Undergraduate Course: Print and Gender Rebellion in Early Modern Europe, 1450-1800 (HIST10529)
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 3 Undergraduate) |
Availability | Available to all students |
| SCQF Credits | 20 |
ECTS Credits | 10 |
| Summary | The first age of mass media, created by the printing press, led to a revolution in how gender was seen, portrayed, and understood in the early modern world. This course will examine people in early modern Europe who refused to conform to gender norms side-by-side with the media they created and that created them in return. It will show how their gender rebellion was enabled by the material realities of the formation and distribution of print. |
| Course description |
In the early modern period as much as now, questions of what defined sex, gender, and their relationship to each other were under debate. New innovations in medical theory, the querelle des femmes or 'woman question', and the rise of colonialism destabilised settled understandings of what defined men and women. However, nothing both enabled and complicated this conversation more than the printing press, which extended these debates through printed word and image to the entire population.
This course takes a broad perspective on early modern Europe and a wide chronology to examine the different ways print culture transformed social understandings of gender. Using the remarkable holdings of the Centre for Research Collections, it will examine historical individuals and groups who rebelled against established norms alongside studying material elements of the early modern book. It will consider not only how these actors produced, consumed, and were portrayed in this printed media, but how the media itself was created and distributed, and how this impacted its message. Students will spend time learning how to handle, describe, and study printed books from the early modern period, and put their materiality in the context of the material the readings describe.
In this course, students will encounter language around gender, sexuality, race, and disability that is outdated, oppressive, and disturbing. This will appear not only in the primary sources from the early modern period but in almost all secondary literature about these topics, from the 1980s to today. This course will not shy away from discussion of outdated language and concepts, and how to approach them in a respectful, scholarly, and sensitive manner. Students may wish to prepare themselves for the discussion of difficult topics, including descriptions of sexual violence, racial violence, discrimination and violence perpetuated against gender nonconforming people and people with disabilities. Learning how to navigate this difficult material and problematic scholarship around it will be an essential part of the course.
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Entry Requirements (not applicable to Visiting Students)
| Pre-requisites |
Students MUST have passed:
Introduction to Historiography (HIST08044)
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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, including HIST08044 Introduction to Historiography, or equivalent.
Students should only be enrolled on this course with approval from the History Honours Programme Administrator. |
Information for Visiting Students
| Pre-requisites | Visiting students must have 3 History courses at grade B or above. We will only consider University/College level courses. Enrolments for this course are managed by the CAHSS Visiting Student Office, in line with the quotas allocated by the department. All enquiries to enrol must be made through the CAHSS Visiting Student Office. It is not appropriate for students to contact the department directly to request additional spaces. |
| High Demand Course? |
Yes |
Course Delivery Information
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| Academic year 2025/26, Available to all students (SV1)
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Quota: 0 |
| Course Start |
Semester 2 |
Timetable |
Timetable |
| Learning and Teaching activities (Further Info) |
Total Hours:
200
(
Seminar/Tutorial Hours 20,
Supervised Practical/Workshop/Studio Hours 2,
Programme Level Learning and Teaching Hours 4,
Directed Learning and Independent Learning Hours
174 )
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| Assessment (Further Info) |
Written Exam
0 %,
Coursework
80 %,
Practical Exam
20 %
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| Additional Information (Assessment) |
Coursework:
1,500-word description exercise of a printed object held in the University's Centre for Research Collections, analysing its material aspects (35%)
2,500-word final essay on a subject of the student's choice, discussed in advance with the Course Organiser (45%)
Non-Written Skills:
Participation, including in-class engagement and weekly discussion forum post (20%) |
| 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:
- Demonstrate critical understanding of how gender was formed and transformed in early modern Europe
- Describe the material, social, and political history of media and communication as it relates to the emergence of print
- Discuss the links between gender, sexuality, race and disability as four essential axes of early modern social life and influence
- Handle and describe rare books from the handpress era with skill and competence
- Analyse primary sources and communicate clear, coherent, well-documented arguments in written form with proper referencing
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Reading List
Crawford, Katherine. European Sexualities, 1400-1800 (Cambridge University Press, 2007)
Dekker, Rudolf M. and Lotte C. van de Pol. The Tradition of Female Transvestism in Early Modern Europe (Macmillan, 1989)
Lafleur, Greta, Masha Raskolnikov, and Anna Klosowska (eds.) Trans Historical: Gender Plurality before the Modern (Cornell University Press, 2021)
Manion, Jen. Female Husbands: A Trans History (Cambridge University Press, 2020)
Merrick, Jeffrey & Bryant T. Ragan, Jr. Homosexuality in Early Modern France: A Documentary Collection (Oxford University Press, 2001)
O'Donnell, K. and M. O'Rourke (eds.), Queer Masculinities, 1550-1800: Siting Same Sex Desire in the Early Modern World (Palgrave, 2006)
Pearson, David. Books as History: The Importance of Books Beyond their Texts (British Library, 2012)
Pettegree, Andrew. The Book in the Renaissance (Yale University Press, 2010)
Rezek, Joseph. 'The Racialization of Print', American Literary History 32.3 (2020), pp. 417-445
Soyer, François. Ambiguous Gender in Early Modern Spain and Portugal: Inquisitors, Doctors and the Transgression of Gender Norms (Brill, 2012)
Vicente, Marta V. 'Trans Visual Narratives: Representing Gender and Nature in Early Modern Europe', Journal of Women's History 35.4 (2023), pp. 57-75
Werner, Sarah. Studying Early Printed Books, 1450-1800: A Practical Guide (Wiley-Blackwell, 2019) |
Additional Information
| Graduate Attributes and Skills |
Research and Enquiry - Students will be able to examine early modern printed books and think critically both about their contents and how they were produced.
Outlook and Engagement - They will have a sharpened understanding of how sex, gender, and sexuality are historically contingent as well as the history of communication.
Personal and Intellectual Autonomy - They will be able to think ethically and intersectionally about how we approach gender in the modern world, both as scholars and as people living in a diverse society.
Communication - They will have developed skills in writing clearly, incisively, and coherently. |
| Keywords | Not entered |
Contacts
| Course organiser | Dr Megan Hunt
Tel: (0131 6)50 9110
Email: Megan.Hunt@ed.ac.uk |
Course secretary | |
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