Gender: A World History by Susan Kingsley Kent, and: Gender Rules: Identity and Empire in Historical Perspective by Karen Phoenix (review)

Abstract

As historian Merry Wiesner-Hanks notes in her 2007 Journal of World History article “World History and the History of Women, Gender, and Sexuality,” more could be done to integrate the fields of world history and gender. Though fifteen years have passed since the article’s publication, and definite strides have been made, this argument still stands true. Two recent books aim to bridge the world history/gender history divide, Susan Kingsley Kent’sGender: AWorld History and Karen Phoenix’s Gender Rules: Identity and Empire in Historical Perspective. Both of these volumes embrace the “new” world history model, consciously striving to move beyond an emphasis on Europe and the United States or a “great civilizations” approach, and instead focusing on connections, interactions, and comparisons. Both aim to center specifically gender in world history, telling not solely a history of women, but one where masculinity is also a subject of study. Both