A Companion to Gender History (Blackwell Companions to History)

A Companion to Gender History surveys the history of women around the world, studies their interaction with men in gendered societies, and looks at the role of gender in shaping human behavior over thousands of years. An extensive survey of the history of women around the world, their interaction with men, and the role of gender in shaping human behavior over thousands of years. Discusses family history, the history of the body and sexuality, and cultural history alongside women’s history and gender history. Considers the importance of class, region, ethnicity, race and religion to the formation of gendered societies. Contains both thematic essays and chronological-geographic essays. Gives due weight to pre-history and the pre-modern era as well as to the modern era. Written by scholars from across the English-speaking world and scholars for whom English is not their first language. Contents 5 Contributors 9 Introduction 13 Thematic Essays on Gender Issuesin World History 21 Sexuality 23 Gender and Labor in World History 38 Structures and Meanings in a Gendered Family History 63 Religion and Gender: Embedded Patterns, Interwoven Frameworks 82 Gender Rules: Law and Politics 98 Race, Gender, and Other Differences in Feminist Theory 122 Gender and Education Before and After Mass Schooling 141 How Images Got Their Gender: Masculinity and Femininity in the Visual Arts 158 Revolution, Nationalism, and Anti-Imperialis m 182 Feminist Movements: Gender and Sexual Equality 198 Chronological and Geographical Essays 219 Prehistory 221 Digging Up Gender in the EarliestHuman Societies 223 Classical and Post-Classical Societies (2000 bce–1400 ce) 239 Women in the Middle East,8000 bce to 1700 ce 241 Gendered Themes in Early African History 261 Confucian Complexities: China, Japan, Korea, and Vietnam 285 Early Western Civilization under the Sign of Gender: Europe and the Mediterranean 297 Gender in the Ancient Americas: From Earliest Villages to European Colonization 317 Gender and the Development of Modern Society (1400–1750) 333 Gender History, Southeast Asia and the “World Regions” Framework 335 Did Gender Have a Renaissance? Exclusions and Traditions in Early Modern Western Europe 355 Self, Society and Gender in Early Modern Russia and Eastern Europe 370 A New World Engendered: The Making of the Iberian Transatlantic Empires 383 Gender and the Modern World (1750–1920) 403 Rescued from Obscurity: Contributions and Challenges in Writing the History of Gender in the Middle East and North Africa 405 Gender, Women, and Power in Africa, 1750–1914 425 Clash of Cultures: Gender and Colonialism in South and Southeast Asia 442 From Private to Public Patriarchy: Women, Labor and the State in East Asia, 1600–1919 456 Gender in the Formation of European Power, 1750–1914 471 Latin America and the Caribbean 489 North America from North of the 49th Parallel 504 Gender in the Contemporary World (1920–2003) 523 Frameworks of Gender: Feminism and Nationalism in Twentieth-Century Asia 525 Women and Gender Roles in Africa since 1918: Gender as a Determinant of Status 552 Continuities Amid Change: Gender Ideas and Arrangements in Twentieth-Century Russia and Eastern Europe 567 Engendering Reform and Revolution in Twentieth-Century Latin America and the Caribbean 580 Equality and Difference in the Twentieth-Century West: North America, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand 598 Bibliography 623 Index 666 A Companion to Gender History surveys the history of women around the world, studies their interaction with men in gendered societies, and looks at the role of gender in shaping human behavior over thousands of years. It contains both thematic essays, which demonstrate how gender has intersected with other historical topics, and chronological-geographic essays, which explore gender in one area of the world during a specific period. All the essays consider the importance of class, region, ethnicity, race, and religion to the formation of gendered societies. The book discusses family history, the history of the body and sexuality, and cultural history within an engendered political, economic, and social context. One of the key points to emerge from the volume as a whole is that no generalization about gender has applied to all times or all places. The contributions are written by scholars from across the English-speaking world and beyond, and includes academics from other disciplines as well as history. The authors present an extensive survey of the history of women around the world, their interaction with men, & the role of gender in shaping human behaviour over thousands of years As a field of scholarly investigation, the history of sexuality is about as old as gender history in its modern, social constructionist form, dating from the 1970s and 1980s.