030399 KU Legal History - Women's History and the Law (15th-19th centuries) (2025S)

A survey of women's history from the fifteenth century to the late nineteenth century. The course will focus on the relationship of women with the law, with legal knowledge, and on the representations of women in early modern and nineteenth-century jurisprudence. The impact of the so-called 'querelle des femmes' on the legal literature will be examined. The course will emphasize the examination of a variety of extracts from historical sources (ranging from extracts of the works of Christine de Pizan and Cornelius Agrippa until the Seneca Falls Declaration of 1848). The course will be divided into five thematic units:
I. Introduction: Women's History and Critical Legal Studies.
II. The Debate on the Nature of Women (the 'Mulier non homo' debate and the Renaissance discourses on the inferiority and superiority of women).
III. Women and Iurisdictio (the concepts of potestas, iurisdictio, imperium, and the representations of the political power by women in early modern legal literature).
IV. The Debate on the Education of Women its Impact on the Jurists’ Discourses
V. Women and Rights. The fifth section will explore various texts concerning the rights of women, written between the second half of the eighteenth century and the nineteenth century.