Gender and Citizenship in Modern France
Hist 391.03
Winter 2012
Prof. Andrew Ross
Department of History
Kenyon College
Seitz House 3
E-mail: rossa@kenyon.edu
Office Hours: M 11-12, Tu 10-12, W 1-3 and by appointment
Course Website: https://www.andrewisraelross.com/teaching/past-courses/gender-and-citizenship-in-modern-france
Course Description: How do we define a “citizen?” How do we know “who’s in” and “who’s out?” Gender has often served as one of the defining bases for deciding who has rights and who does not in a given nation. This class will explore the relationship between gender and citizenship in modern France. Beginning with Enlightenment debates over the women’s role in facilitating public discussion, we will proceed chronologically through French history and explore topics such as gender and the marketplace, the right to vote, masculinity, and immigration.
Course Objectives: By the end of the semester students will be able to:
- identify key events, figures, and ideas that shaped French history
- trace the development of notionss of citizenship and nationhood in Modern France
- understand the relationship between gender and other identities
- recognize and assess historiographical debates
- orally discuss their interpretation of secondary source reading
- construct their own historiographical analysis
Required Texts:
Landes, Joan B. Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1988.
Scott, Joan W. Only Paradoxes to Offer: French Feminists and the Rights of Man. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996.
Hesse, Carla. The Other Enlightenment: How French Women Became Modern. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2001.
Pollard, Miranda. Reign of Virtue: Mobilizing Gender in Vichy France. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999.
Ross, Kristen. Fast Cars, Clean Bodies: Decolonization and Reordering of French Culture. Boston: MIT Press, 1996.
Scott, Joan W. The Politics of the Veil. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007.
All other texts will be available online at moodle.kenyon.edu.
We all also watch one film. A screening will be scheduled outside of class; if you cannot make the scheduled time then viewing the film will remain your responsibility.
Course Format: Class will meet once a week. All class meetings will be discussion format and active participation is expected.
Course Requirements: Students are required to attend all class meetings, complete all readings and view all films, complete online reading responses, write a book review, give a class presentation, and write a final historiography paper.
Attendance and Participation: Attendance in class is a requirement in order to pass this course and role will be taken everyday. You are permitted to miss one class before your grade begins to suffer. Because this is a seminar class, active participation is also a requirement and will form the primary basis for this grade.
Readings: All readings are due the day for which they are listed on the syllabus. Film viewings will be scheduled outside of class; if you are unable to attend, then the film is also due the day for which they are listed on the syllabus.
Online Discussion: Every week you are to respond to the week’s material via the discussion board on Moodle (click the link at the top “reading responses” and reply to the correct week’s topic). Your response should simply be a short paragraph expressing the main point or two that you took from the readings. Responses are due every Sunday at Noon.
Class Presentation: Every student will present the class readings one time this semester. The presenter should introduce what we read, describe the argument of the texts (if applicable), relate the argument to any broader historiographical questions (this might require some additional research and/or consultation with me), and offer the class some questions to begin our discussion. You should not read out a written essay, but should rather use notes to offer an informal introduction to the topic of the day. Presentations should be about 10 minutes long.
Book Review: Your first writing assignment will be a book review (c. 3 pages) of any book relevant to the course topic, e.g. a book on gender and/or citizenship in modern French history. The book you choose should be on a topic on which you may wish to write your larger historiography paper. A good book review will describe the author’s argument, tell the reader how he or she reached his or her conclusion, and then offer an assessment of the book as a whole.
Historiography Paper: The major assignment of this class is a historiography paper (often also referred to as a “review essay”) that relates between 3 and 5 books on a single topic to one another (7-10 pages). This paper is not simply a series of 3 to 5 book reviews, but rather is an attempt to assess the state of a particular subfield of French history. We will complete these papers in stages and we will devote half of one class period to work shopping each other’s work, not only to improve one another’s written work, but to give everyone a sense of some of the materials we did not cover in class. In addition to a grade on your own work, you will also receive a grade on your critiques of your peers.
