2024-2025 Academic Catalog

Nov 21, 2024

2024-2025 Academic Catalog

HIST 295 - Dangerous Women

This course will explore the history of dangerous women from Bible through the present, concentrating most heavily on early modern Europe. We will focus primarily on England, France and Germany (though occasionally we will draw on scholarship about the U.S. and other regions). We will examine discourses of dangerous women developed in religious writings, myth, literature and fairy tales, medicine, crime reporting, social science and legal texts in order to interrogate the very concept of the dangerous woman and ask why certain women at certain times were considered dangerous. We will also look at the experiences and treatment of women labeled dangerous specifically examining saints, heretics, prostitutes, witches, step-mothers, queens, lesbians, criminals, mentally-ill women and women’s rights activists.

Anticipated Terms Offered: Offered periodically.