“What is the big deal? Gender and sexuality in five hundred years of historical debates on four continents” In this seminar, we will explore political debates on gender roles, on practices of sex and on sexuality. The course will consist of three full-day seminars. We will thematically explore controversies over male and female body modification, exotification and fetishization of sexual practices and the use of evolution and race in feminist debates. This will let us move between centuries, from the 17th to the 21st, between continents, and connect to the histories of race and empire, of violence and love, and of the field of history itself. Each seminar will combine in-depth-dives into primary sources and connect these to classic texts in gender history and feminist theory. The course will be co-taught by Lisa Hellman, Susanne Schmidt, Sarah Bellows-Blakely and Lea Börgerding, who collectively specialize in transnational feminism, history of science, social history and the history of capitalism in East and Central Asia, America, Western Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa. We will together explore the forms different debates about sex and sexuality have taken on different continents over the years. The course will challenge us to discuss why debates on gender roles and sexual practices flared up at certain times and places. At the same it, we will discuss how and why certain regions have been used as examples. The meeting of history and use of history will enable us to bridge time and space. It will also let us ask: is it even possible to create such bridges? Can we formulate macro frameworks that do not apply a blueprint based on one particular region and time? Are there things we lose in global history, or in the legitimization of political issues on feminism, race and sexuality, unless we construct macro frameworks, or coherent narratives? close