HIST236 - GENDER, VIOLENCE AND WWII: EUROPE 1933-1950

This seminar explores World War II-era Europe through the lens of evolving gender norms and relations. This turbulent period in European history magnified the so-called "gender troubles" that emerged in the wake of the First World War. From the question of equality between the sexes to the liberalization of sexual mores and divergence from the proscribed roles of men and women, gender had a profound impact on the prewar, wartime, and immediate postwar European landscape. Drawing on primary and secondary sources, we will consider the following questions: How did gender and violence shape the course of World War II and the immediate postwar from Britain to the Soviet Union? How can gender and sexuality help us to understand militarization, violence, and war? How did war and occupation impact relations between and among men and women on the home- and war fronts? We will complicate these questions by probing topics such as women's support for war, masculinity in combat, everyday racial discrimination, eugenics, sexual violence and genocide and the ways in which they infiltradted the every aspect of Europeans' public and private lives. Finally, we will discuss scholarly debates and historiographies on gender during World War II that have emerged since the early 1970s.