HIST2224 Colonialism, Sex and Gender: Historical Episodes

Later Year Course

Offered By	School of History
Academic Career	Undergraduate
Course Subject	History
Offered in	First Semester, 2010
Unit Value	6 units
Course Description	This course is an exploration of historical episodes in which categories of gender-and inevitably, race and sexuality-have interacted and shifted as a result of colonial encounters. Guided by recent work in history and related fields, we will consider episodes in various parts of the globe and at different time periods, in which encounters between expanding imperial cultures and indigenous cultures combined to produce societies with racial and gender hierarchies, and in which gender and sexuality were sites of colonial anxiety, regulation and exploitation. Recent scholarship on imperialism and colonialism has shown how gender and race were crucial markers of colonial social order upon which governing regimes depended. Hierarchies of race have been constructed by imperial powers to buttress their supremacy, and have been both contested and accommodated by colonized peoples. Gender codes were deployed in conjunction with race, so that colonial rulers defined manliness, for example, to fit their own behaviour and to denigrate or control colonized men. Colonized women, often coerced into prostitution or to accept unsanctioned unions with colonizing men, were measured against definitions of femininity based on white Western ideals. Colonial or colonizing women had to adapt definitions of respectable femininity to accommodate the exigencies and challenges of frontier circumstances. This unit presents the history of the modern, globalizing world from perspectives that shed light on contemporary social and cultural issues.
Learning Outcomes	By the end of this course, you should be able to: Analyze the ways in which hierarchies of gender, class and race have intersected historically under colonialism. Use specific historical examples to discuss connections among gender, sexuality and race. Reflect on and discuss specific instances of colonial societies in which imperial rule depended on categories of gender and race. Locate and use primary sources as historical evidence of how colonialism worked. Think, write and argue about how ideas of gender and race have changed over time.
Indicative Assessment	Primary source essay 1,500 words (30%); tutorial participation (10%); research essay 3,500 words (60%).
Workload	The course will be delivered via (streamed) lectures, face-to-face tutorials, and three monitored lecture/activity sessions.
Areas of Interest	History
Requisite Statement	Completion of first year requirements for the HIST major (including EURO 1004), or by permission of the course convenor.
Recommended Courses	None
Prescribed Texts	Nupur Chaudhuri and Margaret Strobel (eds.), Western Women and Imperialism: Complicity and Resistance (1992); Graham Dawson, Soldier Heroes: British Adventure, Empire and the Imagining of Masculinities (1994); Julia Clancy-Smith and Frances Gouda (eds.), Domesticating the Empire: Race, Gender, and Family Life in French and Dutch Colonialism (1998); Tanya Dalziell, Settler Romances and the Australian Girl (2004); Tony Ballantyne and Antoinette Burton (eds.), Bodies in Contact: Rethinking Colonial Encounters in World History (2005).
Majors/Specialisations	History
Academic Contact	Professor Woollacott

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