Gender, Sexuality, and Empire

Course content The course is organized around three modules Module 1: Manhood and Empire Module 2: Sex(uality) and Empire Module 3: Women and Empire

Module 1: Manhood and Empire Examine in what ways empire building was represented as a masculine enterprise How the gendering of the space of the empire and the activities of empire building as a masculine sphere was related to social and political problems in Europe Paradoxes of civilization – progress and threat of degeneration The empire as site of degeneration and regeneration The making of the imperial race  restoration of manhood  athletic activities, scouting movement, adventuring, the Big Game

Manhood and Empire

White hunters as imperial heroes Frederick Selous ( ) Famous hunter in South Africa Inspiration for the fictional hero Allan Quatermain, African big-game hunter character in Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines

Module 2: Sex(uality) and Empire European practice of gendering the colonies as female – use of gender and sexual metaphors to manage relationships with the colonies and the colonized Case study: Orientalism – constructing the “Oriental woman” as the Other of the masculine West e.g. Puccini’s Madame Butterfly The oversexed native versus the effeminate native Interracial sexual relationships between European men and native women and European women and native men

Sex(uality) and Empire Gendering the Other

Sex(ality) and empire From Madama Butterfly to M Butterfly

Module 3: Women and Empire Women’s conditions as index of civilization–> evidence of European superiority and backwardness of colonized White women’s emigration to the empire Myth of the destructive female White woman’s double burden – to civilize both the white men and the natives

Women and Empire