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B7
John Jay College of Criminal Justice The City University of New York
New Course Proposal
When completed, this proposal should be submitted to the Office of Undergraduate Studies-Room 634T for consideration by the College Curriculum Committee.
1.Department (s) proposing this course: History and Gender Studies Program
2.Title of the course: History of Gender and Sexuality, prehistory-1650
Abbreviated title (up to 20 characters): History Gender I
3.Level of this course:
100 Level 200 Level X 300 Level400 Level
4.Course description as it is to appear in the College bulletin:
(Write in complete sentences except for prerequisites, hours and credits.)
This class will build on the introductory surveys in gender and sexuality and global history to provide students with two new lenses through which to view history. Given that gender and sexuality are cultural constructs that represent the social mores of the cultures and times in which they exist, and thus have changed throughout history, we will move from the ancient world through 1650 to provide a chronological and global perspective on the changing meanings of sex, sexuality, and gender, and the ways in which their changes represent broader shifts in cultural values and emphases. The course will address the history of gender and sexuality in China, sub-saharan Africa, Europe, and India. Primary and secondary sources provide the basis for class discussion and written assignments. 3 hours, 3 credits
5.Has this course been taught on an experimental basis?
__ No
X Yes: Semester (s) and year (s): Teacher (s): Allison Kavey Enrollment (s): 36
6. Prerequisites: ENG 102 or 201, GEN 101, HIS 203 or HIS 231, and HIS 204 or HIS 205 or HIS 232
7. Number of: class hours 3lab hourscredits 3
8.Brief rationale for the course: This course is a foundational class for the proposed major in
Gender Studies and is an elective for the proposed major in History. It provides students with a historical perspective on the changing nature of gender and sexuality and encourages them to think globally and comparatively about what are too frequently considered unchanging constructs.
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9a. Knowledge and performance objectives of this course:
(What knowledge will the student be expected to acquire and what conceptual and
applied skills will be learned in this course?)
Understand and critically evaluate global constructions of gender and sexuality before 1650, and analyze the forces that contributed to their formation and change, including religion, empire building, and changes in the intellectual systems used to understand the natural world.
Understand and apply modes of historical analysis, including: change over time, the role of contingency, and historical differences as well as commonalities.
The course assignments aim:
To improve student skills in reading comprehension and analysis, and especially in evaluating and comparing historical constructions of gender and sexuality.
To improve student skills in responsible argumentation by refining their abilities to identify, evaluate, and incorporate evidence within the parameters of persuasive writing.
To explore history through primary source materials, using the types of evidence and methodologies that professional historians employ.
9b. Indicate learning objectives of this course related to information literacy.
The information literate student determines the nature and extent of the information needed, accesses information effectively, efficiently, and appropriately, and evaluates information and its sources critically. The student uses information effectively to accomplish a specific purpose, ethically and legally, (e.g., students demonstrate critical interpretation of required readings; and/or effective searching of appropriate discipline specific bibliographic databases; and/or primary data gathering by observation and experimentation; and/or finding and evaluating Internet resources. For many more examples of classroom performance indicators and outcomes see the ACRL standards for higher education at
For questions on information literacy see the library's curriculum committee representative.
Although the course makes extensive use of the internet through a web-based syllabus, electronic reserves, and Blackboard, the course refines and builds upon student information seeking skills primarily through a close examination of both primary-sources (textual as well as visual) and secondary sources.
10. Recommended writing assignments:
(Indicate types of writing assignments and number of pages of each type. Writing assignments should satisfy the College's requirements for writing across the curriculum.) The course will require at least thirty pages of writing based on critical analyses of primary and secondary sources and independent research. In the attached syllabus, twenty assignments of approximately one page each will ask students to critically evaluate their reading assignments and extrapolate from them to make conclusions about historical changes in gender and sexuality. Students will also be asked to write a research paper of 6-8 pages on a topic of their choice, a task that will be supported by the writing and revision of a thesis paragraph and an annotated bibliography.
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11. Will this course be part of any major (s) or program (s)?
__No
_x_Yes. Major or program:
What part of the major? (Prerequisite, core, skills, etc.) Core course for the Gender Studies major; elective in the global history major, in chronological tracks 1 and 2
12. Is this course related to other specific courses?
__No
_x_Yes. Indicate which course (s) and what the relationship will be (e.g., prerequisite,
sequel, etc.). This is the second course in the Gender Studies major, and will follow Gender Studies 101.
