Junior History Tutorial: Women Make the World (Global Technologies and Gender)
CSS 340
Spring 2025
| Section:
01
02
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Women are only recently appearing as actors in global histories of technology, yet they have long been inventors and creative innovators in a wide range of fields, from domestic textile production and technologies for household maintenance to industrial manufacture. In this tutorial we will explore the global history of technology with women at the center. Initially, scholars located women in relation to specifically gendered objects, such as reproductive technologies like the birth control pill, and tools for "women's work," such as the washing machine. Yet, women have also made "masculine" technological work such as engineering and computer programming their own. Few individual women are credited for their inventions, and one of our challenges will be to locate women's creative production of technological tools and processes in diverse societies from the Americas, Europe, Africa, and Asia. What constitutes women's technology, even women's work, is an unstable category that we will examine together. Moving beyond the domestic space and the family, women's technological work contended with new and emerging state projects related to the economy and politics. Women found their technological identities entangled with discourses of state building and increasingly, after the end of the Cold War, with narratives about international development. These histories of the state overlapped with the domestic, and, over the course of the semester, we will engage with women's global technological stories in relation to big questions about the family, sexuality, and gender and labor. In turn, these same histories will allow us to unpack the ways in which women have engaged with state and international discourses on the economy and development. |
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| Credit: 1 |
Gen Ed Area Dept:
SBS HIST |
| Course Format: Lecture / Discussion | Grading Mode: Graded |
| Level: UGRD |
Prerequisites: None |
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Fulfills a Requirement for: (CSS) |
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Past Enrollment Probability: Not Available |
| SECTION 01 - 3rd Quarter |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
Assigned Readings: (subject to change)
Balsoy, ¿GENDERING OTTOMAN LABOR HISTORY: THE CIBALI RÉGIE FACTORY IN THE EARLY TWENTIETH CENTURY¿ (2009)
Cowan, MORE WORK FOR MOTHER (1985) (select chapters)
Frank, ¿MARKS OF IDENTITY: POTTERS OF THE FOLONA (MALI) AND THEIR MOTHERS¿ (2007)
Hicks, PROGRAMMED INEQUALITY: HOW BRITAIN DISCARDED WOMEN TECHNOLOGISTS AND LOST ITS EDGE IN COMPUTING (2017)
Ko, EVERY STEP A LOTUS: SHOES FOR BOUND FEET (2001) (select chapters)
McGaw, ¿RECONCEIVING TECHNOLOGY: WHY FEMINIST TECHNOLOGIES MATTER¿ (1996)
Okorafor, ¿MOTHER OF INVENTION¿ (2018)
Oldenziel and Karin Zachmann, COLD WAR KITCHEN (2009) (select chapters)
Perez, ¿MODERN KITCHENS IN PAMPAS: HOME MECHANIZATION AND DOMESTIC WORK IN ARGENTINA¿ (2015)
Wajcman, TECHNOFEMINISM (2006 edition) (select chapters)
Additional Readings: TBD
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Examinations and Assignments:
Participation through regular object/media/primary source analysis; Five weekly response papers (2-3pages long); Research Paper (8-10 pages long) |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
Open to CSS Juniors Only |
| Instructor(s): Twagira,Laura Ann Times: .....F. 02:00PM-04:00PM; Location: PAC108; |
Permission of Instructor Required
Enrollment capacity: 10 | Permission of instructor will be granted during the drop/add period. Students must submit either a ranked or unranked drop/add request for this course. |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 0 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
| SECTION 02 - 4th Quarter |
Major Readings: Wesleyan RJ Julia Bookstore
Same as section 01 above |
Examinations and Assignments:
Same as section 01 above |
Additional Requirements and/or Comments:
Same as section 01 above |
| Instructor(s): Twagira,Laura Ann Times: .....F. 02:00PM-04:00PM; Location: PAC116; |
Permission of Instructor Required
Enrollment capacity: 10 | Permission of instructor will be granted during the drop/add period. Students must submit either a ranked or unranked drop/add request for this course. |
| Drop/Add Enrollment Requests | | | | | |
| Total Submitted Requests: 0 | 1st Ranked: 0 | 2nd Ranked: 0 | 3rd Ranked: 0 | 4th Ranked: 0 | Unranked: 0 |
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