Past Fellows at the Institute of International Studies

Reinhard Bendix Memorial Research Fellow, 2002-2003

Arianne Chernock, History: "Intellect Admits of No Sexual Distinction": Men in British Feminism, 1789-1832. In this dissertation, Ms. Chernock argues that men played a key role in the elaboration of feminist ideas in Great Britain during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Far from being an ideology fostered almost exclusively by a small group of women, as is often suggested, feminism -- at least in its nascent stages -- was actively promoted by members of both sexes representing a host of backgrounds and perspectives.  Men like John Anderson (a natural philosopher), Alexander Jardine (a lieutenant-colonel), Benjamin Heath Malkin (a professor of history), William Shepherd (a Unitarian minister), and William Thompson (a political economist), together with women like Mary Wollstonecraft, drew on a blend of Jacobinism, liberalism, and religious Dissent to make a strong case for the reformulation of women's traditional position in Great Britain. This dissertation will highlight these men's important and until now largely overlooked contributions, which included establishing a coeducational university and lobbying for birth control, with the larger goal of demonstrating that early feminist thought was not only more diverse, but also more integral to a range of British religious, political, and cultural movements than has previously been acknowledged.