This week’s assignment and reading deal with gender. By gender we mean the system of cultural and social assumptions of distinctions between femininity and masculinity based on conventions and social constructions (e.g .: dress, personality traits, behavioral norms, language, and so on). This is in contrast to the biological term – sex, which describes the differences between the sexes at the level of chromosomes and anatomical differences in the reproductive system of an individual in nature (male, female, intersex). Gender is an analytical category, that is, a research perspective from which the historical phenomena of the world must be observed, analyzed and explained. It is a “super concept”, relevant to any field of research and to any phenomenon. For comparison and convenience, another example of other analytical categories is social status (= every historical phenomenon in the world is related to, among other things, economic interactions or has an economic aspect), or race (= the experiences of blacks and whites in the world are not similar). Carefully read the attached chapter from George Mosse’s text Nationalism and Sexuality: Middle-Class Morality and Sexual Norms in Modern Europe then offer an analysis of it based on addressing the following questions: What is Musa’s main thesis, and what are the historical sources he uses to prove his thesis?Show more
