Gender

South Texas Border, 1900-1920: Photographs from the Robert Runyon Collection

Gender Roles among the Nahua in the Codex Mendoza

From the time of birth, children in Aztec, or Nahua, society were socialized into gender roles. In the birth ritual introducing the infant to society, symbolic objects clearly differentiated. Boys were to be warriors and craftsmen, and girls were to tend to domestic chores.

Short Teaching Module: Codex Mendoza (16th c.)

In Mexico City, towards the middle of the 16th century, Nahuatl-speaking painters created the Codex Mendoza, one of the most lavish indigenous accounts of history and moral behavior known today. Across pages of expensive, imported paper, the painters of the C.

Short Teaching Module: Children and Witchcraft (16th c.)

The overall details of the rise and decline of this cultural focus on witches are generally accepted.

Short Teaching Module: Roman Children’s Sarcophagi

I use images of two Roman marble sarcophagi for topics on children and childhood in undergraduate courses on ancient society, family, gender, representations, and historiography. The sarcophagi can be used to study one period of antiquity or to examine changing notions of childhood over time.

Short Teaching Module: Chinese Propaganda Posters

Visual images provide valuable material for the exploration of childhood, youth and history.

Writers of the Heian Era: Fiction, The Tale of Genji 2

The greatest work produced during the Heian era was The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu, lady-in-waiting to Empress Akiko. Considered the world’s first novel, Genji is written as an absorbing portrait of Heian court life, the splendor of its rituals, and aesthetic culture.

Writers of the Heian Era: Fiction, The Tale of Genji 1

The greatest work produced during the Heian era was The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu, lady-in-waiting to Empress Akiko. Considered the world’s first novel, Genji is written as an absorbing portrait of Heian court life, the splendor of its rituals, and aesthetic culture.

Writers of the Heian Era: Diary, Sei Shônagon 3

Sei Shônagon, a lady-in-waiting to Empress Teishi (or Sadako), left a journal of anecdotes, impressions, and commentary called The Pillowbook (covering the years 986-1000 CE) that has become a valuable source for the court society and cultural life of the Heian Period.

British Empire: Fiction, Nervous Conditions

In 1959, Tsitsi Dangarembga was born in Africa in the British colony known as Rhodesia, now called Zimbabwe. From the age of two, she spent four years living in Britain. On her return to Rhodesia, she attended a missionary school in Mutare.