PS 317 Money, Sex and Power
At the founding of this country the vast majority of people in the United States were not granted their constitutional rights. This course examines women’s exclusion from the polity, and analyzes its widespread consequences for their equality over the past 300 years. We will read a wide range of works, from Rousseau and Wollstonecraft to DeBeauvoir and Pateman, to analyze how various political theorists have conceived of womens’ citizenship. In the second part of the course we will examine how these ideas have informed attitudes and assumptions about women, and how they have shaped their participation in public life, as well as their lives outside the public domain.