This thesis explores the gendered dynamics of industrialisation in the late Ottoman Empire and British India. It examines the ways in which gendered notions of skill, waged work, domesticity and technology shaped employment patterns, labour processes and politics in silk factories in Bursa and cotton mills in Bombay between 1850 and 1910. The project undermines the notion that women's labour was incidental to the development of large-scale factory enterprise in Ottoman and Indian lands. I argue that the confinement of women to labour-intensive and low-paid occupations within and outside the factory brought down wages and provided flexibility to mechanised production. This flexibility was key to the survival and rapid growth of the export-oriented industries in Bursa and Bombay. The common mechanisms of women's marginalisation in the workforce included segregation, masculinisation of machinery, vertical organisation of trade unions, male-controlled recruitment processes and the household division of labour. The extent to which women influenced employment practices depended on the availability of external mediation as well as their means to subvert notions of victimhood, domesticity, honour and duty. In connecting the Ottoman and Indian paths to industrialisation from a gender perspective, the project destabilises male-centric approaches to the global history of economy, labour and technology.

“Feeling Historical,” examines why history has played such a central role in the construction of queer identities by analyzing how same-sex desiring individuals, particularly elite white individuals, in the U.S. looked to history to construct and navigate their own sexual identities. My project begins in the late nineteenth-century U.S., when history took on new cultural significance in the United States. Americans, previously more preoccupied with the future than the past, became engrossed in finding truth in history and origins. Parallel to this preoccupation with the past was the emergence of modern notions of sexual identity and the rise of the new sexual science of “sexology.” For sexologists, same-sex desire was new, a product of modernity and degeneration in which the sexually deviant fell behind on the evolutionary ladder. “Feeling Historical” analyzes the cultural and racialized work of white queer individuals who pushed back against such pathologizing discourse, arguing that their sexual affinities were not something aberrant, connected to degenerate desires of the racial other. Instead, they positioned themselves as rooted in a complex whitewashed transnational and transhistorical past. Mobilizing the past to construct their present, these individuals often drew on orientalist histories of great ancient civilizations in which they believed same-sex desire was accepted and even celebrated. They did so to not only counter the homophobic violence they experienced in their own time but to also reclaim their privileged racial identities. Much cultural work went into the construction of such a queer history. Using an interdisciplinary framework linking history, memory studies, queer theory, performance studies, visual culture studies, and critical race studies, I examine how these individuals appropriated examples of same-sex desire in the history, literature, and art of Ancient Greece, Italy, and the Middle East with imperialist understandings of such cultures. I ask which histories they found useful, and how gender, race, class, and ethnicity informed their historical reclamations. Through acts of history writing, auto-biography, performance, sexual tourism, and the creation of queer archives, I argue that such same-sex desiring individuals used history to not only navigate their identities and carve out spaces in a hostile world where they could survive and even thrive, but also reclaim their racial privilege by fashioning a queer identity based on a past that positioned queerness as inherently white.

<p>This essay focuses on how women and the woman emancipation are described in high school history textbooks from the years 1970, 1980, 1990 and 2000, using the theories history consciousness and gender. Two textbooks are analyzed from each period. There are several gender theories, in this essay it is Yvonne Hirdman’s theory concerning woman- and gender history that is used. This means that the woman emancipation and women’s history are analyzed from the perspectives invisible, add, and-, how- and gender history. Concerning the theory history consciousness Jeisman’s four definitions are used. The woman’s role and the woman emancipation are also examined from the variables work, education and the woman’s role at home.</p><p>During analyzing the text books it became clear that the presence of a history consciousness and gender perspective gradually became higher the newer the textbook was which means there were big differences in the books from year 1970 to year 2000.</p>

This essay focuses on how women and the woman emancipation are described in high school history textbooks from the years 1970, 1980, 1990 and 2000, using the theories history consciousness and gender. Two textbooks are analyzed from each period. There are several gender theories, in this essay it is Yvonne Hirdman’s theory concerning woman- and gender history that is used. This means that the woman emancipation and women’s history are analyzed from the perspectives invisible, add, and-, how- and gender history. Concerning the theory history consciousness Jeisman’s four definitions are used. The woman’s role and the woman emancipation are also examined from the variables work, education and the woman’s role at home. During analyzing the text books it became clear that the presence of a history consciousness and gender perspective gradually became higher the newer the textbook was which means there were big differences in the books from year 1970 to year 2000.

