notes from 2/26, 3/5, 3/12, 3/25

Feb. 26            Presentation by a descendant of the Oneida religious community in upstate NY, active in the 19^th century.

March 5            “berdache”; Example of a passing Native American woman who was befriended by the wife of an anthropologist, who introduced her to British society. People all though she was a woman (as did the anthropologist’s wife), even though she was tall, big, etc. The case was discussed in terms of cultural differences in how we understand gender. Could have teased out more how ethnicity and culture influence gender norms—i.e., part of the reason the “berdache” was not recognized as male was because 19^th c. definitions of femininity only applied to whiteness, middle or upper classness, and westernness, that gender norms are defined by these often invisible factors.

March 12            Watched Paris Is Burning, described as a film about “transvestites”

March 25            Banner’s thesis about the 1920’s: The 1920’s were paranoid and schizophrenic. Hope and despair, feeling that something terrible would happen again.

Discussed the gains made/not made by women in the 1920’s.

1920’s—suffrage; Prohibition; WW I over; economic prosperity that ends with the Great Depression.

1920’s women’s gain: the right to vote; shorter skirts and hair; hats that cover almost to the eyes; dancing (Charleston, tango); reaction against homoeroticism (more heterosexual than the late 19^th c).

Era of Manners and Morals; Era of Wonderful Nonsense

Still don’t have birth control (1930’s-1960’s); abortion (Roe v. Wade). Comstock Act outlawed birth control, abortion, pornography.

Professor remarked on how Roe v. Wade was up for reconsideration in a few weeks and might be overturned. She outed herself as having an abortion at their age.

War War I (1914-1918): what was it like and why did it create paranoia/schizophrenia in its wake? US only in the war for a year and casualties much less than Europe (16 million vs. 1 million). Influenza epidemic (1918) killed 500 million people worldwide. She argues that its WWI that caused paranoia/schizophrenia, plus the ethnic conflict (ethnicity/race/class) within the U.S. (Claims racism has mostly disappeared in this generation! But I think that she means overt racism.)

WWI produced by nationalism and European alliances. First war since Napoleonic War a hundred years earlier (except the Civil War, but none in Europe). First war that uses major technology (canons with long range, machine guns, planes that drop bombs, poison gas). Trench warfare. Men disfigured by war. Also “shell shock” (PTSD, except they thought only effeminate men had shell shock, not manly men: nightmares, nervous disorders, visions).

1918 – Russian Revolution. Chinese Revolution followed.