220121 The Politics of the Family in Europe, 1789 to the Present (IS) (WiSe 2011/2012)

This seminar will introduce students to key themes and scholarly debates surrounding the history of the family in modern Europe. It will seek to chart the ways in which policies, laws and discourses surrounding the family have changed over the last two centuries. It will problematise whether the family has been ‘modernised’ over the last two centuries through the introduction of increasingly liberal policies and cultural perspectives. It will also question whether there has been a single European experience of the family. Not least, it will investigate the ways in which individuals, families and communities interacted with the law, social and natural sciences and the state in charting the composition, rights and role of the family in society. Although historical in focus, this seminar will be interdisciplinary in nature, drawing on insights from history, law, sociology, social policy and political science. The seminar will therefore be open to postgraduate students in a variety of relevant disciplines.

Topics

1. Revolutionising the Family? 1789 and its aftermaths
2. A Period of Reaction? The early nineteenth century
3. Property
4. Citizenship
5. Majority: Childhood, Adulthood and the Rights of Individuals
6. Bastardy: Exclusionary Politics of Illegitimacy
7. The Discovery of Lovet
8. Liberalising Divorce
9. The Eugenic Family
10. The Inverted Family: War
11. Reconstructions: Recasting the Family after War
12. Equality within the Family?

Lehrende: Dr Julia Moses, University of Oxford