HONR218A

Women have faced a deep antipathy at nearly every turn in their struggles for civic and social inclusion. These denials of women's rights often take the form of commentaries--sometimes vicious ones--about women's general natures, bodies, and fitness for public life. Women are consistently tagged with various labels of otherness: opponents of women's rights deem them irrational, unnatural, traitors to society, even sexual deviants. This course will examine the dangers that women allegedly represent to social stability from the Enlightenment to today, as well as how women have fought back to assert their rights and independence.