European Women's and Gender History (MATILDA)

Established as part of the EU Erasmus program, the MA in European Women's and Gender History (MATILDA) at Central European University (CEU), offers a unique two-year program if you wish to develop expertise in women's and gender history and are interested in international experiences and intercultural exchange.

The European Women's and Gender History (MATILDA) at Central European University (CEU) is for those students interested in intersectional gender history of the medieval, early modern, and modern eras. It approaches “Europe” not as an isolated entity but as connected to the rest of the world, especially through Europe’s colonial history.

Key Facts

MATILDA supports integrative perspectives which go beyond local, regional, and national histories in order to situate these histories, as well as European history as a whole, in broader contexts and as part of world history. With its focus on comparative, entangled, and transnational history, MATILDA aims to:

• explore the history of gender differences and similarities in European cultures and societies, understood as part of broader colonial and imperial histories;

• investigate the role of gender—intersecting with class, ethnicity and other axes of difference—in shaping European history; and

• challenge gendered inequalities.

The MATILDA curriculum includes courses in core subjects in Women’s and Gender History (theory, methodology, and practice) and specialist options covering medieval to modern historical epochs, such as:

• Inclusion and Exclusion Perspectives on Humanity and Race in Modern European History of Ideas and Science;

• Emotions and Affect in History; Feminism and Masculinity;

• Oral History;

• Qualitative Research Methods: Ethnographic Approaches;

• History in the Visual Mode: Methods and Practices of Documentary Storytelling;

• Labor History in Global Perspective 19th to 21st Centuries;

• Gender and Coloniality: Intersectional Debates and Perspectives;

• Men of Empire: Comparative Masculinities in the Worlds of the Ottomans and their Rivals;

• Multiple Inequalities, Multiple Struggles: Gender, Race, and Ethnicity in State-Socialist Europe; Gender and/in War;

• Feminist Biopolitics and Cultural Practices.