I only had one class today: Women’s History. It was spent talking about intersectionality and gender as a form of analysis. I believe I wrote about my historiography class in semester 5 where a unit was dedicated to gender analysis, centred around Joan Scott’s work.

The beginning of the class was my professor showing us an excerpt from a student from this course years ago to help us know what we could write for our weeklong blogs. These blogs are creative exercises where we write from the perspective of a fictional woman from the time period lectured about during the week. The excerpt given was written from the perspective of a Korean woman where she states something about how the Soviets leaving gave rise to guerrilla bands that are now terrorizing the North East.

After this we learned about intersectionality. The most important thing that was emphasized was that intersectionality is not something that can be defined, it is a practice to apply to life. It is analyzing the intersection of oppression (gender, race, sexuality, disability, class, etc.) and the awareness of the unique experiences of those with intersecting identities. The term “compounded identities” was used. It was also stated that gender does not equal women. Intersectional analysis is a metaphor for understanding how different identities compound themselves. There is no real definition as intersectionality is a frame-work for understanding social relations.

Next we went over Joan Scott’s article on whether gender was still a useful form of historical analysis. There was a lot written so I will just try to get the important bits out: the usefulness of gender is dependant on how it is critically used; it is useful as an invitation to think critically about how meaning of sexed bodies are conceived of and how those meanings are deployed and changed. It is used to question how conceptions of sexual differences was created and how the truth keeps changing. I really am trying to write the slides in my own words but it is quite difficult. If you’re confused then I suggest just reading Joan Scott, the specific article is “Gender: Still a Useful Category of Analysis?”

This is where class ended. I apologize for this post being late. I had a turbulent weekend.