Leora Auslander
Office: Social Sciences 222
Email: lausland@uchicago.edu
Webpage: http://home.uchicago.edu/~lausland/
Professor of European Social History
Founding Director of the Center for Gender Studies
Professor, Committee on Jewish Studies
Background:
Currently professor of Modern European Social History, and a member of the Committee on Jewish Studies and the Center for Gender Studies at the University of Chicago, I research and teach the History of Consumerism, Material Culture, Gender History and Theory, Social Theory and its relation to social history, the history and theory of the everyday, of citizenship, of the nation, and most recently, of Jewish history. The primary national focus of my research is modern France, but I am completing a book in which a comparison of England, France and colonial America is key and am working on another which engages both German and French history in the twentieth century. Finally, although I have not yet published in this area, I maintain an active interest and regularly teach materials on the history of European imperialism and colonialism
What type of students would benefit working with you:
People who are interested in working in Modern European 19th and 20th century in France and Germany. If you have questions about social, cultural, and gender issues in regard to Jewish identity. I regularly teach undergraduate and graduate courses in the fields of Modern European History, Modern Jewish History, and Gender History. In 2006-2007 I will expand my range to include an undergraduate course in colonial and postcolonial history. In addition to these courses, which are most often transnational in reach, I also offer courses with a methodological focus, particularly in the area of material culture. My teaching in the field of material culture is designed to enable students to both think conceptually about how historical actors have used symbolic systems other than language to generate meaning and how to use non-textual sources to write history.
Advise for incoming students:
It depends on your interests. I would emphasis learning Hebrew, not necessarily for me. But it is crucial to come talk to me and we can figure out your path.
Can you speak about your work in gender studies:
I have had a very long-standing interest in the analysis of the construction of gender difference. My writings in the field range quite widely including a critical analysis of the work of three key feminist philosophers (Judith Butler, Nancy Fraser, and Denise Riley); another essay in which I argued that nineteenth-century French conceptions of masculinity were fundamentally important in shaping the nature of demands made by organized labor; an article that traces the ways in which different consumption activities were gendered (and the implications of that gendering); and a co-edited volume on "protective" labor legislation in France and the United States in which we attempted to demonstrate that both conceptions of the meanings of both gender and sexuality have influenced that legislation. All of these projects were driven by a conviction that adequate analysis of how differences between women and men are constructed required the concept of gender. That is, only through analysis of the simultaneous construction of masculinity and femininity, and of male roles and female roles can one grasp either. I was equally persuaded that analysis of gender and of sexuality needed to be done hand-in-hand. Trying to understand the conditions of women's labor, for example, without knowing a given society's conception of women's sexuality will necessarily be only partially successful. These convictions formed the core of my intellectual agenda as the Director of the Center for Gender Studies at the University of Chicago (1996-1999).
What courses are you currently teaching:
My upcoming courses include: Religion, Politics, and Modern Europe; Colonization, Civilization, and Gender Studies.
What have you written/working on:
- Taste and Power: Furnishing Modern France. Studies in the History of Society and Culture, Victoria Bonnell and Lynn Hunt, eds. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996).
- Cultural Revolutions: Everyday Life and Politics in England, North America, and France, forthcoming, Oxford: Berg Press, 2007.
- Current Book Project: Strangers at Home: Jewish Parisians and Berliners in the Twentieth Century