This page collects course titles and course descriptions of past (and sometimes present and upcoming) classes in gender history offered at Florida State University, to help graduate students in planning major and minor fields in gender history.
Spring 2020 – Seminar in US Gender History
Prof. Suzanne Sinke
This course provides you with an introduction to key authors and selected topics in the history of gender for the United States. Though we will discuss some classic works and theoretical texts, our focus will remain on recent scholarship. Further, you will explore one element of U.S. gender history that interests you in greater depth and write a seminar paper based on primary source research contextualized through secondary works on that topic. In a graduate program of study the course fits topically as Gender History or geographically as U.S. History. The readings include scholarship across U.S. History hence where you count it chronologically in your program of study will depend on your paper topic. Choose accordingly. Class sessions will consist primarily of a discussion of readings early in the semester, and include a variety of process steps for the final paper across the semester. You should aspire for the seminar paper to be something you could present at a conference or perhaps submit as a potential publication in a scholarly journal.
Fall 2019 – Seminar: Gender and Sexuality
Prof. Charles Upchurch
Fields: 1) Gender and Sexuality 2) European History
This course will expose students to the latest debates and methodologies in gender history and the history of sexuality, drawing primarily on British gender history and the theoretical works that have shaped the study of gender and sexuality more broadly. The methodologies of gender history are now applied in all fields of history, including political, economic, social, cultural, religious, and military history, just as the theories that have shaped gender history are shared broadly within the profession, especially by social and cultural historians. Students will produce an original research paper for the class. The research paper can be on British gender history, or it can be based on the primary and secondary sources that the student expects to work with in their dissertation, but interpreting those sources with either a gendered analysis or a theoretical framework they had not yet considered. A significant amount of time will be spent workshopping student papers, and identifying which theoretical frameworks or methodological approaches might best enhance the analysis of the sources and questions. While gender history is a component of most courses I teach, I offer a course primarily focused on gender history (such as this one) only once every three years.
Fall 2019 – Medicine and Law in Eighteenth-Century France
Prof. Cathy McClive
This class will count for the fields of gender, STEM, early modern Europe and global history.
Spring 2019 – War and Home Fronts in East Asia HIS 69XX
Prof. Annika Culver
By investigating imperial Japan and its colonized periphery (Korea, Manchuria, and later, portions of China) as a lens to view complex issues of home front-battlefield interactions, gender, and postwar reconstruction, this graduate-level course examines how individuals experienced life under wartime conditions and then dealt with its aftermath following either buoying victory (Sino-Japanese, 1894-1895 and Russo-Japanese Wars, 1904-1905) or defeat (Asia-Pacific War, 1937-1945). In its phase of imperial expansion, Japan occupied numerous surrounding territories, but after losing World War II, experienced Allied Occupation (1945-1952). Contemporary Japan currently exists as thriving democracy and peaceful international actor, but a wartime legacy of an expansionist, militarist past continues to haunt relations with its continental neighbors. This course examines how the Japanese themselves experienced war and viewed their society. This class will count for the fields of gender and War and Society.
Spring 2019 – Medicine and Science, 1500-1800
Prof. Cathy McClive
This class will count for the fields of gender, STEM, early modern Europe and Atlantic World.
Spring 2018 – U.S. Gender History Seminar
Prof. Katherine Mooney
This course allows students to dive into texts that have followed Joan Scott’s call to consider gender as a useful category of historical analysis. Each assigned book (some classics, some new) serves as a model of one way of engaging gender and an example of a particular body of work in the field. With these in mind, students should be prepared to stake out their own research projects; considerable time in class will be devoted to the writing process, from idea, to research, to drafting, to editing, to presentation. This class will count for the fields of gender history and US history (either half). This course is distinct from the colloquium in U.S. Gender History, taught in the Spring 2017 semester by Prof. Sinke.
Spring 2017 – Colloquium: U.S. Gender History
Prof. Suzanne Sinke
This course provides you with an introduction to key authors and selected topics in the history of gender for the United States. Though we will discuss some classic works and theoretical texts, our focus will remain on recent scholarship. Further, you will explore the scholarship on one element of U.S. gender history that interests you in greater depth and write a historiography on that topic. In a graduate program of study the course fits topically as Gender History or geographically as U.S. History. The readings include scholarship across U.S. History hence where you count it chronologically in your program of study will depend on your historiography topic. Choose accordingly. Class sessions will consist primarily of a discussion of readings, typically five-six articles/ book chapters per week. Come prepared to discuss all of them. You will write a short reaction paper prior to most class sessions. Insights about gender and how historians approach it will build over the semester.
Spring 2016 – Seminar: Writing History: Gender/Theory
Prof. Charles Upchurch, British History
This course focuses on identifying the best approaches and theoretical frameworks to apply to specific research questions and source materials. The readings will expose students to the latest debates methodologies in gender history, drawing primarily on British gender history and the more theoretical works that have shaped the study of gender and sexuality more broadly. The methodologies of gender history are now applied in all fields of history, including political, economic, social, cultural, religious, and military history, just as the theories that have shaped gender history are shared broadly within the profession, especially by social and cultural historians. Students will produce an original research paper for the class. The research paper can be on British gender history, or it can be based on the primary and secondary sources that the student expects to work with in their dissertation, but interpreting those sources with either a gendered analysis or a theoretical framework they had not yet considered. A significant amount of time will be spent workshopping student papers, and identifying which theoretical frameworks or methodological approaches might best enhance the analysis of the sources and questions. In addition, as time permits, there will be an ongoing discussion throughout the semester on how to make the best use of digital resources, not only to research a topic, but also to create professional connections within your field, to enhance publication and presentation options.
Fall 2014 – Graduate Colloquium: Gender and Consumerism in Japan from Empire to Postwar, 1880s-1950s
Dr. Annika A. Culver, East Asian History
This graduate-level course investigates how products, people, and companies circulated throughout Japan and its empire into wartime and the postwar period, and how gender impacted consumption and consumerism in China, Japan, and Korea during pivotal moments in East Asian history. We examine how working-class and middle- to upper-class women emerged as important consumers for household items, foods, fashions, cosmetics, and even wartime propaganda. We also look at how state propaganda functioned as “advertising” to instruct women to engage in behaviors beneficial to the nation (or corporation) from the Meiji (1868-1912) to early postwar period (1945-1955).
Use the comments section below to suggest classes or leave comments. The gender history faculty will review all requests.
Projects in History 