Undergraduate Course: Gender and Work: A Global Survey from 1750 to WWII (HIST10521)
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 | We all experience work as gendered beings, in a world structured by racial capitalism and the legacy of imperialism. Yet the mainstream historical narratives of economy and labour still resist a serious engagement with gender. This course will provide you with alternative (feminist) conceptual frameworks within which to study the past and present issues of labour, production, value, cultures of work, inequality, and skill. |
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 an exploration of recent trends in global histories of work, and feminist critiques of the fundamentals of economic thought. It continues with a sector-by-sector, in-depth analysis 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 Peru to China, 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.
Content note: The study of History inevitably involves the study of difficult topics that we encourage students to approach in a respectful, scholarly, and sensitive manner. Nevertheless, we remain conscious that some students may wish to prepare themselves for the discussion of difficult topics. In particular, the course organiser has outlined that the following topics may be discussed in this course, whether in class or through required or recommended primary and secondary sources: violence and discrimination based on race, ethnicity, gender, age, nationality, sexuality, physical appearance, disability, socioeconomic status, politics, religion, and immigration. While this list indicates sensitive topics students are likely to encounter, it is not exhaustive because course organisers cannot entirely predict the directions discussions may take in tutorials or seminars, or through the wider reading that students may conduct for the course.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
Pre-requisites |
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Co-requisites | |
Prohibited Combinations | Students MUST NOT also be taking
Feminist Histories of Work from 1750 to WWII (HIST10471)
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Other requirements | A pass in 40 credits of third level historical courses or equivalent.
Students should only be enrolled on this course with approval from the History Honours Programme Administrator. |
Course Delivery Information
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Academic year 2024/25, 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
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Seminar/Tutorial Hours 44,
Summative Assessment Hours 3,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 8,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
345 )
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Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
40 %,
Coursework
40 %,
Practical Exam
20 %
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Additional Information (Assessment) |
Coursework:
3000-word essay 1 (15%)
4000-word essay 2 (25%)
Non-Written Skills:
Class participation (20%)
Exam:
3 hour exam (40%) |
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. |
Exam Information |
Exam Diet |
Paper Name |
Hours & Minutes |
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Main Exam Diet S2 (April/May) | | :180 | |
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. Judith M. Bennett, History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).
2. Janice Peterson and Margaret Lewis, The Elgar Companion to Feminist Economics (Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar, 1999).
3. Karin Hofmeester and Marcel Van Der Linden, Handbook Global History of Work (Berlin: De Gruyter GmbH, 2017).
4. Els Hiemstra-Kuperus et al., eds., The Ashgate Companion to the History of Textile Workers, 1650-2000 (2016).
5. Amy Stanley, "Maidservants' Tales: Narrating Domestic and Global History in Eurasia, 1600-1900", The American Historical Review 121 (2016): 437-60.
6. Akram Fouad Khater, Inventing Home: Emigration, Gender, and the Middle Class in Lebanon, 1870-1920 (University of California Press, 2001).
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 |
Develop skills in critically appraising diverse evidence and historiographical arguments.
Design and execute an original research project independently and effectively.
Expand and demonstrate knowledge and understanding of issues related to gender, class, race, labour, and employment.
Develop and sustain independent lines of argument persuasively in written form.
Analyse, assimilate and deploy critically a range of secondary literature relevant and related to the student's individual research subject. |
Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
Course organiser | Dr Hatice Yildiz
Tel: (0131 6)50 2378
Email: hyildiz@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | Mrs Lizzie Hunter
Tel:
Email: ehunter6@ed.ac.uk |
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