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Gender and Sexuality in Historical Perspective

This research seminar brings together faculty and advanced graduate students working on projects that engage the theme of gender and sexuality in historical perspective. Encouraging academic exchanges across disciplinary boundaries, this seminar will meet regularly for research presentations by affiliated faculty and graduate students, lectures from invited speakers, and discussions of current scholarship. Deliberately broad in scope, this seminar will explore gender in a wide variety of historical periods and geographic contexts. Among the questions we will ask are how a gender analysis can shape studies of sexuality and ideas of the body; the ways in which race, ethnicity, class and gender are relationally constituted and intersect in historically important ways; and finally, the ways in which a gender analysis can help illuminate major political transformations.

Current Events

Fall 2021

All Meetings will be held via Zoom.

  • Friday, September 24, 2021, 1:30-2:30 P.M.
    Research talk: Margaret Andersen (Associate Professor, History)
    Title: “Denied the Joys of Motherhood”: Infertility, Medicine, and Women's Voices in Interwar France
  • Monday, October 4, 2021, 3:30-5:00 P.M.
    Of interest to seminar participants: Abraham and Rebecca Solomon and Ida Schwartz Distinguished Lecture on Judaic Studies: The Politics of Risk and Resistance: Thinking Gender, Disability, and State Violence through Ancient Jewish Story, Julia Watts Belser, Georgetown University
  • Friday, October 22, 2021, 1:30-2:30 P.M.
    Discussion of Manon Garcia, We are not born submissive (Princeton UP, 2021)
  • November 19, 2021, 11:00 A.M.-12:00 P.M.
    Joint meeting with Just Environments seminar: Maria Stehle (MFLL) and Joela Jacobs: “A Conversation about Little Joe (dir. Hausner, 2019), Interspecies Relations and Plant Sexualities”
  • December 3, 2021, 1:30-2:30 P.M.
    Research talk: Claire Mayo (PhD candidate, history):
    Title: The Performance of Citizenship and the Gender of Recovery Aid: A Case Study of the Great Flood of 1910

Spring 2022

  •  January 28, 1:30-2:30 P.M.
    Research talk: Alyssa Culp (PhD candidate, History)
    Title: The Dead Do Tell Tales: Corpse Women and the Legitimization of the Bavarian Morgue

  • February 11, 1:30-2:30 P.M.
    Invited talk: Meghan Roberts, Bowdoin College
    Title: TBA 

  •  March 25: 1:30-2:30 P.M.
    Research talk: Brooke Bauer (Assistant Professor, History)
    Title: TBA 

  • April 8 12:45-1:45 P.M.
    Research talk: Annachiara Mariani and Gregory Whited (Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures)
    Title: TBA


Past Events

Spring 2021

All Meetings will be held via Zoom.

  • Friday, January 22, 2021, 1:30-2:30 P.M.
    Research talk: Dawn Coleman, Department of English
    Title: "Inventing Secular Womanhood in American Literature, 1850-1890" 
  • Friday, February 19, 2021, 1:30-2:30 P.M.
    Research talk: Maria Stehle, Department of Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures
    Title: "Plants, Places, and Plots: Interrelations in and Beyond German Literature, Film, and Art"
  • Friday, March 5, 2021, 1:30-2:30 PM
    Research talk: Helene Sinnreich, Department of Religious Studies
    Title: "The Atrocity of Hunger: Starvation in the Warsaw, Lodz, and Krakow Ghettos during World War II"
  • Friday, April 30, 2021, 1:30-2:30 PM
    Book discussion: Kate Manne's Down Girl

Fall 2020

All meetings to be held via Zoom 

  • Friday, September 25, 2020, 1:30-2:30 P.M.
    Discussion: Deborah Cohen, Family Secrets: Shame and Privacy in Modern Britain, introduction and Chapter 6 
  • Friday, October 9, 2020, 1:30-2:30 P.M.
    Discussion of pre-circulated work in progress: Margaret Andersen, Department of History “Family Formation and the Law: Reconceiving Adoption in France, 1923-1958” 
  • Friday, October 30,  2020, 1:30-2:30 P.M.
    Discussion: Christopher Chitty, Sexual Hegemony 
  • Friday, November 20, 2020, 1:30-2:30 P.M.
    Research talk: Laura Leibman, Reed College,
    Title: The Art of the Jewish Family: A History of Women in Early New York in Five Objects 
  • Friday, December 4, 2020, 1:30-2:30 P.M.
    Discussion of pre-circulated work in progress: Kristen Block, Department of History
    Title: “Sexual Predation and Venereal Disease in the Jamaica Diaries of Thomas Thistlewood, 1750-1780” 