Grade Breakdown:
Attendance and Participation: 20%
Online Discussion: 10%
Class Presentation: 10%
Book Review: 20%
Historiography Paper:
First Draft: 15%
Final Draft: 20%
Workshop Comments: 5%
Grade Appeals: There are no grade appeals! I’m more than happy to talk to you about your grade and how you can improve your work (in fact, I highly encourage you to do so), but please do not ask me to change your grade.
Late Assignments: Late assignments will be deducted one grade for each day late. If I have not received your assignment after four days you will automatically fail the assignment. If I never receive an assignment you will fail the course.
Paperless Grading: In an effort to both save trees and improve the quality of my comments to you, your assignments MUST be turned in electronically. You will do so via e-mail, with a subject heading “Gender and Citizenship ASSIGNMENT from YOUR NAME.” Accepted file formats are .pdf (preferable), .doc, and .docx. All papers not already in .pdf format will be converted prior to grading. I will e-mail you your paper directly after all assignments have been graded. Please let me know if you have any questions or concerns regarding this policy.
Contacting Me: The best way to get in touch with me is through e-mail. Please allow 24 hours for a response; if you have not heard from me in that time, do not hesitate to send another note. My office hours are at the top of this syllabus; if those times are not convenient for you I am happy to make other arrangements. I hope you will all come by my office at some point during the semester. Please check your Kenyon e-mail regularly and please keep apprised of materials available on the class website.
Online Resources: The course website can be found at http://aiross.wordpress.com/teaching/gender-and-citizenship-in-modern-france-winter-2012/. There you will find a copy of the syllabus and other resources relevant to the course.
Technology in the Classroom: Because this course revolves around active discussion, laptops and other devices should NOT be used during class. All articles should therefore be printed out; dedicated eBook readers are permitted if you are using e-texts. The one exception is our workshop day where those of you who give electronic comments may bring and use your laptops.
Plagiarism and Academic Honesty: All students must follow the College’s policies regarding academic honesty as outlined in the Kenyon College Catalog. If you have any questions regarding this issue, please consult with me before submitting work. All work for this class must be your own and completed specifically for this class and all materials consulted, paraphrased and quoted must be cited.
Disabilities: If you have a hidden or visible disability that may require classroom or test accommodations, please see me privately as soon as possible during a scheduled office hour. If you have not already done so, you must register with the Coordinator of Disability Services, Erin Salva, salvae@kenyon.edu, or x5145, who is the individual responsible for coordinating accommodations and services for students with disabilities. All information and documentation of disabilities are strictly confidential. No accommodations will be granted in this course without notification from the Office of Disability Services.
Week 1: January 16: Introductions
Week 2: January 23: Historiographical Debates on Gender and the Nation
Readings: Joan W. Scott, “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” American Historical Review 91.5 (Dec 1986): 1053-1075; Benedict A. Anderson, “The Origins of National Consciousness,” in Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origins and Spread of Nationalism (London: Verso, 1983), 37-46; David A. Bell, “Introduction: Constructing the Nation,” in The Cult of the Nation in France (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2003), 1-21; Joan Scott, Only Paradoxes to Offer, 1-18.
Week 3: January 30: The Public Sphere 1: Defining the Public Sphere
Readings: Immanuel Kant, “What is Enlightenment?” Jurgen Habermas, “The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article,” in Media and Cultural Studies: Keyworks, ed. Meenakshi Gigi Durham and Douglas M. Kellner (Malden, MA : Blackwell, 2006), 73-78; Landes, Women and the Public Sphere, pp. 1-65.
Book review topics due in class.
Week 4: February 6: The Public Sphere 2: Women and the Enlightenment
Dena Goodman, “Philosophes and Sallonières: A Critique of Enlightenment Historiography,” in The Republic of Letters (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 53-89; Landes, Women and the Public Sphere, 66-89; Hesse, The Other Enlightenment, 3-55.
