This module will examine the ways in which gender divisions were constructed, experienced, affirmed and challenged, and the ways in which gender relations were played out and regulated in Europe c.1450-c.1750. It aims to do this in various ways. For example, it will look at certain key phenomena of the early modern period (the Reformation and religious change, and the hunting of witches, for example) and analyse how they affected gender and gender relations and the extent to which men and women experienced them differently. It will also focus on selected methodological debates with particular significance for the early modern period (whether or not there was a sixteenth-century 'crisis' in gender relations, for example, and the use of psychoanalytic theory to establish the psychological dimension of sexual difference) in order to assess how useful they are in furthering our understanding of early modern gender.