EN 353—Gender and Western Values

     Western values—gendered or universal? This question matters to all of us—to our culture, to our literature, to our daily lives.  All the readings in this course have been designed to address this question.

    The texts we use will explore a range of values—as written, spoken, or lived—relevant to Queen Elizabeth, Machiavelli, Veronica Franco, Baldassare Castiglione, Giovanni Boccaccio, and Marguerite de Navarre. All these figures are important to the literature and thought of the Early Modern period.

     These days people continue to debate what books should be taught in our universities.  In these debates, we often hear references to the "Western tradition," stretching from Greek and Roman civilization, through the Renaissance and Enlightenment in Europe, and on to the principles on which the United States was founded. 

     Sometimes the Western tradition is called Judaeo-Christian, in reference to religious principles, but the term Western is also applied to a broad range of humanist principles such as individuality, leadership, freedom, citizenship, democracy, community, and human rights--not to mention life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.   For this course, I'm defining this range of principles as Western Values. In this course, the focus is primarily upon the values of leadership, individuality, and freedom.

     The Western tradition has also produced the concepts of "masculine" and "feminine."  These two words evoke two traditional sets of traits.   "Masculine" traits are typically understood to be the opposite of "feminine" traits—for example, strong as opposed to delicate, rational as opposed to emotional, loud as opposed to soft-spoken.   For this course, we define these two contrasting sets of traits as gender.

      In our postmodern society, we try to avoid gender stereotyping—that is, we try not to assume that all males must be "masculine" and all females "feminine."   That effort is fine, as far as it goes. 

      However, in Gender and Western Values we are asking a more fundamental question: 

       Course requirements: Seven journals, one presentation of a scholarly article, prepared questions and responses during class, a "fieldwork" paper comparing a Renaissance figure with a contemporary figure, and regular class attendance.