WOMEN'S HISTORY: GENDER & POLITICS
HIST 865

           If “well-behaved women rarely make history,” why was the creation of a National Women’s History Museum near the Mall in Washington DC so controversial? What would you select to display in the exhibit on politics? Are politics just voting and running for office?
           What did we learn from the confirmation hearings before the Senate of the Honorable Ketanji Brown Jackson for the US Supreme Court? Who has posed the “woman question” before and how have the challenges changed over time and from one continent to another?
            Why did Parisian women march on a rainy October afternoon in 1789 demanding bread and then return home the next evening with the king? How did Mary Wollstonecraft make her argument for women’s rights as human rights? Are women’s rights human rights?
            What can we learn from novels, films, and memoirs about Rosa Luxemburg who was eulogized by German newspapers as the last heroic man still alive at the end of the First World War? How did the Russian Revolution reorganize families in 1917? Why were French girls banned from wearing headscarves to school? When did Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, leader of the Liberian women’s movement and the first democratically elected woman to serve as president in African history receive the Nobel Peace Prize?
            How do our own leaders define politics? You will have the opportunity to ask them as they run for office during the midterms.
            In short, we will ask lots of questions and we will hope to answer a few. We will focus on revolutionary crowds, questions of inclusion and difference, feminism and suffrage, and student activism in Europe and the world. What new models could we propose for teaching gender and politics at the high school and university level.
            Questions about the course: Janet.Polasky@unh.edu