This thesis locates John G. Diefenbaker’s electoral triumphs in the general elections of 1957 and 1958 and his subsequent world tour within the context of the revival of Conservative nationalism in the postwar period. To make his case against a Liberal government that had been in power for twenty-two years, Diefenbaker had to engage the public in a response to political events based on an appreciation of an abstract and not quite palpable threat to democracy and a national way of life. He did so by harnessing the persuasive techniques of public relations and the new medium of television—a powerful combination that Diefenbaker knew could most effectively tell and sell a national narrative. The signature he settled on was the “New National Policy.” The choice harkened back to a discourse of Conservative nationalism that spoke of the antiquity of his party ideology and rediscovered the heroes who founded the nation. The “New National Policy” was a therapeutic ethos designed to assuage voters’ fears about mass consumption, continentalism, communism, and the end of empire: it ensured that the greatness of events and men of the past could guarantee the ideas and values of the present; it was gendered in its construction of patriotic manhood, exalted motherhood, and icons of nationalist ideology; it was transnational in scope; it told of a relation of cause-and-effect that resembled a theory of history more than a blueprint for public policy; it was fashioned to disarm critical analysis because it conformed to the structures and traditions of storytelling and the clichés of historical memory. This thesis makes three interrelated arguments. First, it argues that the systems of values and meanings on which Diefenbaker drew cannot be understood by analyzing his personal foibles or tracing his rise and fall through a series of events. Partisan narratives are built out of the dialectical interchange between warring political ideologies and are stories fitted to character, circumstance, and experience. Second, it suggests that Diefenbaker was a transitional figure whose vision, message, leadership style, and public relations campaign seemed to best fit the barely discernable dimensions of the political and cultural change of the immediate postwar decades. Finally, by examining resurgence of Conservative nationalism in the context of imperial decline, it seeks to show that partisan narratives in English Canada in the 1960s cannot be understood outside of the larger transnational contexts in which they emerged.

This thesis locates John G. Diefenbaker’s electoral triumphs in the general elections of 1957 and 1958 and his subsequent world tour within the context of the revival of Conservative nationalism in the postwar period. To make his case against a Liberal government that had been in power for twenty-two years, Diefenbaker had to engage the public in a response to political events based on an appreciation of an abstract and not quite palpable threat to democracy and a national way of life. He did so by harnessing the persuasive techniques of public relations and the new medium of television—a powerful combination that Diefenbaker knew could most effectively tell and sell a national narrative. The signature he settled on was the “New National Policy.” The choice harkened back to a discourse of Conservative nationalism that spoke of the antiquity of his party ideology and rediscovered the heroes who founded the nation. The “New National Policy” was a therapeutic ethos designed to assuage voters’ fears about mass consumption, continentalism, communism, and the end of empire: it ensured that the greatness of events and men of the past could guarantee the ideas and values of the present; it was gendered in its construction of patriotic manhood, exalted motherhood, and icons of nationalist ideology; it was transnational in scope; it told of a relation of cause-and-effect that resembled a theory of history more than a blueprint for public policy; it was fashioned to disarm critical analysis because it conformed to the structures and traditions of storytelling and the clichés of historical memory. This thesis makes three interrelated arguments. First, it argues that the systems of values and meanings on which Diefenbaker drew cannot be understood by analyzing his personal foibles or tracing his rise and fall through a series of events. Partisan narratives are built out of the dialectical interchange between warring political ideologies and are stories fitted to character, circumstance, and experience. Second, it suggests that Diefenbaker was a transitional figure whose vision, message, leadership style, and public relations campaign seemed to best fit the barely discernable dimensions of the political and cultural change of the immediate postwar decades. Finally, by examining resurgence of Conservative nationalism in the context of imperial decline, it seeks to show that partisan narratives in English Canada in the 1960s cannot be understood outside of the larger transnational contexts in which they emerged.

