HIST 358: Libertinage and Liberty (HC): Gender

In the Renaissance, the androygyne — based on sources in Genesis and Plato's Symposium, understood to be connected—was a means of expressing the full potential of humans made in the image of God. Rothstein documents the range of uses of the androgyne in the thought of poets, philosophers, courtiers,and women in positions of political power and its ultimate connection to gender construction during the European Renaissance.

This collection, a testament to the work of Hilda L. Smith, confronts orthodoxy in social and cultural, scientific and intellectual, and political and legal traditions, to demonstrate how women of all social classes could challenge the conventional thinking of their time as well as the ways in which they have been traditionally portrayed by scholars. Subjects include women's relationship to guns and gunpowder, the law, religion, public finances, the new science in early modern Europe, and women and indentured servitude in the New World.

These essays draw on new research into Charles d'Eon de Beaumont's unusual life, exploring how a gender identity could come to be negotiated over time.

Desmond M. Clarke presents new translations of three of the first feminist tracts to support explicitly the equality of the sexes. The alleged inferiority of women's nature and the corresponding roles that women were (in)capable of exercising in society was debated in Western culture from the civilization of ancient Greece to the establishment of early Christian churches. In contrast to earlier periods, the seventeenth century witnessed the first publications that argued for the equality of men and women. Among the most articulate and original defenders of that view were Marie le Jars de Gournay, Anna Maria van Schurman, and Francois Poulain de la Barre. Gournay published The Equality of Men and Women in Paris in 1622, while one of her Dutch correspondents, Van Schurman, published in Latin her Dissertation in support of women's education in 1641. Poulain wrote a radical Physical and Moral Discourse concerning the Equality of Both Sexes in 1673, which he also published in Paris. This edition includes new translations, from French and Latin, of these three key texts, and excerpts from the authors' related writings, together with an extensive introduction to the religious and philosophical context within which they argued against the traditional view of women's natural inferiority to men.
A digital copy of the book is also available.

The book includes Swetnam's text, "The Araignment of Lewde, idle, froward, and unconstant women" (1615) followed by rejoinders from Rachel Speght, Ester Sowernam, Constantia Munda, and Anonymous.

What role did gender play in the Scottish Enlightenment? Combining intellectual and cultural history, this book explores how men and women experienced the Scottish Enlightenment. It examines Scotland in a European context, investigating ideologies of gender and cultural practices among the urban elites of Scotland in the 18th century. The book provides an in-depth analysis of men's construction and performance of masculinity in intellectual clubs, taverns and through the violent ritual of the duel. Women are important actors in this story, and the book presents an analysis of women's contribution to Scottish Enlightenment culture, and it asks why there were no Scottish bluestockings.

Laura Gowing provides unique insight into gender relations in a time of flux, from the women who tried to vote in Ipswich in 1640, to a grandmother describing the first time her grandson wore breeches. Examining gender relations in the contexts of the body, the house, the neighbourhood and the political world, this comprehensive introduction gives readers both the evidence and the tools to reconstruct the hidden histories of early England.

"A Mother's Love: Crafting Feminine Virtue in Enlightenment France chronicles the emergence of an idealized mother figure whose reforming zeal sought to make French society more just. Lesley H. Walker contends that this attempt during the eighteenth century to "rewrite" social relations in terms of greater social equality represents an important but overlooked strand of Enlightenment thought. During this period, popular domestic novels, the ever-raging debates about women's social roles, and highly sought-after genre paintings produced a remarkable image of motherhood. Through a focus on feminine virtue, Walker studies female writers and artists to argue that these women theorize the domestic sphere as a site of significant social and ethical productivity."--BOOK JACKET.

Each summer, a 'perpetual fair' plagued eighteenth-century London, a city in transition overrun by a burgeoning population. City officials attempted to control disorderly urban amusement according to their own gendered understandings of order and morality. Frequently derided as locations of dangerous femininity disrupting masculine commerce, fairs withstood regulation attempts.

This volume brings together an unprecedented gathering of women and men from the Atlantic World during the Age of Revolutions. Featuring hard-to-find writings from colonists and colonized, citizens and slaves, religious visionaries and scandal-dogged actresses, these wide-ranging selections present a panorama of the diverse, vibrant world facing women during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. An expansive introduction, along with rich contextual headnotes, makes this an indispensable text for students and scholars of literature, history, and women's and gender studies.With writings from figures like Aphra Behn, Phillis Wheatley, Thomas Jefferson, Mary Wollstonecraft, and Toussaint L'Ouverture, to name just a few,Transatlantic Feminisms in the Age of Revolutionsrecovers the revolutionary moment in which women stepped into a globalizing world and imagined themselves free.

Substantive defense of women written by a French cleric and published in 1673.

Two issues of the journal Lumières deal with women's issues in the 18th century:
La cause des femmes au xvIIIe siècle No. 23
La condition des femmes dans l'Europe du XVIIIe siècle No. 24