This course explores the ways in which gender relations have been an integral part of colonial and imperial expansion and national identities, from the mid-18th to the mid-20th centuries. We examine both how gender relations helped structure these historical developments and how gender relations were subject to change in various colonial contexts (including 'settler societies' such as Canada). The course readings explore the uneven and historically contingent ways in which processes of colonial and national expansion created new forms of gender asymmetry in both colony and metropole.