Feminist Histories of Work from 1750 to WWII

This course provides students with a comparative global history of feminist approaches to work, broadly defined, from 1750 to WWII. It starts from the premise that mainstream economic history has consistently failed to integrate gender into its conceptual frameworks and relied on male-centric, narrow definitions of value and skill. This year-long course presents an alternative paradigm that a) expands the concept of "work" to incorporate all activities that generate use value, thus problematising the productive/reproductive work binary, and b) de-centres Europe as "the" location of capitalist work relations by drawing on cases from a wide range of historical contexts. The course starts with an exploration of recent trends in global histories of work, and feminist critiques of the fundamentals of economic thought. It continues with a sector-by-sector, in-depth analysis of the ways in which new forms of work emerged and were assigned value within capitalist economies, and of the ideological and cultural assumptions that shaped these processes. In encompassing nearly two hundred years that played a crucial role in shaping modern relations of production, as well as a vast geography stretching from Peru to China, the course provides students with the means to interrogate the historical origins of the division and hierarchies of labour in key sectors of contemporary capitalist economies.   Credit Level: 40 Year taken: Year 4 Undergraduate

Not running in 2025/26