The Spanish Civil War is typically presented as a military narrative of the ideological battle between socialism and fascism, foreshadowing World War II. Yet the Spanish war continued trends begun during World War I, notably the use of propaganda posters and the movement of women into visible roles within the public sphere. Employing cultural studies methods to read propaganda poster art from the Spanish war as texts, this thesis analyzes the ways in which this persuasive medium represented extremes of gender discourse within the context of letters, memoirs, and other experiential accounts. This thesis analyzes symbols present in propaganda art and considers how their meanings interacted with the changing gendered identities of Republic and nation. Even within the relatively egalitarian Republic, political factions constructed conflicting representations of femininity in propaganda art, and women’s accounts indicate that despite ideological differences, both sides still shared a patriarchal worldview.

In the cultural upheaval of the 1920s, Canadians became particularly invested in looking at and debating women’s images in public. This dissertation looks at how English-Canadians debated, accepted, and challenged modernity through public images of women. In analysing the debates over cultural rituals of looking it seeks to show how the discussions about images reveal the power of vision in ordering and understanding modernity as well as social and cultural changes. Through five case studies on the flapper, the Diamond Jubilee of Confederation, two beauty contests, an art exhibition including nudes, and the relationship between film and automobiles this study reveals how important images of the body were to the cultural developments and debates on the post-World War One modern world. By the 1920s urban visual culture was dominated by various images of women and an analysis of those images and the debates around them reveal underlying tensions related to gender, class, age, social order, and race. Anxieties over changes in these areas were absorbed into the broader concerns over the pleasures and perils associated with being modern. This dissertation looks at Canadian visual culture in terms of what it can reveal about modernity and the problems, perils, and pleasures associated with it.

This thesis investigates the motivations, strategies and experiences of a movement that saw thousands of young and youngish people permanently relocate to the Canadian countryside during the 1970s. It focuses on two contrasting coasts, Denman, Hornby and Lasqueti Islands in the Strait of Georgia, British Columbia, and three small communities near Baddeck, Cape Breton. This is a work of oral history, based on interviews with over ninety people, all of whom had lived in their communities for more than thirty years. It asks what induced so many young people to abandon their expected life course and take on a completely new rural way of life at a time when large numbers were leaving the countryside in search of work in the cities. It then explores how location and the communities already established affected the initial process of settlement. Although almost all back-to-the-landers were critical of the modern urban and industrial project; they discovered that they could not escape modern capitalist society. However, they were determined to control their relationship to the modern economic system with strategies for building with found materials, adopting older ways and technologies for their homes and working off-property as little as possible. Living in a resource based economy, building a homestead, and cutting firewood favoured masculine strength. The thesis addresses the gendered implications of this way of life, particularly for women. At one extreme, they embraced and came to terms with the traditional roles expected of them; at the other they insisted on conquering both the masculine and feminine roles. Through the study of a newsletter for Denman Island and eye-witness accounts for Cape Breton, we get a glimpse of the fierce commitment back-to-the-landers felt for their new communities and of their willingness to defend their collective rights to clean air, water and soil. The study concludes that geography, demography and culture were instrumental in shaping the eventual integration of the immigrant and pre-existing communities. Everywhere this influx of young and enthusiastic migrants enriched their communities and provided a deeply satisfying way of life for those who succeeded in their newly adopted rural landscape.

A disagreement may occur between Skolverket’s aim to include various perspectives in history teaching, and the realization of the subject amongst students with negative attitudes towards the gender perspective. The object of this overview is to compile and analyze the result of an information retrieval regarding adolescents’ attitudes towards gender history, and how they may affect the teaching frame. Thus, this overview can become a tool for history teachers when implementing gender history in their teaching. Useful material was found through the databases: Education Research Complete (ERC), ERIC via EBSCO, Sociological Abstracts, Google Scholar, and DiVa Portal. Each source has been reviewed and valued based on its relevance to the effects of attitudes in regards to gender history. Therefore, sources processing attitudes around feminism, gender equality, and women’s history have also been valued as useful. The result in this overview conveys both positive and negative attitudes towards feminism, gender equality, and women’s history. However, the research provides examples of how the teacher can affect how the students encounter gender history, and, therefore, also their attitudes towards the subject matter. The teacher is wise to implement a teaching with a gender perspective, which will challenge the students’ preconceived perceptions. Secondly, the research conveys the important use of a variation of historical agents for the sake of each students’ identification within gender history. Thirdly, a significant part of the used sources promotes the idea of including gender history as a vital segment of the traditional history teaching. Otherwise it would remain simply a less valued supplement. Lastly, a relationship-oriented teaching is suggested as a useful tool whilst managing the problems which may occur when teaching gender history.