13. Please meet with a member of the library faculty before answering question 13. The faculty
member consulted should sign below. (Contact the library's curriculum committee representative to identify which library faculty member to meet with).
Identify and assess the adequacy of the following types of library resources to support this course: databases, books, periodicals. Attach a list of available resources.
Attach a list of recommended resources that would further support this course. Both lists should be in a standard, recognized bibliographic format, preferably APA format.
Signature of library faculty member consulted: ______
14. Are the current resources (e.g. computer labs, facilities, equipment) adequate to support this
course?xYes
___No
If not, what resources will be necessary? With whom have these resource needs been discussed?
15. Syllabus:
Attach a sample syllabus for this course. It should be based on the College's model syllabus. The sample syllabus must include a week by week or class by class listing of topics, readings, other assignments, tests, papers due, or other scheduled parts of the course. It must also include proposed texts. It should indicate how much various assignments or tests will count towards final grades. (If this course has been taught on an experimental basis, an actual syllabus may be attached, if suitable.)
16. This section is to be completed by the chair(s) of the department(s) proposing the course. Name(s) of the Chairperson(s): Eli Faber, Allison Pease
Has this proposal been approved at a meeting of the department curriculum committee?
_No X Yes: Meeting date: November 2008
When will this course be taught?
Every semester, starting Fall 2009
One semester each year, starting______
Once every two years, starting______
How many sections of this course will be offered? At least one every semester
Who will be assigned to teach this course? Professor Allison Kavey
Is this proposed course similar to or related to any course or major offered by any other department (s)?
X No
_Yes. What course (s) or major (s) is this course similar or related to?
Did you consult with department (s) offering similar or related courses or majors?
_X Not applicable_No_Yes
If yes, give a short summary of the consultation process and results.
Will any course be withdrawn if this course is approved? _No _Yes, namely:
Signature (s) of chair of Department (s) proposing this course: Eli Faber Allison Pease
Date: November 26, 2008
Gender Studies 250/History 250: The History of Gender and Sexuality Through 1650 Instructor: Allison Kavey
Office: 4306N, (212)237-8819, Office Hours: M and W, 4-5 or by appointment
This class will build on the introductory surveys in gender and sexuality and global history to provide students with two new lenses through which to view history. It takes for granted that gender and sexuality are cultural constructs that represent the social mores of the cultures and times in which they exist, and thus that they have necessarily changed throughout history. We will move from the ancient world through 1650 to provide a chronological and global perspective on the changing meanings of sex, sexuality, and gender, and the ways in which their changes represent broader shifts in cultural values and emphases. The course will address the history of gender and sexuality in China, sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, and India. Primary and secondary sources will provide fodder for class discussion and written assignments. 3 hours, 3 credits
Required Texts:
All readings will be available through the electronic reserve
Means of Evaluation:
20 1 page reading responses: 40%
1 research paper and presentation (6-8 pages): 60%
Week One
Introduction
How to do the history of gender and sexuality
Jeffrey Weeks, "Sexuality and History Revisited," p. 27-41 in Kim Philips, Sexuality: A Reader, NY:
Routledge, 2001.
Sanra Bern, "Biological Essentialism," p. 6-38 in Sandra L. Bern, Lenses of Gender: Transforming the
Debate over Sexual Inequality, New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994.
Week Two
Gender in the Ancient Near East
Julia M. Asher-Greve, "The Essential Body: Mesopotamian Conceptions of the Gendered Body," p. 8-
37, London: Blackwell, 1998.
Rivkah Harris, "Images of Women in the Gilgamesh Epic," and "The Female Sage in Mesopotamian Literature," ch. 7 and 9 in Rivkah Harris, Gender and Aging in Mesopotamia: The Gilgamesh Epic and Other Ancient Literature, Oklahoma City: University of Oklahoma Press, 2003.
Sexuality in the Ancient Near East
Zainab Bahrani, "Women/sex/gender: Women's History and the Ancient Near East," p. 17-27 in
Women of Babylon: Gender and Representation in Mesopotamia and "Babylonian Women in the
Orientalist Imagination," p. 161-179 in Women of Babylon: Gender and Representation in
Mesopotamia.
Excerpts from Gilgamesh
Week Three
Gender in Ancient Greece
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Sarah B. Pomeroy, "Women in the City of Athens," p. 57-79 in Sarah B. Pomeroy, Goddesses, Whores,
Wives, and Slaves: Women in Classical Antiquity. Schocken Books, 1995.