Spring 2020

  • Wednesday, January 29, 2020, 1:30-2:30 P.M.
    Discussion of the book Sins against Nature: Sex and Archives in Colonial New Spain by Zeb Tortorici
    UT Humanities Center Seminar Room 2229 Dunford Hall – 2nd Floor

  • Wednesday, February 19, 2020, 1:00-2:00 P.M.
    Research Presentation by Chad Black (Department of History), "Negotiating Adultery in Colonial Quito" 
    UT Humanities Center Seminar Room 2229 Dunford Hall – 2nd Floor

  • Wednesday,March 4, 2020, 1:30-2:30 P.M.
    Research Presentation by Sara Ritchey (Department of History)
    UT Humanities Center Seminar Room 2229 Dunford Hall – 2nd Floor

  • Wednesday, April 15, 2020, 1:00-2:00 P.M.
    Research Presentation by Kristin Block (Department of History) Canceled
    UT Humanities Center Seminar Room 2229 Dunford Hall – 2nd Floor

  • Wednesday, April 29, 2020, 1:00-2:00 P.M.
    Discussion of Reading Canceled
    UT Humanities Center Seminar Room 2229 Dunford Hall – 2nd Floor

Fall 2019

  • Monday, September 9, 2019, 1:00-2:00 P.M.
    Discussion of Rachel O’Neill “Whither Critical Masculinity Studies? Notes on Inclusive Masculinity Theory, Postfeminism, and Sexual Politics” Men and Masculinities 18(1): 100-120
    UT Humanities Center Seminar Room 2229 Dunford Hall – 2nd Floor
  • Monday, September 23, 2019, 1:00-2:00 P.M.
    Research Presentation by Dr. Margaret Andersen (History), “Writing to the State about Infertility in 1970s France”
    UT Humanities Center Seminar Room 2229 Dunford Hall – 2nd Floor
  • Monday, October 28, 2019, 1:00-2:00 P.M.

    Research Presentation by Dr. Megan Bryson (Religious Studies), “Introduction to Buddhist Masculinities: Beyond the Buddha”
    1210 McClung Tower

  • Monday, November 11, 2019, 1:00-2:00 P.M.
    Discussion of Laura Kounine, “Emotions, Mind, and Body on Trial: A Cross-Cultural Perspective” Journal of Social History, 2017, Vol.51 (2), pp.219-230
    402 McClung Tower, 4th floor
  • Monday, December 2, 2019, 1:00-2:00 P.M.
    Research Presentation by Alex Garnhart-Bushakra (PhD Candidate, Department of History),“Masculinity, Mother Jerusalem, and Transgressive Imagery in First Crusade Sources”
    UT Humanities Center Seminar Room 2229 Dunford Hall – 2nd Floor

Spring 2019

  • Friday, January 18, 2019 12:15-1:15 P.M.
    Discussion of:
    Cassia Roth, “Policing Pregnancy: Reproduction, Poverty, and the Law in Early Twentieth-Century Rio de Janeiro” Journal of Women’s History Volume 29, No. 4 (Winter 2017)
    UT Humanities Center Seminar Room E308 Melrose Hall (3rd floor)
  • Friday, February 8, 2019 12:15-1:15  P.M.
    Discussion with David Greven, University of South Carolina
    UT Humanities Center Seminar Room E308 Melrose Hall (3rd floor)
  • Friday, February 22, 2019 1:30-2:30 P.M.
    Lecture by Jennifer Palmer, University of Georgia
    “They Persisted in Their Revolt: Freedom and Ownership in the French Caribbean”
    Hodges Auditorium
  • Friday, March 29, 2019 12:15-1:15 P.M.
    Book discussion, TBA
    UT Humanities Center Seminar Room E308 Melrose Hall (3rd floor)
  • Friday, April 12, 2019 12:15-1:15 P.M.
    Research discussion with Helene Sinnreich, Department of Religious Studies
    UT Humanities Center Seminar Room E308 Melrose Hall (3rd floor)

