Webb Lecture: Wretched Girls and Wretched Boys
The Medieval Origins of the "European Marriage Pattern"
Thursday, November 10, 2016 · 4 - 5:30 PM
Judith Bennett, John R. Hubbard Professor Emerita, University of Southern California
Championed
by Nike, the United Nations, and many NGOs, the "Girl Effect," a new
buzzword in development theory, argues that that economies grow when
girls marry later and get more schooling. This lecture skeptically
explores its historical equivalent, namely, the notion that because
after 1500 European girls began to marry later than their peers
elsewhere, "Girlpower" drove the extraordinary economic development of
modern Europe. Professor Bennett will show, first, that women began to
marry later (or not at all) in Europe long before 1500, and, second,
that the impetus for this distinctive "European Marriage Pattern" was
abject poverty, not prudential investment in the human potential of
girls.
Bio: Judith
Bennett taught women's history and medieval history at the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Southern
California. Her publications include the best-selling textbook Medieval Europe: A Short History; History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism; and Single women in the European Past,
a pathbreaking collection of essays co-edited with UMBC historian Amy
Froide. During her university career, Bennett has received numerous
teaching awards, research fellowships, and publication prizes. She now
divides her time between Portland, Oregon and London, England.
Sponsored by the History Department and the Dresher Center for the Humanities