Week 5: February 13: The Public Sphere 3: Women and the Revolution
Readings: Readings: “Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen;” Olympe de Gouges, “Declaration of Rights of Woman;” “Closing of the Revolutionary Clubs;” Landes, Women and the Public Sphere, 93-168; Scott, Only Pardoxes to Offer, 19-56
Week 6: February 20: The Public Sphere 4: Was the Revolution Revolutionary for Women?
Readings: Hesse, The Other Enlightenment, 56-156; Landes, Women and the Public Sphere, 168-206
Historiography essay topic due in class.
Book Review due by e-mail before class
Week 7: February 27: Prostitution, Class, and the State
Readings: Jill Harsin, “Criminal Marginality,” in Policing Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century Paris (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 205-240; Bernheimer, Charles, “Parent-Duchâtelet: Engineer of Abjection,” in Figures of Ill Repute: Representing Prostitution in Nineteenth-Century France (Durham: Duke University Press, 1997), 8-34; Victoria Thompson, “Work, Wages, and Citizenship in the 1840s,” in The Virtuous Marketplace: Women and Men, Money and Politics in Paris, 1830-1870 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000), 52-85.
Spring Break
Optional Film Screening, Monday, March 19 at 4:00p: The Grand Illusion (dir. Jean Renoir, 1937) in the Multimedia Theatre in Olin Library. Also on reserve.
Week 8: March 19: The Right to Vote
Readings: Scott, “The Duties of the Citizen: Jeanne Deroin in the Revolution of 1848” and “The Rights of ‘the Social:’ Hubertine Auclert and the Politics of the Third Republic,” in Only Paradoxes to Offer; Steven C. Hause “France and the Question of Women’s Rights,” in Women’s Suffrage and Social Politics in the French Third Republic (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984).
Week 9: March 26: Gender and Anti-Semitism: The Dreyfus Affair
Readings: Christopher Forth, “Masculine Performances: Alfred Dreyfus and the Paradox of the Jewish Soldier,” and “Adventures of the Naked Truth: Women and the Dreyfusard Imagination,” in The Dreyfus Affair and the Crisis of French Manhood (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006), 17-60, 137-168; Mary Louise Roberts, “The New Woman and the Jew, “ in Disruptive Acts: The New Woman in Fin-de-Siècle France (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 107-130.
Week 10: April 1: Masculine Anxieties and the State
Readings: Judith Surkis, “Introduction: Irregular Love and Republican Citizenship,” and “Part 1: Affective Government,” in Sexing the Citizen (Ithaca: Cornell University Press), 1-68; Kristen Stromberg Childers, “Paternity, Law and Politics in the Third Republic,” “Icons of the Père de Famille,” in Fathers, Families and the State in France 1914-1945 (Ithaca: Cornell University, 2003), 12-81.
First draft of historiography paper due to me and workshop group before class
Week 11: April 8: Class, Gender, and War
Film: A Very Long Engagement (dir. Jean-Pierre Jeunet, 2004)
Readings: Susan R. Grayzel, “Promoting Motherhood and Regulating Women,” in Women’s Identities at War: Gender, Motherhood, and Politics in Britain and France During the First World War (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999), 86-120.
In-Class Workshopping
Copy of reviewed essays with your comments due to me in class or by e-mail
Week 12: April 15: Fascist Ideologies
Reading:Miranda Pollard, Reign of Virtue
Week 13: April 22: Decolonization
Readings: Todd Shepard, “Veiled “Muslim” Women, Violent Pied Noir Men, and the Family of France: Gender, Sexuality, and Ethnic Difference,” in The Invention of Decolonization (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006), 183-204; Ross, Fast Cars, Clean Bodies
Week 14: April 29: Headscarves, Burkas, and Mosques, Oh My!
Reading: Joan Scott, The Politics of the Veil
Historiography Essay Due Before Class