NEH Enduring Questions Course on "What Is the Role of Women in an Ideal Society?"

FAIN: AQ-50947-13

Northern Illinois University (DeKalb, IL 60115-2828)
Andrea Maria Radasanu (Project Director: September 2012 to June 2016)

The development of an upper-level undergraduate course that asks, What is the role of women in an ideal society?

This course explores the just and appropriate role of women in political society. Students will study the works of philosophers, political theorists, novelists, and others from a range of historical periods who propose disparate visions of societies in which familial, social, and political arrangements between the sexes play pivotal roles. The course will require students to reflect on the desirable and the possible concerning relations between men and women and equality between the sexes. This enduring question breaks down into two inquiries. First, what is the nature of women? Are women fundamentally different or the same as men? Is there such a thing as human or female nature? Second, what are and ought to be the implications of conceptions of womanhood for political life? How does femininity qualify or disqualify women from political participation? How does the form of a government shape prevailing views of the appropriate role of women? Dates: 1-1-14 through 12-31-15.