Fall 2018

  • Friday, September 7: 12:15-1:15 P.M.
    Discussion of:
    • Kaitlynn Mendes, Jessica Ringrose, Jessalynn Keller, “#MeToo and the Promise and Pitfalls of challenging rape culture through digital feminist activism” European Journal of Women’s Studies April 28, 2019
    • Julia Martinez, “The Harvey Weinstein of Colorado College” The Chronicle of Higher Education.November 4, 2017
      UT Humanities Center Seminar Room E308 Melrose Hall (3rd floor)
  • Friday, September 21: 12:15-1:15 P.M.
    Discussion of:
    • Sarah Colvin and Katharina Karcher, “1968 - the year that rocked whose world?” in Sarah Colvin ed. Women, global protest movements, and political agency: rethinking the legacy of 1968
    • Andrea Hajek, “Despite or in debt to 1968? Second-wave feminism and the gendered history of Italy's 1968” in Sarah Colvin ed. Women, global protest movements, and political agency: rethinking the legacy of 1968
      UT Humanities Center Seminar Room E308 Melrose Hall (3rd floor)
  • Monday, October 15, 2018 12:20-1:10 P.M.
    Lecture by Cameron Cross (University of Michigan)
    UT Humanities Center Seminar Room E102 Melrose Hall
  • Friday, October 26, 2018 12:15-1:15 P.M.
    Research Discussion with Nicholas Chare (Université de Montréal)
    UT Humanities Center Seminar Room E308 Melrose Hall (3rd floor)
  • Friday, November 16, 2018 12:15-1:15 E308 Melrose
    Lecture by Elizabeth Eubanks (Department of History)
    UT Humanities Center Seminar Room E308 Melrose Hall (3rd floor)

Spring 2018

  • January 19, 2018 12:15-1:15 P.M.
    Lecture by Katie Kleinkopf, Department of History
    “Out of Sight, Out of Mind? Ascetic Assemblages and the Disruption of Dualism”
    UT Humanities Center Seminar Room E308 Melrose Hall (3rd floor)
  • February 2, 2018 12:15-1:15 P.M.
    Lecture by Helene Sinnreich, Department of Religious Studies
    “Gendered Martyrdom: Orthodox Jewish Hagiographies of Holocaust Victims”
    UT Humanities Center Seminar Room E308 Melrose Hall (3rd floor)
  • February 23, 2018 12:00-1:00 P.M.
    Lecture by Pete Sigal, Duke University
    “A Modern Mystery: Fantasies of Mexica and Maya Men”
    Hodges Library Lindsay Young Auditorium
  • March 23, 2018 12:15-1:15 P.M.
    Lecture by Maria Stehle, Department of Modern Foreign Languages and Literatures
    Title: "Precarious Intimacies: Politics of Touch in Contemporary European Cinema"
    UT Humanities Center Seminar Room E308 Melrose Hall (3rd floor)
  • April 13, 2018 12:15-1:15 P.M.
    Book discussion “Sex Museums: The Politics of Performance and Display” by Jennifer Tyburczy
    UT Humanities Center Seminar Room E308 Melrose Hall (3rd floor)

Fall 2017

  • September 8, 2017  12:00-1:00 P.M.
    Discussion of "Sexual Barter in Times of Genocide: Negotiating the Sexual Economy of the Theresienstadt Ghetto," Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, (vol. 38, no. 3) spring 2013, Recipient of the Catharine Stimpson Prize for Outstanding Feminist Scholarship 2013
    UT Humanities Center Seminar Room E308 Melrose Hall (3rd floor)
  • September 27, 2017  1:30-2:30 P.M.
    Presentation by Margaret Andersen, Department of History
    “Fears of Depopulation and French Fertility Treatments between the Two World Wars”
    UT Humanities Center Seminar Room E308 Melrose Hall (3rd floor)
  • October 18, 2017  2:30-3:30P.M.
    Lecture by Rachel Chrastil, Xavier University “Childlessness in Western Europe: A Brief History”
  • November 10, 2017  12:00-1:00 P.M.
    Presentation by Shannen Williams, Department of History
    "'Our Sole Wish Is To Do the Will of God': The Struggle for Black Nuns in the Nineteenth Century United States"
    UT Humanities Center Seminar Room E308 Melrose Hall (3rd floor)
  • December 7, 2017  12:00-1:00 P.M.
    Discussion of Camille Robcis, Catholics, the ‘Theory of Gender,’ and the Turn to the Human in France: A New Dreyfus Affair?” The Journal of Modern History 87 (December 2015): 892-923
    UT Humanities Center Seminar Room E308 Melrose Hall (3rd floor)

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