Undergraduate Course: Feminist Histories of Work from 1750 to WWII (HIST10471)
Course Outline
| School | School of History, Classics and Archaeology |
College | College of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences |
| Credit level (Normal year taken) | SCQF Level 10 (Year 4 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Not available to visiting students |
| SCQF Credits | 40 |
ECTS Credits | 20 |
| Summary | The COVID-19 pandemic has engendered a widening pay gap between women and men in advanced economies of the West. Governments, think-tanks, and multinational organisations have therefore begun to debate the causes of, and remedies for, reinforced hierarchies between women's and men's work. Can the present situation be adequately explained without a historical understanding of gender in capitalist production? |
| Course description |
This course provides students with a comparative global history of feminist approaches to work, broadly defined, from 1750 to WWII. It starts from the premise that mainstream economic history has consistently failed to integrate gender into its conceptual frameworks and relied on male-centric, narrow definitions of value and skill. This year-long course presents an alternative paradigm that a) expands the concept of "work" to incorporate all activities that generate use value, thus problematising the productive/reproductive work binary, and b) de-centres Europe as "the" location of capitalist work relations by drawing on cases from a wide range of historical contexts.
The course starts with theoretical explorations about gender in historical analysis, global histories of work, and feminist critiques of the fundamentals of economic thought. It continues with a sector-by-sector, in-depth exploration of the ways in which new forms of work emerged and were assigned value within capitalist economies, and of the ideological and cultural assumptions that shaped these processes. In encompassing nearly two hundred years that played a crucial role in shaping modern relations of production, as well as a vast geography stretching from sugar plantations in the Caribbean to coal mines inv Punjab, the course provides students with the means to interrogate the historical origins of the division and hierarchies of labour in key sectors of contemporary capitalist economies.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
| Prohibited Combinations | |
Other requirements | A pass or passes in 40 credits of first level historical courses or equivalent and a pass or passes in 40 credits of second level historical courses or equivalent.
Before enrolling students on this course, Personal Tutors are asked to contact the History Honours Admission Secretary to ensure that a place is available (Tel: 504030) |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2021/22, Not available to visiting students (SS1)
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Quota: 0 |
| Course Start |
Full Year |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
400
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 44,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 8,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
348 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
50 %,
Coursework
50 %,
Practical Exam
0 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Exam:
3 hour exam (50%)
Coursework:
2,000 word historiographical review (10%)
6,000 word essay (40%)
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| Feedback |
Students will receive feedback on their coursework, and will have the opportunity to discuss that feedback further with the Course Organiser during their published office hours for this course or by appointment. |
| No Exam Information |
Learning Outcomes
On completion of this course, the student will be able to:
- Situate various strands of the historical scholarship on work in capitalist economies within a comparative, world-historical context
- Analyse and appraise the fundamentals of mainstream economic thought through a gender-critical lens
- Demonstrate, by way of coursework,an in-depth command of the feminist scholarship on wages, the gendered division of labour, protective legislation, and discrimination at work
- Utilise non-textual resources such as sounds, images, and objects to overcome gaps in conventional sources
- Demonstrate a high degree of intellectual autonomy and integrity, and an ability to critically evaluate and improve the work of peers
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Reading List
1. Nancy Fraser, "Behind Marx's Hidden Abode: For an Expanded Conception of Capitalism", New Left Review, no. 86 (2014): 55.
2. Judy Wajcman, "Feminist Theories of Technology", Cambridge Journal of Economics 34, (2010): 143-152.
3. Judith M.Bennett, History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).
4. Janice Peterson and Margaret Lewis, The Elgar Companion to Feminist Economics (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 1999).
5. Karin Hofmeester and Marcel Van Der Linden, Handbook Global History of Work (Berlin: De Gruyter GmbH, 2017).
6. Maxine Berg, The Age of Manufactures, 1700-1820: Industry, Innovation and Work in Britain (London: Routlege, 1994).
7. Donald Quataert, Ottoman Manufacturing in the Age of the Industrial Revolution (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
8. Samita Sen, Women and Labour in Late Colonial India: The Bengal Jute Industry(Cambridge University Press, 1999).
9. Madhavi Kale, Fragments of Empire: Capital, Slavery, and Indian Indentured Labour Migration in the British Caribbean (Philadelphia University Press, 1998).
10. Sonya O. Rose, Limited Livelihoods: Gender and Class in Nineteenth-century England (London: Routledge, 1992).
11. Gillian Sutherland, In Search of the New Woman: Middle-Class Women and Work in Britain, 1870-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2015).
12. Elif Mahir Metinsoy, Ottoman Women During World War I (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Not entered |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Hatice Yildiz
Tel: (0131 6)50 2378
Email: hyildiz@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mrs Ksenia Gorlatova
Tel: (0131 6)50 8349
Email: Ksenia.Gorlatova@ed.ac.uk |
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