Murasaki and Comnena: Two Women and Two Themes in World History

Abstract

IN RECENT YEARS many world history courses have been evolving from what were essentially Western Civilization courses into more truly global studies of the human past. Both world history teachers in their courses and publishers in their world history textbooks have been increasing their coverage of the histories of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Although the questions of how best to incorporate material on those regions' histories into one's course and what new world-scope themes to use have stimulated many historians and provoked some to devote their energies exclusively to issues in world history, this evolution has also created some new dilemmas. Obviously something has to be left out in order to make room for the new material, and when historians are faced with such difficult choices, they often fall back on the more traditional political histories and omit the material on women and social history in general, the history of science, and some newer fields. Although the thirteen people who designed the team-taught, twosemester world history course at Tufts have by no means solved this problem, we are concerned about it.I And while our attention has primarily been focused upon developing thematic generalizations that will help us cope with the question of what to include and what, reluctantly, to omit, we have in our pre-1500 medieval section come upon two modest themes that at least spotlight two women, Anna Comnena (1083-ca. 1153), a great Byzantine historian and princess, and Murasaki Shikibu (973-1025?), the Japanese lady-in-waiting who