application of social policies, state and social actors worked separately toward a shared goal: repopulating France with immigrant families. Filled with voices gleaned from census reports, municipal statistics, naturalization dossiers, court cases, police files, and social worker registers, Reproductive Citizens shows how France welcomed foreign-born men and women—mobilizing naturalization, family law, social policy, and welfare assistance to ensure they would procreate, bearing French-assimilated children. Immigrants often embraced these policies because they, too, stood to gain from pensions, family allowances, unemployment benefits, and French nationality. By striking this bargain, they were also guaranteed safety and stability on a tumultuous continent. Barton concludes that, in return for generous social provisions and refuge in dark times, immigrants joined the French nation through marriage and reproduction, breadwinning and child-rearing—in short, through families and family-making—which made them more French than even formal citizenship status could.

The Family and the Nation

The Family and the Nation
Author: Jennifer Ngaire Heuer
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Total Pages: 268
Release: 2018-09-05
Genre: History
ISBN: 1501725602

The French Revolution transformed the nation's—and eventually the world's—thinking about citizenship, nationality, and gender roles. At the same time, it created fundamental contradictions between citizenship and family as women acquired new rights and duties but remained dependents within the household. In The Family and the Nation, Jennifer Ngaire Heuer examines the meaning of citizenship during and after the revolution and the relationship between citizenship and gender as these ideas and practices were reworked in the late 1790s and early nineteenth century.Heuer argues that tensions between family and nation shaped men's and women's legal and social identities from the Revolution and Terror through the Restoration. She shows the critical importance of relating nationality to political citizenship and of examining the application, not just the creation, of new categories of membership in the nation. Heuer draws on diverse historical sources—from political treatises to police records, immigration reports to court cases—to demonstrate the extent of revolutionary concern over national citizenship. This book casts into relief France's evolving attitudes toward patriotism, immigration, and emigration, and the frequently opposing demands of family ties and citizenship.

The Business of Everyday Life

The Business of Everyday Life
Author: Beverly Lemire
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Total Pages: 292
Release: 2005
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780719072222

This book examines the daily practices of men and women in the 17th through 19th centuries to budget succesfully and make ends meet. The author shows the many ways businesses worked, such as pawning, selling, and borrowing on a regular basis, as well as the strong role gender played in the division of responsibilities.

Europe, 1890-1945

Europe, 1890-1945
Author: Robin W. Winks
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 306
Release: 2003
Genre: Business & Economics
ISBN: 9780195154498

The first half of the twentieth century was of one of the most turbulent periods in Europe's history. While social theorists challenged orthodox ways of thinking about the establishment of a -good society, - scientists offered up new visions of the workings of the universe. Women fought for increased power within the altered social landscape, and change and controversy reigned in the worlds of art and culture. The chaos of world politics ushered in the two great wars, which would forever alter Europe's position in the world. Europe, 1890-1945 offers a concise, accessible overview of this tumultuous time period. It provides a clear outline of the political events that shaped the age and offers a discussion of the seismic shifts in social and cultural landscapes. Topics covered include the rise of modernism in the arts, Social Darwinism and its effects on theories of race, the making of -national- identities, the origins of the modern ecology movement, and the changing roles of women in an era of war and violence. The authors thoroughly analyze the causes and effects of the two great wars, while reaching beyond Europe to discuss the events in the United States, Africa, and Asia that contributed to the evolving face of world politics. With nine maps for easy reference, chapter summaries to aid in reader comprehension, a detailed chronology, and twenty-four photographs, Europe, 1890-1945 is an ideal text for undergraduate courses that explore the crisis and conflict that governed the early twentieth-century European world.

The Frail Social Body

The Frail Social Body
Author: Carolyn J. Dean
Publisher: Univ of California Press
Total Pages: 284
Release: 2000-02-16
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780520923485

Amid the national shame and subjugation following World War I in France, cultural critics there—journalists, novelists, doctors, and legislators, among others—worked to rehabilitate what was perceived as an unhealthy social body. Carolyn J. Dean shows how these critics attempted to reconstruct the "bodily integrity" of the nation by pointing to the dangers of homosexuality and pornography. Dean's provocative work demonstrates the importance of this concept of bodily integrity in France and shows how it was ultimately used to define first-class citizenship. Dean presents fresh historical material—including novels and medical treatises—to show how fantasies about the body-violating qualities of homosexuality and pornography informed social perceptions and political action. Although she focuses on the period from 1890 to 1945, Dean also establishes the relevance of these ideas to current preoccupations with pornography and sexuality in the United States.