Women, Gender, & Sexuality

The history of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at the University of Virginia explores the past through the lens of gender and sexual difference. Since gender and sexuality are central to many of the of systems, hierarchies, and divisions that have structured societies in the past, our graduate students and professors research topics that transcend scholarly, conceptual, and generic boundaries. Our department has particular strengths in the history of women, gender, and sexuality in the US South and in Latin America. What unites our scholarly community is an insistence on the historical relevance and meaning of the personal, the domestic, and the intimate in understanding all aspects of the past. Our work in the history department often features close collaboration with the Department of Women, Gender, & Sexuality, as well as other departments and programs here at the University.

As a field, histories of gender and sexuality emerged from struggles to establish women in history as an important and valued form of study. Building from this legacy, some of our faculty and graduate students do write primarily about the history of women. Others understand that the tools that helped historians first find women and other marginalized groups in history can also help historians look in new ways at both men and women as gendered, sexualized subjects. Historians of gender and sexuality also use gender and sexuality as categories of analysis for related social divisions and social constructs such as raceclassculture, and religion. By showing how the norms and meanings of gender and sexuality have shifted over time and place, historians offer new insight into our own cultural worlds in the present as well as the past.

Faculty

Zhang
Professor
256 Nau Hall
Office Hours: Tuesdays: 10-11am; Thursdays, 12:30-1:30 pm; and by appointment
Themes: Cultural and Social History, Material Culture, Political History, Women, Gender, & Sexuality
Shulman
Research Professor of History, Editor of The Dolley Madison Digital Edition
Themes: Cultural and Social History, Political History, Women, Gender, & Sexuality
Klubock
Professor and Chair
Nau Hall 281
Office Hours: W, 1:00PM-3:00PM and by appointment
Themes: Cultural and Social History, Environmental History, Labor History, Race & Ethnicity, Women, Gender, & Sexuality
John L Nau, III, Professor in History of American Civil War, Director, John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History
497 Nau Hall
Office Hours: ON LEAVE
Themes: Cultural and Social History, Military & War History, Women, Gender, & Sexuality
Associate Professor of Data Science
Elson 191
Themes: Cultural and Social History, Women, Gender, & Sexuality
Commonwealth Professor of American Studies and History
283 Nau Hall
Office Hours: ON LEAVE
Themes: Cultural and Social History, Digital Humanities, Race & Ethnicity, Women, Gender, & Sexuality
Associate Chair and Associate Professor of Women, Gender & Sexuality
203 Levering Hall
Office Hours: Fall 2023: Monday, 10:00am - 12:00pm and by appointment
Themes: Cultural and Social History, Race & Ethnicity, Women, Gender, & Sexuality
Associate Professor
Nau 395
Office Hours: T, 1:00-3:30PM and by appointment
Themes: Empire & Colonialism, Women, Gender, & Sexuality

Graduate Student