Hans van Wees, "A brief history of tears: Gender differentiation in Ancient Greece," p. 10-53 in Lin
Foxhall (Ed), When Men Were Men: Masculinity, Power, and Identity in Classical Antiquity,
Routledge, 1999.
Antigone
Male Sexuality in Ancient Greece
John Winkler, "Laying Down the Law: The Oversight of Men's Sexual Behavior in Classical Athens,"
p. 45-70 in John Winkler, The Constraints of Desire. Routledge, 1990.
David M. Halperin, "Sex Before Sexuality: Pederasty, Politics, and Power in Classical Athens," p. 37-
53 in Martin Duberman et al. (eds), Hidden From History. Meridian: 1989.
excerpts from Plato
Research Topic Due
Week Four
Female Sexuality in Ancient Greece
Marilyn Katz, "Sappho and her Sisters: Women in Ancient Greece," Signs 25, 2 (Winter, 2000): SOS-SI, excerpts from Sappho
Female Gender and Sexuality in Ancient China
Susan Mann and Yu-Yin Cheng, "The Book of Filial Piety for Women, attributed to a woman named
Ne'E Zheng," and "Two Ghost Stories from Liaozhai's Records of the Strange, "p. 47-70 and 197-216
in Under Confucian Eyes: Writings on Gender in Chinese History, University of California Press,
2001.
Week Five
Sexuality and Ancient Empires: India
excerpts from the Kama Sutras
Jyoti Puri, "Challenging the Kama Sutras: Challenging Narratives of History and Sexuality," Signs,
2002, 27(3): 603-39.
Anjoli Arondekar, "Without a Trace: Sexuality and the Colonial Archive," Journal of the History of
Sexuality 2005, 14(1-2): 10-27.
Gender in Ancient India
Geraldine Hancock Forbes, "Reflections on South Asian Women's/Gender History, Past and Future,"
Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History, 2003 4(1).
Jeevan Deol, "Sex., Social Critique, and the Female Figure in Premodern Punjabi Poetry: Varis Shah's
'Hir'," Modem Asian Studies, 2002, 36(1): 141-171.
Week Six
Rome and Gender
Mary Boatwright, "The Imperial Women of the Early Second Century AD," American Journal of
Philology, (1991), 112(4): 513-540.
Lysistrata
Rome and Sexuality
Amy Richlin, "Not Before Sexuality: The Materiality of the Cinaedus and the Roman Law against
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Love Between Men," Journal of the History of Sexuality, 3(4), (1993): 523-573.
Lysistrata
Week Seven
Judeo-Christian Religion, Sex, and Gender
Charlotte Elisheva Fonrobert, "When Women Walk in the Ways of Their Fathers: On Gendering the
Rabbinic Claim for Authority," Journal of the History of Sexuality, vol. 10, 3 and 4; (July, 2001): 398-
415.
David Instone Brewer, "Jewish Women Divorcing their Husbands: The Background to Papyrus Se'elim
Thirteen," Harvard Theological Review, (July, 1999), 92(3): 349-357.
Jerome T. Walsh, "Leviticus 18: 22 and 20:13: Who's Doing What to Whom?," Journal of Biblical
Literature, (summer, 2001), 120(2): 201-209.
Saul M. Olyer, "And With a Male You Shalt Not Lie the Lying Down of a Woman:' On the Meaning
and Significance of Leviticus 18:22 and 20:13," Journal of the History of Sexuality, (October, 1994)
5(2): 179-206.
6 source annotated bibliography due
Week Eight
Religion and Denial of the Body
Kathryn A. Smith, "Inventing Marital Chastity: The Iconography of Susanna and the Elders in early
Christian Art," Oxford Art Journal (1993) 16(1): 3-24.
Ross S. Kraemer, "The Conversion of Women to Ascetic Versions of Christianity,"Szg«s, (Winter,
1998), 6(2): 298-307.
Eugenio Menegon, "Child Bodies, Blessed Bodies: The Contest Between Christian Virginity and Confucian Chastity," Nan-Nu: Women and Gender in Early Imperial China, (2004), 6(2): 177-240.
Week Nine
Margaret Malamud, "Gender and Spiritual Self-Fashioning: The Master-Disciple Relationship in Classical Sufism," Journal of the American Academy of Religion, (Spring, 1996), 64(1): 89-117. Mohammed Fadel, "Two Women, One Man: Knowledge, Power, and Gender in Medieval Sunni Legal Thought," International Journal of Middle East Studies, (May, 1997), 29(2): 185-204
Wendy Doniger O'Flaherty, "Ascetism and Sexuality in the Mythology of Siva, Part One," History of Religions, (1969), 8(4): 300-337.
