HIST217

Starting with Britain's first feminist writer in the 1790s, Mary Wollstonecraft, and ending with the post-feminist fictional Bridget Jones, this course will examine the economic, social, political, and cultural lives of women in Britain since the late 18th century. We will meet famous British women (Queens Victoria and Elizabeth II, Virginia Woolf, Margaret Thatcher, etc) as well as ordinary women (industrial workers, Victorian prostitutes, war nurses and munitions workers, feminist activists, mothers, among others) to understand how class, gender, race, and history intersect. The course aims to provide an introduction to debates about gender and history and employs a variety of primary sources (including novels, autobiography, political pamphlets and social investigations, film) supplemented by secondary sources, to explore women's engagement in public life over the last 230 years.