Vorlesungs­verzeichnis

Gender Studies

Women and/on the Economy: Historical and Literary Perspectives

120004 VO 2023S

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Ziele, Inhalte und Methode der Lehrveranstaltung

The aim of this research-based lecture is, firstly, to acquaint you with the ways in which economic processes intersect with gender and, secondly, to introduce and discuss selected examples of women’s contributions to the development of economic thought. Did you know, for example, that already two hundred years ago, women were criticising what today we term the gender pay gap? Have you thought about how marriage for centuries has been a union based on economic considerations and what this meant for women? In this lecture course, we will delve into such and similar questions. The lecture course is transdisciplinary, involving approaches from literary studies, cultural studies, history, and feminist economics.

The first part of the lecture will explore and discuss the androcentric biases at the heart of economics: established notions of what constitutes economic enquiry, economic topics, and economic genres of writing have for centuries privileged a vantage point that excludes the perspectives and experiences of women and that marginalises the type of knowledge women have generated and recorded in, among others, literary texts. This has resulted in an underrepresentation of women in the canon of economic theory, with manifest consequences for economic practice up to this day. You will be introduced to methods with which this lacuna can be redressed and get an insight into the emergent theoretical field of economic criticism (www.economic-criticism.com). In the second part of the lecture will explore how women have contributed to the development of economic thought. We will discuss selected women writers’ analyses of the economics of marriage, of women and paid work, and of moral economics, with a focus on English writers from the late 18th and 19th centuries.

The lecture course will be taught weekly from 19 April to 28 June 2023 in a hybrid manner: on-campus meetings will alternate with online meetings (synchronous and/or asynchronous). One additional online guest lecture is scheduled for 11.05.2023, 16:15 - 17:45.

 

Art der Leistungskontrolle und erlaubte Hilfsmittel

The lecture will be assessed based on a take-home written exam.

 

Literatur

To read up on the topic of the class, you can consult the following texts:
Ferber, Marianne A., and Julie A. Nelson. Preface. Feminist Economics Today: Beyond Economic Man. Ed. Marianne A. Ferber and Julia A. Nelson. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 2003. vii-ix.
Grünkemeier, Ellen, Pleßke, Nora, and Joanna Rostek. ‘The Value of Economic Criticism Reconsidered: Approaching Literature and Culture through the Lens of Economics’. Introduction. Proceedings Anglistentag 2017. Ed. Anne-Julia Zwierlein, Jochen Petzold, Katharina Boehm, and Martin Decker. Trier: WVT, 2018. 117-125.
Kuiper, Edith. A Herstory of Economics. Cambridge: Polity, 2022.
Osteen, Mark, and Martha Woodmansee. ‘Taking Account of the New Economic Criticism. An Historical Introduction.’ The New Economic Criticism. Studies at the Intersection of Literature and Economics. Ed. Martha Woodmansee and Mark Osteen. Oxon: Routledge, 1999. 3-50.
Poovey,Mary.Genres of the Credit Economy: Mediating Value in Eighteenth- and Nineteenth-Century Britain.Chicago:U of Chicago P,2008.
Rostek, Joanna. ‘Implementing Feminist Economics for the Study of Literature: The Economic Dimensions of Charlotte Brontë’s Shirley Revisited’. Brontë Studies 43.1 (2018): 7888.
Rostek, Joanna. Women’s Economic Thought in the Romantic Age: Towards a Transdisciplinary Herstory of Economic Thought. Abingdon: Routledge, 2021.

 

Prüfungsstoff

Entire lecture content including lecture slides, asynchronous material and obligatory course reading.

 

Mindestanforderungen und Beurteilungsmaßstab

All content covered in the lecture series will be relevant for the final exam, which will count for the entirety of the participant’s grade. The benchmark for passing the exam is at 60%.
Grades in %:
1 (very good): 90-100
2 (good): 80-89
3 (satisfactory): 70-79
4 (pass): 60-69
5 (fail): 0-59