Womens Voices in Medieval and Early Modern Europe

History 1427
Harvard College/GSAS: 7597

Fall, 2007: MW[F], 10:00

Barker Center (Union/Burr), Room 114 (Kresge Room)

Rachel L. Greenblatt
Semitic Museum (6 Divinity Avenue), Room 305
495-9823
rlgreenb@fas.harvard.edu

Office Hours: Mondays, 2:00 to 3:00, or by appointment

In this course, we will seek out the voices of Jewish, Protestant and Catholic women, with an
emphasis on womens writings, and examine methods for uncovering information about womens
lives when their own voices are absent from the historical record. We will consider ideal images
and daily realities of both mens and womens gendered roles in such areas as life-cycle rituals,
livelihood and spirituality.

Student Responsibilities

1. Class participation. Course readings and source analysis form the core of our class discussion.
Course readings from scholarly works, listed on the syllabus, must be completed by the Monday
meeting of each week. Sometimes, we may divide the reading, and participants will summarize
readings for each other in class. I may, in the course of the semester, assign written response
papers to be submitted in class the day readings are discussed, if I feel this step would be
beneficial to class discussions. Sources, to be discussed primary during each weeks Wednesday
meeting, will be available on the couse web site by the beginning of each week. (30%)

We will meet for class on Mondays and Wednesdays, with some Friday meetings scheduled
throughout the semester. Announcements of a Friday meeting will always be made by no later
than the previous Monday.

2. Two papers, due Oct. 10 (10%) and Dec. 10 (15%).

3. Mid-term exam, Oct. 28. (15%)

4. Final exam. (30%)

Graduate students, please see me to discuss possible alternatives to the semesters assignments
and adjustments of the reading requirements. Senior concentrators in History, WGS, NELC or
related topics may also join graduate students in adjusting the requirements if they wish to do so.
 Womens Voices, p. 2

Lectures and Readings

The main texts for the course are availabe at the Coop and on reserve. These are:

Jennifer Ward, Women in Medieval Europe, 1200-1500 (London: Longman, 2002).

Merry E. Wiesner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.
Press, 1993).

Natalie Zemon Davis, Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives (Cambridge,
Mass: Harvard Univ. Press, 1995).

Altogether, however, these three texts form but a small portion of our readings, which will consist
laragely of scholarly articles. Readings preceded by a * can be found in the course reader,
available and Gnomon copy. A reader for the first several weeks of class will be available at the
beginning of the semester, with subsequent volumes to follow. There will also be links to
scanned or internet copies on the course web site.

Week 1 (Sept. 17): Introductions

What is so hard about finding womens voices? How do we meet the challenge?

Readings (for the second class meeting, Wed., Sept. 19)

*Judith P. Zinsser, History & Feminism: A Glass Half Full (New York: Twayne Publishers,
1993), pp. 16-24. Optional: pp. 5-15.

Merry E. Wiesner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.
Press, 1993), pp. 1-9.

I. Medieval Europe

Week 2 (Sept. 24, 26): Education, Livelihood, Family: Gendered Roles in Home, Work &
Public Worship

Readings

*Judith R. Baskin, Jewish Women in the Middle Ages, in Jewish Women in Historical
Perspective, ed. Judith R. Baskin (2nd ed., Detroit: Wayne State Univ. Press, 1998), pp. 101-127.

*Ivan G. Marcus, Mothers, Martyrs and Moneymakers: Some Jewish Women in Medieval
Europe, Conservative Judaism 38 (1986): 34-45.

Jennifer Ward, Women in Medieval Europe, 1200-1500 (London: Longman, 2002), pp. 1-93,
154-190.
 Womens Voices, p. 3

Week 3 (Oct 1, 3): Childbirth & Birth Rituals

Readings

Elisheva Baumgarten, Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe (Princeton:
Princeton Univ. Press, 2004), pp. 21-118.

Ward, Women in Medieval Europe, pp. 94-110.

*Gail McMurray Gibson, Scene and Obscene: Seeing and Performing Late Medieval
Childbirth, Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 29 (1999): 7-24.

Week 4 (No class Mon, Oct 8, meet Wed., Oct 10, Fri. Oct 12): Spirituality and Martyrdom

Due in class on Wed., Oct. 10:

Short paper (5-8 pp). Topics to be distributed in class.

Readings

*Susan Einbinder, Jewish Women Martyrs: Changing Models of Represenation, Exemplaria 12

(2000): 15-27.

Ward, Women in Medieval Europe, pp. 191-237, 238-251.

*Anneke B. Mulder-Bakker, Gendering Medieval Martyrdom: Thirteenth-Century Lives of

Holy Women in the Low Countries, More than a Memory: The Discourse of Martyrdom and
the Construction of Christian Identity in the History of Christianity, ed. Johan Leemans (Leuven:
Peeters, 2005), pp. 221-242.

*Jeffrey Hamburger, Nuns as Artists: The Visual Culture of a Medieval Convent (Berkeley, Los
Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1997), pp. 1-61.

Week 5 (Oct. 15, 17): Medieval Memory

*Patrick J. Geary, Phantoms of Remembrance: Memory and Oblivion at the End of the First
Millenium (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1994), pp. 48-80.

*Elisabeth van Houts, Memory and Gender in Medieval Europe, 900-1200 (Houndsmill, London:
Macmillan Press, 1999), selections.

*Patricia Skinner, Gender, Memory and Jewish Identity: Reading a Family History from
Medieval Southern Italy, Early Medieval Europe 13, 3 (2005): 277-296.
 Womens Voices, p. 4

II. Early Modern Europe

Week 6 (Oct 22, 24): Defining early modern Europe, the transition from medieval times,
and sketching its geographical and confessional boundaries.

