The study of genders, bodies and sexualities is central to fully appreciating the past, whether studying political culture, work and leisure, religious ideologies, scientific practices, state formation, or war. Our department has long been a recognized leader of gender history in a variety of temporal and geographic fields: medieval and modern Europe, colonial North America and modern US, Africa, the Middle East, East Asia, and South Asia. Many of us work on topics that transcend national boundaries by integrating gender and sexuality into studies of imperialism, decolonization, borderlands, and international trade. Our research methods are as diverse as the topics we study. We approach the history of sex, gender, and sexuality as scholars of the emotions and the senses, political economy and business, material culture, consumption, food practices, cities and the built environment, and childhood and the family.
Some of our activities include:
- We host a regular Gender + Sexualities History Workshop series in which faculty, graduate students and guests share in-progress articles and chapters and discuss current issues in feminist pedagogy and politics. Undergraduate and graduate students can earn credit through HIST 295 GS.
- We host guest speakers, conferences, and symposia.
- We partner with the Department of Feminist Studies and other affiliated scholars.
- Each June, we host an annual graduate student retreat where graduate students from across campus discuss their work with faculty and peers separate from those on their doctoral committees.
Cluster Colloquia
Undergraduate and Graduate Students can enroll in HIST 295GS – Gender and Sexualities Workshop on a quarterly basis to earn credit for their scholarly engagement at colloquia.
Current
Past
- Anshu Malhotra, “Stories and Histories: Gendered Performances, Caste and Sociability in Some Punjabi Domestic Tales,” 2 February 2024.
- Makoto Hunter, “‘Our Relationship to Each Other’: Co-wives and Other Unnamed Connections in the Udall Plural Marriage, 1880s–1930s,” 19 January 2024.
- Julie Johnson, “He Tells Me His Penis is Abnormally Large”: Productive Pleasures in Conversation in British Bedrooms after World War One,” 1 December 2023.
- Candice Lyons, “Loyalty, Love, or None of the Above: 19th Century US Women’s Queer Connections,” 17 November 2023.
- Jarett Henderson, “He Looked Pale and the Picture of Death” — Sodomy, Settler Self-Government, and the Age of Reform in 1840s Canada, 8 May 2023.
- Kandra Polantis, “Deadly Curves: Dissection and Desire in Japan, 1879-1930,” 16 March 2023.
- Marc Stein, “Queer Public History,” 2 March 2023.
- Kristen Thomas-McGill, “Reputation and Habitual Misbehavior on a “Spicy Little Isle Where Ladies Were Few,” 16 February 2023.
- Mika Thornburg, “Selling Self-Discovery: Constructing a Desire for Female Travel in Postwar Japan, 1960-1985,” 19 January 2023.
- Erika Rappaport, “Hotels, Swimming Pools, and Bikinis: Public Relations, White Sexuality, and the Disavowal of State Violence in 1960s Kenya,” 12 May 2022.
- Arunima Datta, “Stranded: Travelling Indian Ayas Negotiating War and Abandonment in Europe,” 28 April 2022.
- Giulia Giamboni, “Women’s Donations of Textiles: A Shared Body of Memories,” 17 February 2022.
- Anna Rudolph, “Revolutionary Radegund,” 20 January 2022.
- Kendall Lovely, ” ‘If you love me, Beware’: Classicism, Voyeurism, and the Ovidian Eroticims of Kent Monkman,” 2 December 2021.
- Joy Dixon, “Sex Magick as Sacramental Sexology: Aleister Crowley’s Queer Masculinity,” 21 October 2021.
