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Gender History is one of the fields of the so-called ‘New History’ that came into being during the last decades of the twentieth century. This essay presents the methodological challenges involved in the study of Gender History, focusing especially on those faced by historians of the premodern era. The first part of the essay surveys the ideological background of the evolution of Women’s History as an academic field, the principal critique it aroused, and the impact of this critique on the transition from Women’s History to Gender History during the 1980s. The second part presents the findings of a recent study focusing on the gendered aspects of an early modern religious reform movement. It discusses the broader implications of such studies in Gender History for the rethinking of European religious history, and suggests the historiographical potential of the ‘gendering of history’.
Tamar Herzig is a senior lecturer in the Department of History at Tel-Aviv University. She was a member of the Young Scholars Forum of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in the years 2008–2009. In 2012 she was selected by the Israel Academy for membership in the newly established Israel Young Academy’s first group of members.