Readings:

*Joan Kelly, Did Women Have a Renaissance, in: Becoming Visible: Women in European
History, ed. Renate Bridenthal, Susan Mosher Stuard, Merry E. Wiesner, (Houghton Mifflin,
1977, revised edition, 1988), pp. 137-164.

*Merry E. Wiesner, Gender, Church and State in Early Modern Germany (London, New York,
1998), pp. 1-46, 63-83.

*Raymond Grew, The Case for Comparing Histories, The American Historical Review, Vol.
85, No. 4. (Oct., 1980): 763-778. (See this issue and another, Vol 87 [February 1982] for forums
including a variety of opinions about the use of comparative history).

Fri., Oct. 28: Mid-term Exam

Week 7 (Oct. 29, 31): Jewish World of Glikl bas Judah Leib

Readings

*Rudolf Dekker, Introduction, in Egodocuments and History: Autobiographical Writing in its

Social Context since the Middle Ages, ed. Idem (Hilversum: Verloren, 2002), pp. 7-20.

Merry E. Wiesner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.
Press, 1993), pp. 41-81.

Natalie Zemon Davis, Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives (Cambridge,
Mass: Harvard Univ. Press, 1995), pp. 1-62.

*Jacob Katz, Tradition and Crisis: Jewish Society at the End of the Middle Ages, trans. Bernard
Dov Cooperman (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1993), pp. 1-16, 65-75, 113-131.

Week 8 (Nov. 5, 7): Catholic World of Marie de LIncarnation

Readings

Davis, Women on the Margins, pp. 63-139.

 Womens Voices, p. 5

*Elizabeth C. Goldsmith, Publishing Women's Life Stories in France, 1647- 1720: From Voice to
Print (Brookfield, VT: Ashgate, 2001), pp. 1-11, 156-162; recommended: pp. 12-41.

Wiesner, Women and Gender, pp. 179-238.

Week 9 (No class Mon, Nov. 12, meet Wed., Nov. 14, Fri., Nov. 12): Protestant World of
Maria Sibylla Merian

Readings

Davis, Women on the Margins, pp. 140-215.

Wiesner 117-174 (Part II: The Mind)

*Wiesner, From Spiritual Virginity to Family as Calling, in her Gender, Church and the State
in Early Modern Germany (London, New York: Longman, 1998), pp. 36-46.

Recommended: Steven E. Ozment, The Burgermeisters Daughter: Scandal in a Sixteenth-

Century German Town (New York: HarperCollins, 1997).

To be arranged: Houghton viewing of Maria Sibylla Merian, Wonderful Transformation and

Singular Plant-Food of Caterpillars.

Week 10 (Nov. 19, 21): Farther East

Readings

*Moshe Rosman, Innovative Tradition: Jewish Culture in the Polish-Lithuanian

Commonwealth, Cultures of the Jews: A New History, ed. David Biale (New York: Schocken
Books, 2002), Vol. 2, pp. 217-268 (skim all, focus on pp. 249-258).

*Ada Rapoport-Albert, On Women in Hasidism, Jewish History: Essays in Honor of Chimen

Abramsky (London: P. Halban, 1988), pp. 495-525.

*Maria Bogucka, Women in Early Modern Polish Society (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2004), pp.
1-52, 111-124, 177-179.

Week 11 (Nov. 26, 28): Spirituality, Holy Women; Demons and Witches

Readings

Chava Weissler, Voices of the Matriarchs: Listening to the Prayers of Early Modern Jewish
Women, selections.

*Selections from: Saints, Sinners and Sisters: Gender and Northern Art in Medieval and Early
Modern Europe (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2003).
 Womens Voices, p. 6

Moshe Sluhovsky, Believe Not Every Spirit: Possession, Mysticism, & Discernment in Early
Modern Catholicism (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2007), selections.

Week 12 (Dec. 3, 5): More on Print, Publishing

Readings

*Natalie Zemon Davis, Printing and the People, Society and Culture in Ealry Modern France
(Stanford: Stanford Univ. Press, 1975), pp. 189-226.

*Androniki Dialeti, The Publisher Gabriel Giolito de Ferrari, Female Readers, and the Debate
about Women in Sixteenth-Century Italy, Renaissance and Reform n.s. 28, 4 (2004): 6-32.

*Marie-Elisabeth Ducreux, Reading unto Death: Books and Readers in Eighteenth-Century

Bohemia, The Culture of Print, ed. Roger Chartier, trans. Lydia G. Cochrane (Princeton:
Princeton Univ. Press, ) pp. 191-229.

Zeev Gries, The Book in the Jewish World, 1700-1900, trans. Jeffrey M. Green (Littman Library,
2007), selections.

Week 13 (Dec. 10, 12, 17): Early Modern Memory, Review and Conclusions

Due in class on Mon., Dec. 10:

Final paper (approximately 10 pp.). Topics to be distributed in class.

Readings

*Rachel L. Greenblatt, The Shapes of Memory: Evidence in Stone from the Old Jewish
Cemetery in Prague, Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook 47 (2002): 43-67.

*Clive Burgess, "'Longing to be Prayed for:' Death and Commemoration in an English Parish in
the Later Middle Ages" The Place of the Dead: Death and Remembrance in Late Medieval and
Early Modern Europe, ed. Bruce Gordon and Peter Marshall (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 44-65.

*Merry E. Wiesner, Gender, Church and State in Early Modern Germany (London, New York,
1998), pp. 199-212.

Final Exam: date to be determined by the registrar. Depending on class size, a take-home
final exam may be substituted.