Eliot S. Desutch, "Sakti in Medieval Hindu Sculpture," The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, (1965), 24(1): 81-89.
Week Ten
Empire Building and Sexuality
Walter Penrose, "Hidden in History: Female Homoerotic Desire and Women of a Third Nature in the
South Asian Past," Journal of the History of Sexuality, (2001), 10(1): 3-39.
Luise White, "The Traffic in Heads: Bodies, Borders, and the Articulation of Regional Histories,"
Journal of South African Studies, (June, 1997), 23(2): 325-338.
Jennifer L. Morgan, "Some Could Suckle Over Their Shoulder: Male Travelers, Female Bodies, and the Gendering of Racial Identity, 1500-1770," William and Mary Quarterly, (1997), 54(1): 167-192. Martin Hall, "The Legend of the Lost City, or the Man With Golden Balls," Journal o
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African Studies, (1997), 21(2): 175-99.
Week Eleven
The Medicalization of Gender and Sexuality: and oppositions to it
Michael J. Sweet and Leonard Zwilling, "The First Medicalization: The Taxation and Etiology of Queerness in Classical Indian Medicine," Journal of the History of Sexuality, (4/1993), 3(4): 590-607. Thomas LaQueur, "Discovery of the Sexes," ch. 5 in Making Sex, Harvard University Press, 1990.
Kathleen Brown, "Changed...Into the Fashion of a Man: The Politics of Sexual Difference in a Seventeenth-Century Anglo-American Settlement," Journal of the History of Sexuality, (10/1995), 6(2): 171-193.
Allison Kavey, "Mercury Falling: Gender Malleability and Eroticism in Early Modern Alchemical Writing," ch. 11 in The Sciences of Sexuality in Early Modern Europe, Kenneth Borris and George Rousseau (Eds.), Routledge, 2008.
Week Twelve
Gender, Sexuality, and Religious Reformations
Alison Weber, "Between Ecstasy and Exorcism: Religious Negotiation in Sixteenth Century Spain,"
The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, (1993), 23(2): 221-234.
Mary Wiesner-Hanks, "Women and the Reformations: Reflections of Recent Research," History
Compass (2004), 2.
Phyllis Mack, "Feminine Behavior and Radical Action: Fransiscans, Quakers, and the Followers of
Gandhi," Signs, 1986), 11(3): 457-477.
Peter McDonough, "Metamorphoses of the Jesuits: Sexual Identity, Gender Roles, and Hierarchy in
Catholicism," Comparative Study in Society and History (1990), 32(2): 325-356.
12 source annotated bibliography due
Week Thirteen
Sex, Sexuality, and the Body Politic
Katherine B. Crawford, "Love, Sodomy,and Scandal: Controlling the Sexual Reputation of Henry III,"
Journal of the History of Sexuality, (10/2003), 12(4): 513-542.
Elizabeth Lehfeldt, "Ruling Sexuality: The Political Legitimacy of Elizabeth of Castile," Renaissance
Quarterly, (Spring, 2000), 53(1): 31-56.
Jeffrey Merrick, "The Cardinal and the Queen: Sexual and Political Disorders in the Mazarinades," French Historical Studies, (Spring, 1994), 18(3): 667-699.
Kathleen P. Long, "The Royal Hermaphrodite: Henri III of France," ch. 7 in Hermaphrodites in Renaissance Europe, Ashgate, 2007.
Week Fourteen
Ruling from Below
Tim Gilfoyle, "Prostitutes in History: From Parables of Pornography to Metaphors of Modernity,"
American Historical Review, (2/1999), 104(1): 117-141.
Matthew C. Gutman, "Trafficking in Men: The Anthropology of Masculinity," Annual Review of
Anthropology, (1996), 26: 385-409.
Conclusions
Approved by UCASC, April 24, prepared for College Council, May 11, 2009
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Your research paper will be due at the date and time of the final exam
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Lloyd, G,E.R. (editor). The Hippocratic Writings. NY: Penguin Classics, 1984. Lloyd, G.E.R. Early Greek Science, Thales to Aristotle. NY: W.W. Norton, 1974.
Lloyd, G.E.R. Adversaries and Authorities: Investigations into Ancient Greek and Chinese Science.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Majno, Guido. The Healing Hand: Man and Wound in the Ancient World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991.
Moran, Bruce T. Distilling Knowledge: Alchemy, Chemistry, and the Scientific Revolution. Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. Newman, William R. Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature. Chicago: