9.8: Electric Generators and Back Source Voltage
By the end of this section, you will be able to:
- Explain how an electric generator works
- Determine the induced source voltage in a loop at any time interval, rotating at a constant rate in a magnetic field.
- Show that rotating coils have an induced source voltage; in motors this is called back source voltage because it opposes the source voltage input to the motor.
A variety of important phenomena and devices can be understood with Faraday’s law. In this section, we examine two of these.
Electric Generators
Electric generators induce a source voltage by rotating a coil in a magnetic field, as briefly discussed in Motional Source Voltage . We now explore generators in more detail. Consider the following example.
The generator coil shown in Figure \(\PageIndex{1}\) is rotated through one-fourth of a revolution (from \(\theta = 0^o\) to \(\theta = 90^o\)) in 15.0 ms. The 200-turn circular coil has a 5.00-cm radius and is in a uniform 0.80-T magnetic field. What is the source voltage induced?
Strategy
Faraday’s law of induction is used to find the source voltage induced:
\[\epsilon = - N\frac{d\Phi_m}{dt}.\]
We recognize this situation as the same one in Example 13.4.3 . According to the diagram, the projection of the surface normal vector \(\hat{n}\) to the magnetic field is initially \(cos \, \theta\) and this is inserted by the definition of the dot product. The magnitude of the magnetic field and area of the loop are fixed over time, which makes the integration simplify quickly. The induced source voltage is written out using Faraday’s law:
\[\epsilon = NBA \, sin \, \theta \frac{d\theta}{dt}.\]
Solution We are given that \(N = 200,\) \(B = 0.80 \, T\), \(\theta = 90^o\), \(d\theta = 90^o = \pi /2\), and \(dt = 15.0 \, ms\). The area of the loop is
\[A = \pi r^2 = (3.14)(0.0500 \, m)^2 = 7.85 \times 10^{-3} \, m^2.\]
Entering this value gives
\[\epsilon = (200)(0.80 \, T)(7.85 \times 10^{-3} \, m^2) sin (90^o) \frac{\pi/2}{15.0 \times 10^{-3} s} = 131 \, V.\]
Significance
This is a practical average value, similar to the 120 V used in household power.
The source voltage calculated in Example \(\PageIndex{1}\) is the average over one-fourth of a revolution. What is the source voltage at any given instant? It varies with the angle between the magnetic field and a perpendicular to the coil. We can get an expression for source voltage as a function of time by considering the motional source voltage on a rotating rectangular coil of width w and height l in a uniform magnetic field, as illustrated in Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\).
Charges in the wires of the loop experience the magnetic force, because they are moving in a magnetic field. Charges in the vertical wires experience forces parallel to the wire, causing currents. But those in the top and bottom segments feel a force perpendicular to the wire, which does not cause a current. We can thus find the induced source voltage by considering only the side wires. Motional source voltage is given to be \(\epsilon = Blv\), where the velocity v is perpendicular to the magnetic field B . Here the velocity is at an angle \(\theta\) with B , so that its component perpendicular to B is v sin \(\theta\) (see Figure \(\PageIndex{2}\)). Thus, in this case, the source voltage induced on each side is \(\epsilon = Blv \, sin \, \theta\) and they are in the same direction. The total source voltage around the loop is then
\[\epsilon = 2 Blv \, sin \, \theta.\]
This expression is valid, but it does not give soure voltage as a function of time. To find the time dependence of source voltage, we assume the coil rotates at a constant angular velocity \(\omega\). The angle \(\theta\) is related to angular velocity by \(\theta = \omega t\), so that \[\epsilon = 2 Blv \, sin (\omega t).\]
Now, linear velocity v is related to angular velocity \(\omega\) by \(v = r\omega\). Here, \(r = \omega/2\), so that \(v = (\omega/2)\omega\), and
\[\epsilon = 2Bl \frac{\omega}{2} \omega \, sin \, \omega t = (l\omega) Bw \, sin \, \omega t.\]
Noting that the area of the loop is \(A = l\omega\), and allowing for N loops, we find that
\[\epsilon = NBAw \, sin \, (\omega t).\]
This is the source voltage induced in a generator coil of N turns and area A rotating at a constant angular velocity \(ω\) in a uniform magnetic field B . This can also be expressed as
\[\epsilon = \epsilon_0 \, sin \, \omega t,\] where
\[\epsilon_0 = NAB\omega\]
is the peak source voltage, since the maximum value of \(sin (\omega t) = 1\). Note that the frequency of the oscillation is \(f = \omega /2\pi\) and the period is \(T = 1/f = 2\pi /\omega\). Figure \(\PageIndex{3}\) shows a graph of source voltage as a function of time, and it now seems reasonable that ac voltage is sinusoidal.
The fact that the peak source voltage is \(\epsilon_0 = NBA\omega\) makes good sense. The greater the number of coils, the larger their area, and the stronger the field, the greater the output voltage. It is interesting that the faster the generator is spun (greater \(\omega\)), the greater the source voltage. This is noticeable on bicycle generators—at least the cheaper varieties.
Figure \(\PageIndex{4}\) shows a scheme by which a generator can be made to produce pulsed dc. More elaborate arrangements of multiple coils and split rings can produce smoother dc, although electronic rather than mechanical means are usually used to make ripple-free dc.
In real life, electric generators look a lot different from the figures in this section, but the principles are the same. The source of mechanical energy that turns the coil can be falling water (hydropower), steam produced by the burning of fossil fuels, or the kinetic energy of wind. Figure \(\PageIndex{5}\) shows a cutaway view of a steam turbine; steam moves over the blades connected to the shaft, which rotates the coil within the generator. The generation of electrical energy from mechanical energy is the basic principle of all power that is sent through our electrical grids to our homes.
Generators illustrated in this section look very much like the motors illustrated previously. This is not coincidental. In fact, a motor becomes a generator when its shaft rotates. Certain early automobiles used their starter motor as a generator. In the next section, we further explore the action of a motor as a generator.
Back Source Voltage
Generators convert mechanical energy into electrical energy, whereas motors convert electrical energy into mechanical energy. Thus, it is not surprising that motors and generators have the same general construction. A motor works by sending a current through a loop of wire located in a magnetic field. As a result, the magnetic field exerts torque on the loop. This rotates a shaft, thereby extracting mechanical work out of the electrical current sent in initially. (Refer to Force and Torque on a Current Loop for a discussion on motors that will help you understand more about them before proceeding.)
When the coil of a motor is turned, magnetic flux changes through the coil, and a source voltage (consistent with Faraday’s law) is induced. The motor thus acts as a generator whenever its coil rotates. This happens whether the shaft is turned by an external input, like a belt drive, or by the action of the motor itself. That is, when a motor is doing work and its shaft is turning, a source voltage is generated. Lenz’s law tells us the source voltage opposes any change, so that the motor’s self-generated source voltage opposes the input source voltage that powers the motor, called the back source voltage of the motor (Figure \(\PageIndex{6}\)).
The generator output of a motor is the difference between the supply voltage and the back source voltage. The back source voltage is zero when the motor is first turned on, meaning that the coil receives the full driving voltage and the motor draws maximum current when it is on but not turning. As the motor turns faster, the back source voltage grows, always opposing the driving source voltage, and reduces both the voltage across the coil and the amount of current it draws. This effect is noticeable in many common situations. When a vacuum cleaner, refrigerator, or washing machine is first turned on, lights in the same circuit dim briefly due to the IR drop produced in feeder lines by the large current drawn by the motor.
When a motor first comes on, it draws more current than when it runs at its normal operating speed. When a mechanical load is placed on the motor, like an electric wheelchair going up a hill, the motor slows, the back source voltage drops, more current flows, and more work can be done. If the motor runs at too low a speed, the larger current can overheat it (via resistive power in the coil, \(P = I^2R)\), perhaps even burning it out. On the other hand, if there is no mechanical load on the motor, it increases its angular velocity \(\omega\) until the back source voltage is nearly equal to the driving source voltage. Then the motor uses only enough energy to overcome friction.
Eddy currents in iron cores of motors can cause troublesome energy losses. These are usually minimized by constructing the cores out of thin, electrically insulated sheets of iron. The magnetic properties of the core are hardly affected by the lamination of the insulating sheet, while the resistive heating is reduced considerably. Consider, for example, the motor coils represented in Figure \(\PageIndex{6}\). The coils have an equivalent resistance of \(0.400 \, \Omega\) and are driven by a source voltage of 48.0 V. Shortly after being turned on, they draw a current
\[I = V/R = (48.0 \, V)/(0.400 \, \Omega) = 120 \, A\]
and thus dissipate \(P = I^2R = 5.76 \, kW\) of energy as heat transfer. Under normal operating conditions for this motor, suppose the back source voltage is 40.0 V. Then at operating speed, the total voltage across the coils is 8.0 V (48.0 V minus the 40.0 V back source voltage), and the current drawn is
\[I = V/R = (8.0 \, V)/(0.400 \, \Omega) = 20 \, A.\]
Under normal load, then, the power dissipated is \(P = IV = (20 \, A)(8.0 \, V) = 160 \, W\). This does not cause a problem for this motor, whereas the former 5.76 kW would burn out the coils if sustained.
The total resistance \((R_f + R_a)\) of a series-wound dc motor is \(2.0 \, \Omega\) (Figure \(\PageIndex{7}\)). When connected to a 120-V source \((\epsilon_S)\), the motor draws 10 A while running at constant angular velocity. (a) What is the back source voltage induced in the rotating coil, \(\epsilon_i\)? (b) What is the mechanical power output of the motor? (c) How much power is dissipated in the resistance of the coils? (d) What is the power output of the 120-V source? (e) Suppose the load on the motor increases, causing it to slow down to the point where it draws 20 A. Answer parts (a) through (d) for this situation.
Strategy
The back source voltage is calculated based on the difference between the supplied voltage and the loss from the current through the resistance. The power from each device is calculated from one of the power formulas based on the given information.
Solution
- The back source voltage is \[\epsilon_i = \epsilon_S - I(R_f + RE_a) = 120 \, V - (10 \, A)(2.0 \, \Omega) = 100 \, V.\]
- Since the potential across the armature is 100 V when the current through it is 10 A, the power output of the motor is \[P_m = \epsilon_i I = (100 \, V)(10 \, A) = 1.0 \times 10^3 \, W.\]
- A 10-A current flows through coils whose combined resistance is \(2.0 \, \Omega\), so the power dissipated in the coils is \[P_R = I^2R = (10 \, A)^2(2.0 \, \Omega) = 2.0 \times 10^2 \, W.\]
- Since 10 A is drawn from the 120-V source, its power output is \[P_S = \epsilon_S I = (120 \, V)(10 \, A) = 1.2 \times 10^3 \, W.\]
- Repeating the same calculations with \(I = 20 \, A\), we find \[\epsilon_i = 80 \, V, \, P_m = 1.6 \times 10^3 \, W, \, P_R = 8.0 \times 10^2 \, W, \, and \, P_s = 2.4 \times 10^3 \, W.\] The motor is turning more slowly in this case, so its power output and the power of the source are larger.
Significance Notice that we have an energy balance in part (d): \[1.2 \times 10^3 \, W = 1.0 \times 10^3 \, W + 2.0 \times 10^2 \, W.\]


5.1: The Global North - Introducing the Region
What is the Global North ? The Global North does not refer to a geographic region in any traditional sense but rather to the relative power and wealth of countries in distinct parts of the world ( figure 15.1 ). The chapters in this section explore the construction and complexity of gender within the Global North: particularly, the United States, Canada, and Belgium. To do so, we first consider how the Global North and South divide came to exist in the popular imagination. However, we should note that although the Global North is on the whole powerful and wealthy, it is not monolithic. Societies within it are internally stratified and diverse such that not everyone in the Global North is rich and powerful.
does not refer to a geographic region in any traditional sense but rather to the relative power and wealth of countries in distinct parts of the world. The Global North encompasses the rich and powerful regions such as North America, Europe, and Australia.
Attempts to categorize the world order have been based more on politics and economics than geography. These include East and West; developed and developing nations; and the First, Second, and Third Worlds. For example, if East/West were geographic entities, then all nations west of the Prime Meridian (i.e., the United States, Canada, and Latin America nations) would be grouped together, while all nations to the east (i.e., countries of Europe, Africa, and Asia) would be grouped together. But this is not the case. Rather, the “West” is meant to refer to countries—particularly European nations and the United States—that benefited from the exploits of colonialism, achieving a higher quality of life and more power than the East. Similarly, the terminology of “developed” and “developing” nations indexes a power differential along with the ethnocentric assumption that all countries follow a singular idealized trajectory. Anthropologists and social theorists have critiqued this notion, insisting that societies change over time, proceeding along varied developmental paths.
The First, Second, and Third World terminology developed in the mid-twentieth century during the Cold War to categorize nations based on their participation in the conflict between the democratic United States (and its allies) and the Communist Soviet Union (and its allies). The First World was said to include economically developed, high-income, politically stable capitalist nations. The Second World comprised Communist nations that despite stable incomes and decent social conditions were viewed by the First World as economically and politically unstable due to their totalitarian governments. The Third World referred to previously colonized nations (nonaligned) that both the United States and the Soviet Union were trying to incorporate into their respective political-economic orders. Third World leaders have critiqued this schema, asserting that they were not just pawns in the US-Soviet conflict; rather, they were actively engaged in improving their own social conditions, creating stable national identities, and participating in the global community (e.g., in the 1960s, some Third World countries joined the United Nations for the first time).
In the late twentieth century, the Global North and South terminology replaced previous descriptors of the global order. It was generally agreed that the Global North would include the United States, Canada, England, nations of the European Union, as well as Singapore, Japan, South Korea, and even some countries in the southern hemisphere: Australia, and New Zealand. The Global South, on the other hand, would include formerly colonized countries in Africa and Latin America, as well as the Middle East, Brazil, India, and parts of Asia. Many of these countries are still marked by the social, cultural, and economic repercussions of colonialism, even after achieving national independence. The Global South remains home to the majority of the world’s population, but that population is relatively young and resource-poor, living in economically dependent nations.
Like prior attempts to characterize nations, the Global North/South distinction simplifies the world order, ignoring internal variation within both the North and South, while negating commonalities that exist between these large and diverse entities. Further, there are outliers that muddy the attempt to specify a clear North/South divide. For example, where do China, Russia, and Saudi Arabia fit? In terms of their economies and power, they resemble the North, but their political and social organization can also resemble the South. All global terminology systems discussed here are historically situated, politicized attempts to organize nations into a straightforward world order that is, in fact, quite complicated and increasingly interconnected.
THE WORLD ECONOMY
A rapidly globalized economy has highlighted the imagined divide between the North and South. According to Wallerstein’s world systems theory , a global capitalist system separates countries into the core (the North), semiperiphery, and periphery (the South) based primarily on their economic participation (Wallerstein 1974). His theory is largely influenced by Karl Marx, who saw the economy as the foundation of society that determined all cultural phenomena. According to Marx, under capitalism, societies are composed of the bourgeoisie (the owners who control the means of production, e.g., the factories) and the workers (who labor and produce goods in exchange for wages). The owner’s motive to maximize profit is achieved by exploiting the workers, who are paid less than what their labor is worth and who grow alienated from themselves, other people, and their labor. Despite the ideological attempts of the owners to obscure exploitation, Marx believed that the workers would eventually realize the systemic injustices of capitalism, rise up, and replace it with Communism.
Developed by Emmanuel Wallerstein to describe a global capitalist system that separates countries into the core (the North), semiperiphery, and periphery (the South) based primarily on their economic participation.
For Wallerstein, similar actors and structural inequalities operate within the global capitalist system. The core nations of the Global North act like the owners, controlling multinational corporations that extract raw material and exploit labor from peripheral nations of the Global South. The core nations thereby amass profit that benefits them, hardening the divide between the haves and have-nots. Thus, core nations remain wealthy, politically stable, and culturally dominant, while peripheral nations remain economically dependent, politically unstable, and at the mercy of cultural trends. The semiperipheral nations are said to be in transition from the periphery to the core (see figure 15.2 ).
Like all binaries, the division of the world into core and periphery, North and South, is overly simplistic and assumes these are fundamentally different and unequal entities. Yet, we are not a world indelibly marked as wealthy or poor, producers or consumers, powerful or powerless. For many anthropologists, the world order is far more complex and interrelated. They consider, for example, the process of glocalization , whereby people around the world alter globalized goods, ideas, and practices to fit their own lived experiences. This is not the passive, wholesale adoption of Global Northern lifeways but the active adaptation of them into culturally relevant forms. Similarly, globalization does not just flow from the North to the South. From food to clothes to music and media, people in the Global North also consume and adapt the cultural products of the Global South.
a combination of the words “globalization” and “localization.” Refers to ways that a cultural product is developed by one culture and adopted by the local culture to accommodate local needs and preferences.
the worldwide intensification of social and economic interactions and interdependence between disparate parts of the world.
Arjun Appadurai addresses this complexity by describing several global “scapes”: social and cultural flows that move around the world in multiple directions, affecting nations and people in diverse ways. As he puts it, the “new global cultural economy has to be seen as a complex, overlapping, disjunctive order” (Appadurai 1996, 32). This order comprises five “scapes”:
- ethnoscape (the movement of people)
- financescape (the movement of money)
- technoscape (the movement of technologies)
- mediascapes (the movement of media)
- ideoscapes (the movement of ideas)
These globalscapes are interlinked. Take, for example, cell phones: as objects, they are part of the technoscape that people use to access the mediascape through which they engage with the ideoscape. This idea of globalscapes helps us see the dynamic nature of people, things, and ideas that interact to defy any simplistic static division of North and South.
ENGENDERING THE GLOBAL NORTH
While globalization is an interactive process, the Global North has undeniably played a leading role in it. The economic, political, and cultural hegemony of the Global North, hardened by colonialism, has affected many aspects of social life elsewhere, including gender. As anthropologists and gender scholars argue, there is nothing natural or universal about the North’s binary gender system (male/female). There are other options: anthropological studies have described nonbinary gender systems with varied levels of gender inequality. For example, the Two-Spirit category among some Native American societies is a third gender category, one that recognizes that an individual’s gender identity may not be the same as their cisgender embodiment. Two-Spirit individuals possess both male and female qualities that uniquely position them to interact with the supernatural realm. This is not considered to be a transgressive category but rather a transcendent one.
the dominance of one group over another supported by legitimating norms and ideas that normalize dominance. Using collective consent rather than force, dominant social groups maintain power and social inequalities are naturalized.
refers to people whose gender identity corresponds to their sex at birth.
In the Global North, however, there exists a dominant portrayal of gender as a strict binary: male or female, whereby male is privileged over female. This was not always the case: the archaeological record and observations of modern hunting and gathering groups (used as a model for early human societies that were likewise small-scale, family-based, and fairly egalitarian) reveal societies with gender roles but less gender stratification. Such societies cannot afford to exclude half the population—the women—from the daily work of subsistence and survival. Indeed, women, in both ancient and modern hunting and gathering groups, make an essential contribution that complements men’s activities. For example, these women supply the majority of the group’s daily calories through the arduous labor of gathering wild plants and digging up tubers. It was only recently in human history, about ten thousand years ago with the advent of agriculture and permanent settlements, that a strict division of labor emerged that served to lower women’s status. Men began to dominate the public sphere, relegating women to the (devalued) private domestic sphere. We see this gender hierarchy perpetuated within several domains, including philosophy, Christianity, and science.
Early Greek philosophers like Aristotle (384–322 BCE) and Galen (130–210 AD) were convinced of men’s innate dominance over women. As Aristotle (1905, 34) writes: “The male is by nature superior, and the female inferior; and the one rules and the other is ruled; this principle, of necessity, extends to all mankind.” This statement asserts a universal inequality between the sexes that justifies women’s subservience to men. The Bible, and texts from other Abrahamic religions, convey similar ideas, as reflected by this famous quote from the Book of Genesis (2: 7):
And the Lord God constructed the rib which He had taken from the earth-creature into a woman and brought her to the earth-man. And the earth-man said, this time is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh. She shall be called wo-man, for from man was she taken.
Throughout the Middle Ages (fourth to fourteenth century), many stories in the Bible were read as reinforcing male superiority. Men were often portrayed as prominent actors, with women making secondary contributions. As people saw the church as a prominent source of authority, they further internalized this gender ideology.
It is not until the Enlightenment (1650–1800), or the so-called Age of Reason, that new sources of authority emerge as people use scientific principles to challenge biblical accounts of the world. Through firsthand investigations of nature and society, people were no longer dependent on religious authority to answer their questions; they could now seek answers via their own empirical observations and rationality. Yet, there was nothing truly “objective” about these scientific inquiries. With respect to gender, a misogynous view of women still influenced the questions and answers of (predominantly male) scientists.
refers to the contempt or hatred for women, often expressed as prejudice or discrimination.
Take, for example, the question of whether men are more intelligent than women. In the eighteenth century, “scientific” illustrations of male and female bodies grossly exaggerated their proportions, showing males with extremely large heads and females with small heads but large hips (see figure 15.3 ) that conveyed their alleged inferior intellect and their fundamental child-bearing function (Biewen 2018).
Later, in the nineteenth century, the gender question was addressed through the then-popular pseudoscience of phrenology: the examination of skull features that allegedly reveal mental qualities and character. Such analyses pointed to women’s “low foreheads” as proof that they lacked the necessary cognitive abilities for participation in intellectual pursuits (Staum 2003, 64). We now explain differences in male and female skull size as due to sexual dimorphism: since male bodies are (on average) slightly larger than female bodies, their skulls must be proportionate to the rest of their bodies. Further, there is no proven correlation between skull size and brain function: skull size does not correlate with intellectual capacity (Gould 1981). Nevertheless, the attempt to scientifically prove men’s worth, like the attempt to theologically prove women’s secondary status, served to affirm a strict binary gender hierarchy. In many parts of the Global North, this hierarchy has had profound social consequences: it justified the disenfranchisement of women in civic life and formal employment and excluded gender minorities from institutions such as marriage and the military.
GENDER IN THE GLOBAL NORTH TODAY
By the end of the twentieth century, most of the claims made by pseudoscience about gender had been corrected. Nevertheless, many of the underlying ideas and assumptions it produced persisted, including those that justified inequality for women and gender minorities. For instance, by the year 2000, women in the United States on average earned seventy-one cents per every dollar that a man earned (Graf et al. 2019). By 2020, that rate rose to eighty-five cents, although, paradoxically, women for the first time also made up more than half the workforce (Omeokwe 2020). Transgendered people in many parts of the Global North face discrimination, violence, anemic legal protections and obstacles accessing health care, among other concerns. While we explore some of these contemporary gender-related issues in the Global North, we also recognize that gender is dynamic and responsive to larger social, cultural, and political forces.
GENDER AND SEXUAL VIOLENCE
The Global North in the twentieth century is marked by a gradual arc of increasing gender equity; however, some countries, and particular groups within these countries, continue to experience high rates of gender-based violence. In the United States, Canada, and Australia, for example, ethnic minorities and Indigenous women tend to experience the highest rates of such violence. The concept of intersectionality allows us to understand the compounding factors of oppression (such as poverty, racism, sexism, social neglect, among others) that contribute to gender violence within some communities in the Global North. For instance, in the United States, murder is the third top cause of death for American Indian women, which is more than twice the rate than for white women (Heron 2018). In Canada, Indigenous women are sixteen times more likely than white women to be murdered or go missing (National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls 2019). And in Australia, aboriginal women are thirty-two times more likely to be hospitalized as a result of domestic violence and ten times more likely to die from a violent assault than non-Indigenous women (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2018).
refers to the interconnected nature of social categories such as race, class, and gender that creates overlapping systems of discrimination or disadvantage. The goal of an intersectional analysis is to understand how racism, sexism, and homophobia (for example) interact together to impact our identities and how we live in our society.
Sexual violence continues to plague the Global North, despite some progress overall. These issues received increased attention in the late 2010s.  The Twitter hashtag #MeToo exploded after actress Alyssa Milano used it in a tweet to highlight her connection to other survivors of sexual assault. Hundreds of thousands of women joined in by disclosing that they, too, had been sexually assaulted or abused. The movement was later criticized for ignoring the origin of the phrase, which was coined by activist Tarana Burke in 2006. Many claimed that Burke’s work to bring awareness to the frequency of sexual assault had been overlooked because as an African American woman her voice was not heard or respected as much as white women’s or celebrities’ voices.
In the United States the #MeToo movement is credited with helping center sexual assault within the national narrative. Nevertheless, US society, like other societies, still struggles with how to talk about and address this problem.
TRANSGENDER AND GENDER NONCONFORMING IDENTITIES
Similar to the increasing awareness and sensitivity to sexual assault, societal awareness of the lived experiences of transgender and gender-diverse people has improved in recent years.  In addition, some Northern societies are increasingly recognizing people who do not identify as male or female, or whose gender identity is fluid. Languages are adapting to these changes by including new pronouns, verbs, and nouns. For instance, some English-speaking populations are using “they/them” or “xe/xem” instead of “he/she.” In Spanish, words ending with “a” are usually considered feminine, and those ending with “o” are usually considered masculine. However, some Spanish-speaking populations are now using the gender-neutral “x” in place of “a” or “o” at the end of words, as in “Latinx.”
Gender-diverse people are increasingly visible in popular television programs and movies, and some countries have established policies to protect their rights. For instance, in 2014, the Danish parliament passed legislation that allows legal gender recognition for transgender people based solely on their self-determined identity (Transgender Europe 2014). In 2016, a similar law was passed in Norway. However, many countries in Europe do not have such policies or protections, or they require a psychiatric or medical diagnosis for a legal gender change (Transgender Europe 2016). This is compounded by societal stigma and lack of public understanding, which results in widespread discrimination and marginalization of transgender people. For instance, in the United States, 29 percent of transgender people surveyed live in poverty, and 30 percent had been homeless at some point in their lives (according to a 2015 survey conducted by National Center for Transgender Equality). Their unemployment rate was 15 percent—three times the national average (National Center for Transgender Equality 2016). Transgender people are also more likely to avoid seeking medical care because they experience discrimination, disrespect, and even harassment in health-care settings.
In addition, transgender and gender nonconforming people have faced discrimination in bathroom use, particularly in the United States. For instance, 16 American states have considered legislation that would restrict access to multiuser bathrooms (and other sex-segregated facilities) on the basis of one’s sex assigned at birth (Kralik 2019). Although most of these efforts failed or were withdrawn, the issue still remains highly contentious. As anthropologist Robert Myers stated, “Americans match deep convictions about males and females with binary spaces to perform those necessary biological functions. … the bathroom is the central space where beliefs and anxieties about gender, the body, identity, privacy and safety collide. It is a culture war waged over symbolic spaces reinforcing constructions of how we see ourselves privately and publicly” (Myers 2018). While bathrooms remain politically charged gendered spaces, people are becoming aware of gender diversity in ways that are starting to rattle their prior convictions. Many colleges and universities, and a variety of public and private institutions, are designating gender-neutral bathrooms that are available for anyone to use, regardless of their gender identity or expression.
PATRIARCHY
The problems of restrictions on transgender people’s bathroom use, sexual assault, and sexual violence are tied to a lingering system of patriarchy that remains deeply embedded in societies in the Global North. Patriarchy has long been a central structural element of many societies and is characterized by a set of culturally specific symbols, behaviors, and ideas that are male dominated, male identified, and male-centric. This structure normalizes a worldview of binary gender, gender stereotypes, and the limitation of gender roles, among other things. Patriarchy reaches deep into the fabric of societies, which makes its existence difficult to see but profoundly influential. For instance, in the Global North, patriarchy influences inflexible notions of what it means to be “feminine” and “masculine.” These notions are seen in the expectations for cisgender men to serve in the military and for women to be more responsible for domestic work. They are also seen in the paucity of men employed in care services, such as nursing and childcare, and a low number of women in manual labor-intensive work like construction or in political leadership positions.
a dynamic system of power and inequality that privileges men and boys over women and girls in social interactions and institutions. Patriarchy describes a society with a male-dominated political and authority structure and an ideology that privileges males over females in domestic and public spheres.
Consider another example. You may have heard a popular riddle that goes something like this: “A father and son have a car accident and are both badly hurt. They are both taken to separate hospitals. When the boy is taken in for an operation, the surgeon says, ‘I cannot do the surgery because this is my son.’ How is this possible?” The trick (spoiler alert!) is that the surgeon is, of course, the boy’s mother. This riddle is perplexing to many people who have been socialized to associate being a surgeon with being a man. The possibility that a woman (or mother) might be the surgeon seems so unlikely that we unconsciously do not even consider it. These types of associations are embedded within a patriarchal order that influences how people in the Global North see the world and their place in it.
Another manifestation of patriarchy can be seen in hypermasculine gender expressions, sometimes referred to as toxic masculinity. In the Global North, this form of masculinity tends to be characterized by qualities such as a competitive nature, physical strength, emotional suppression, rejection of femininity, risk taking, and violence. In January 2019 the American Psychological Association released a set of new guidelines for psychologists who work with males. The guidelines suggested that being enculturated into a traditional masculine ideology does harm not only to women and people with nonconforming gender identities but also to boys and men. The guidelines highlighted the impact of toxic masculinity on boys and men, which includes poor mental and physical health outcomes (American Psychological Association 2018). For example, toxic masculinity deems anger as the only appropriate emotion men can express, which can lead to the distancing of men from others, resulting in difficulty developing and sustaining close relationships. Further, since toxic masculinity dictates that men should be strong and independent, some men feel they cannot seek help from others for their mental or physical issues.
tends to be characterized by qualities such as a competitive nature, physical strength, emotional suppression, rejection of femininity, risk taking, and violence.
Despite the influence of patriarchy, many of these gendered characteristics have been changing in recent years. More men and women are entering into nontraditional gender employment, and more women are taking on leadership roles. Men are increasingly active in childrearing, and some are even opting to stay home and raise children while their spouse works outside the home. Gender, and the influence of patriarchy, is in flux in the Global North.
CONCLUSION
Just as the Global North/South divide was developed to give order to an increasingly complex interrelated world system, the male/female divide, as rendered in the Global North, was developed to make sense of different yet interrelated sexed bodies. These bodies came to be understood in binary and hierarchical terms: one was either male or female, with male privileged over female. While in other places, males, females, and other genders had been understood in distinctive ways, the value-laden gender hierarchy of the Global North was disseminated widely due to the region’s social, economic, and political power.  And yet gender is dynamic: as we have discussed, gender roles are in flux, women are asserting their rights, members of sexual minority groups are being heard, and masculine ideals are being challenged.
The chapters in Part V: The Global North present anthropological research that showcases some of the gendered experiences of men and women from different places in the social hierarchy in highly unequal and stratified regions. Chapter 16 examines mothers in upper-middle-class households in a large northeast city. In online forums these women compete to perform “proper” motherhood. Their online performances serve as practice for how they will interact with their peers as ideal mothers in real life.  Here we see how gendered stereotypes of sex workers blind legislators and social service agencies to the violence and vulnerability of young men in the sex trade. In this case, an intersectional approach reveals the subordination and structural violence these men experience. Chapters 18 and 19 explore the gendered lives of migrants living in the Global North. Muslim women in Belgium respond to discrimination and reclaim their agency and resist marginalization. Chapter 19 shows how undocumented migrants from Mexico struggle to redefine their roles as fathers when children are left behind in the home village or parents are deported to Mexico leaving children behind in the United States. In these transnational families, fathers must negotiate different norms and expectations of parenthood on both sides of the border. Finally, the profile at the end of this introduction highlights the work of Kathleen Steinhauer, who fought for the rights and recognition of Indigenous women in Canada.

Global North: does not refer to a geographic region in any traditional sense but rather to the relative power and wealth of countries in distinct parts of the world. The Global North encompasses the rich and powerful regions such as North America, Europe, and Australia.
globalization: the worldwide intensification of social and economic interactions and interdependence between disparate parts of the world.
glocalization: a combination of the words “globalization” and “localization.” Refers to ways that a cultural product is developed by one culture and adopted by the local culture to accommodate local needs and preferences.
hegemony: the dominance of one group over another supported by legitimating norms and ideas that normalize dominance. Using collective consent rather than force, dominant social groups maintain power and social inequalities are naturalized.
intersectionality: refers to the interconnected nature of social categories such as race, class, and gender that creates overlapping systems of discrimination or disadvantage. The goal of an intersectional analysis is to understand how racism, sexism, and homophobia (for example) interact together to impact our identities and how we live in our society.
misogynous/misogyny: refers to the contempt or hatred for women, often expressed as prejudice or discrimination.
patriarchy: a dynamic system of power and inequality that privileges men and boys over women and girls in social interactions and institutions. Patriarchy describes a society with a male-dominated political and authority structure and an ideology that privileges males over females in domestic and public spheres.
toxic masculinity : tends to be characterized by qualities such as a competitive nature, physical strength, emotional suppression, rejection of femininity, risk taking, and violence.
world systems theory: Developed by Emmanuel Wallerstein to describe a global capitalist system that separates countries into the core (the North), semiperiphery, and periphery (the South) based primarily on their economic participation.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
American Psychological Association. 2018. APA Guidelines for Psychological Practice with Boys and Men . Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Appadurai, Arjun. 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Aristotle. 1905. Aristotle’s Politics . Oxford: Clarendon.
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. 2018. Family, Domestic and Sexual Violence in Australia, 2018 . Canberra: Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.
Biewen, John. “Skeleton War.” MEN. Scene on Radio, August 8, 2018. http://www.sceneonradio.org/tag/season-3 .
Gould, Stephen Jay. 1981. The Mismeasure of Man . New York: W.W. Norton.
Graf, Nikki, Anna Brown, and Eileen Patten. 2019. “The Narrowing, but Persistent, Gender Gap in Pay.” Fact Tank . Washington, DC: Pew Research Center.
Heron, Melonie. 2018. Deaths: Leading Causes for 2016. National Vital Statistics Reports 67, no. 6. Hyattsville, MD: National Center for Health Statistics.
Kralik, Joellen. 2019. “ ‘Bathroom Bill’ Legislative Tracking.” Washington, DC: National Conference of State Legislatures.
Myers, Robert. 2018. “That Most Dangerous, Sacred American Space, the Bathroom.” 10, no. 1 Anthropology Now .
National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls. 2019. Reclaiming Power and Place: The Final Report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, Volume 1a. National Inquiry, Canadian Government.
National Center for Transgender Equality. 2016. The Report of the 2015 U.S. Transgender Survey. Washington, DC: National Center for Transgender Equality.
Omeokwe, Amara. 2020. “Women Overtake Men as Majority of U.S. Workforce.” Washington Post . January 10, 2020.
Staum, Martin. 2003. Labeling People: French Scholars on Society, Race and Empire, 1815–1848 . Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press.
Transgender Europe. 2014. “Denmark Goes Argentina!” June 11, 2014. https://tgeu.org/denmark-goes-argentina/ .
Transgender Europe. 2016. “34 Countries in Europe Make this Nightmare a Reality.” February 23, 2015. https://tgeu.org/nightmare/ .
Wallerstein, Immanuel. 1974. The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century. Studies in Social Discontinuity. New York: Academic Press.
PROFILE: INDIAN RIGHTS FOR INDIAN WOMEN: KATHLEEN STEINHAUER, AN INDIGENOUS ACTIVIST IN CANADA
Sarah L. Quick
Kathleen Steinhauer (1932–2012) was a woman who bridged many worlds, many identities. She identified as First Nations and as Métis; while some assumed she was white. When I knew her she never wore pants, always skirts or dresses; and when she danced her traditional-style jigging in outdoor competitions, she would often wear a signature hat—daintily bobbing in time with the fiddle while her feet executed the steps with precision. She was also an activist but one who worked behind the scenes, collaborating with her more vocal friends on First Nations policy in Canada. It is important to note that after 1985 and Canada’s constitutional reforms, three umbrella groups were recognized as “Aboriginal” or Indigenous—Inuit, First Nations, and Métis. Those who had previously been recognized as Indians via treaty and the Indian Act are now known as First Nations. Métis has complex and contested meanings. It may refer to an affiliation with the Métis Nation that has a specific cultural history stemming from the Red River region of Manitoba or to a broader understanding of individuals and groups with mixed European and Indigenous ancestry. In Kathleen’s case, she is Cree (First Nations) and white through her parents, but she also identified with the Métis Nation culturally speaking.
Kathleen initially grew up on Saddle Lake reserve, a Cree First Nations reserve in eastern Alberta, Canada. She then attended a Protestant residential school, the Edmonton Indian Residential School, from age five to eight. Here she and the other children regularly received corporal punishment, especially if they spoke Cree (see Steinhauer and Carlson 2013 for more details). A more positive story from her residential school years was when Kathleen recalled in an interview I conducted with her how she and other girls would secretly dance in the basement through a warning system they developed: one girl would watch and listen near the door, another at the landing to the upstairs, and another at the top of the stairs down to the basement. These girls were not completely passive in how they survived the residential school system. Once her mother realized that the school was mistreating Kathleen and her sisters, she began to homeschool them. Other First Nations and Métis children did not have this luxury, but she had some leeway, since her mother was white and adamant about the conditions there (Steinhauer and Carlson 2013, 16).
See: Kathleen Steinhauer Red River Jigging at the John Arcand Fiddle Fest in Saskatchewan, Canada, https://youtu.be/qqlNZAVhJ9A .
Kathleen continued her schooling by training as a nurse. After she had been a nurse for a number of years, she married her second husband in 1965. With this marriage, she lost her treaty rights because her husband was a “non-status Indian.” She, along with many other First Nations women (over five thousand), were involuntarily “enfranchised” once they married someone who was not registered as an official member of an “Indian band” (Leddy 2016). Canada’s enfranchisement policies promoted assimilation and Canadian citizenship. For example, before 1960, “enfranchised Indians” could vote in federal elections while those who retained their “Indian status” could not (Leslie 2016). In reality, these enfranchisement policies meant disenfranchisement or a loss of Indigenous rights. Those who were “enfranchised” were not allowed to live on the reserve, inherit reserve property, vote in reserve matters, or have access to health or education benefits recognized by treaty (Goyette 2013, xxxiii).
These enfranchisement policies also affected women differently than men. When men married women who were non-Indigenous or “non-status,” their wives then gained access to these Indigenous rights. As Kathleen would remind me, her own white mother had gained access to these rights upon marrying her father, while she was denied them for marrying someone legally “non-status.” The ideology behind these policies was that since women were the dependents, once they married someone non-Indigenous, they no longer needed to depend on the benefits granted by treaty to Indigenous people.
In protest of Canada’s unequal treatment of Indigenous women, Kathleen joined forces in the late 1960s with other women activists from Saddle Lake living in Edmonton—Nellie Carlson, who had also been at the same residential school as Kathleen—Jenny Margetts, as well as more well-known activists from the east, Mary Two-Axe Early, Jeannette Corbiere Lavell, and Sandra Lovelace Nicholas. They eventually formed what became the national Indian Rights for Indian Women organization, which sought to overturn the inherently sexist and colonial ideology running through Canada’s policies toward women. They met with politicians, protested at rallies, wrote letters to newspapers, and became legal experts through their many court battles with the Canadian state. They also suffered backlash from the government, the press, from groups like the National Indian Brotherhood (what became the Assembly of First Nations), and even from relatives in their families.
After years protesting their unfair loss of rights, these women finally saw some justice in 1985 when Canada amended these exclusionary policies with what is called Bill C-31. This bill reinstated women and their children’s membership. However, for Kathleen, the struggle did not end here because Canada’s Indian Affairs reinstated her to her first husband’s band. It was not until 1999, thirty-nine years after she had lost her rights and after years of working with lawyers and another court case that Kathleen was reinstated to the Saddle Lake Cree Nation to which she belonged at birth (Steinhauer and Carlson 2013, 100–108).
As one of her granddaughters, Jessie Loyer, recalled in reflecting on Kathleen’s legacy, “Activism was always at the heart of what she did. … She cared so strongly about justice that she worked tirelessly.” Kathleen died in March of 2012, and Jessie thought that she would have appreciated the Idle No More movement that arose later that year in protest of the federal government’s disregard for the environment and Indigenous sovereignty. It saddened Jessie that she could not speak to her grandmother directly about Idle No More nor take her to its rallies. Idle No More was founded by women, and while Kathleen was not a part of its emergence, she and the other activist women in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s laid the groundwork for these twenty-first-century Indigenous activists.
RESOURCES FOR FURTHER EXPLORATION
- Glenn, Evelyn Nakano. 2015. “Settler Colonialism as Structure: A Framework for Comparative Studies of U.S. Race and Gender Formation.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 1, no. 1: 54–74.
- Canadian Encyclopedia online. http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca .
- “Disinherited Love: Matrimony and the Indian Act.” 2018. Permanent exhibit at the Royal Alberta Museum, Edmonton, Alberta.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank Kathleen Steinhauer’s family, especially her daughter Celina Loyer and her granddaughter Jessie Loyer.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Carlson, Nellie, and Kathleen Steinhauer. 2013. Disinherited Generations: Our Struggle to Reclaim Treaty Rights for First Nations Women and their Descendants . Edmonton: University of Alberta Press.
Goyette, Linda. 2013. “Introduction.” In Disinherited Generations: Our Struggle to Reclaim Treaty Rights for First Nations Women and their Descendants , edited by Nellie Carlson and Kathleen Steinhauer, xxi–xliv. Edmonton: University of Alberta Press.
Leddy, Lianne C. 2016. “Indigenous Women and the Franchise.” The Canadian Encyclopedia . https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/indigenous-women-and-the-franchise . Accessed July 27, 2019.
Leslie, John F. 2016. “Indigenous Suffrage.” The Canadian Encyclopedia . https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/indigenous-suffrage . Accessed November 6, 2019.


4.1: Why It Matters- Writing in College
Why learn to think beyond the five-paragraph essay?
College writing is different from high school writing. College professors view you as independent scholars and imagine you writing with a genuine, driving interest in tackling complex questions. They envision you approaching an assignment without a pre-existing bias. They expect you to look deep into the evidence, consider the broader scholarly conversation about the issues, and work out an original, insightful argument.
This module will introduce you to various rhetorical styles, or patterns of writing, that will set you up for success, no matter the writing assignment. Knowing how to approach these assignments and learning some tips for effective essay-writing will set up the foundation for you to go beyond a contrived or formulaic response to a writing prompt. Writing a paper isn’t about getting the “right answer” and adhering to basic conventions; it’s about joining an academic conversation with something original to say and contribute, borne of rigorous thought.
Sometimes a college writing assignment doesn’t even look like a “writing” assignment at all—it could be a presentation, a video report, or even a blog post. While these types of multimodal assignments may not require a traditional five-paragraph essay, they still necessitate critical thinking and writing skills and can be approached the same way as you would other written assignments.
Contributors and Attributions
- Why It Matters: Writing Process. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
- Really? Writing? Again?. Authored by : Amy Guptill. Provided by : The College at Brockport, SUNY. Located at : textbooks.opensuny.org/writing-in-college-from-competence-to-excellence/. Project : Writing in College: From Competence to Excellence. . License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
- Image of woman biting pencil. Authored by : Jan Vasek. Provided by : Pixabay. Located at : pixabay.com/photos/laptop-woman-education-study-young-3087585/. License : Other . License Terms : pixabay.com/service/terms/#license


1.1: Introduction to the Middle Ages
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- Bonnie J. Robinson & Laura Getty
- University of North Georgia via University of North Georgia Press
Medieval British literature exists because of the waves of successive groups that made the British Isles a melting pot of cultures, with each contributing a piece of the puzzle. The Middle Ages spans over 1000 years of history, which would be impossible to reproduce in much detail in a concise summary; the avid student of history would do well to pick up a textbook (or two) on British medieval history for a more complete picture of events. The purpose of this introduction is to give an outline of major events that affected literature, including who was in Britain at what time, and how literature responded to the changing times. To understand the context of medieval British literature, it is necessary to begin much earlier, in Roman times.
1.2.1 Roman Britain
Although Julius Caesar invaded Britain in 55 and 54 BCE, it was not until 43 ACE that the Romans began a systematic invasion of the British Isles. The inhabitants, called Britons by the Romans, were not a unified group, but rather many different tribes; popularly, they now are referred to as Celts, although archaeologists and historians suggest that calling them Celtic language speakers would be more accurate. The Celts were not the original or only inhabitants of the island (archaeologists have found evidence of settlements dating back to the Stone Age), and even some sites now associated with the Celts, such as Stonehenge, predate them. Although these Celtic tribes had an oral culture, rather than a written one, Roman authors wrote about them (not the most unbiased of sources); it would be difficult to imagine later medieval British literature without references to their cultures (such as the druids, who served as priests and advisors, among other functions) and their languages. The tribes in the south—the ones first encountered by the Romans—spoke Common Brittonic, a Celtic language that would develop into modern Welsh, Cornish, and Breton (and the now- extinct Cumbric). The Goidelic, or Gaelic, language developed into Irish Gaelic, Scottish Gaelic, and Manx (spoken on the Isle of Man). The influence of Celtic languages can be found most prominently in place names, such as London, Dover, Avon, and Cornwall.
The Roman conquest of Britain was met with considerable resistance; the most famous example was the revolt led by Queen Boudica of the Iceni, a Celtic tribe, in either 60 or 61 ACE. Boudica and her coalition of several Celtic tribes came close to driving out the Romans, but Roman forces under Suetonius managed to defeat the coalition and reassert control. To the north, the Roman Emperor Hadrian ordered the construction of a wall in 122 ACE to keep out the Picts, who inhabited what is present-day Scotland. The Picts may have been a combination of indigenous tribes (who predat- ed the Celtic migration to the island hundreds of years earlier) and immigrants from Ireland (the word Scoti , from which the name Scotland derives, was used by the Romans to describe the Irish). The Picts were never conquered by the Romans, just as Ireland resisted Roman rule. Much later, in the Declaration of Arbroath (1320), the Scots would use this fact to argue to the Pope that they historically were an in- dependent kingdom, and there- fore Edward I of England had no right to their lands.
Although the Middle Ages in Europe are often seen as beginning after the fall of Rome in 476 ACE, the Middle Ages in Britain start with the withdrawal of Roman troops. By 383 ACE, Roman forces had withdrawn from the north and west, with the final departure of troops from the island in 410 ACE. The medieval legend of King Arthur and his knights comes from the events that followed this departure.
1.2.2 Anglo-Saxon Britain
When Roman forces abandoned their British outposts, the Britons were left vulnerable after several hundred years of Roman military protection. The Irish and the Picts began raiding the lands formerly controlled by the Romans, while Saxon pirates stepped up their raids along the British coastline. Although historical records from this time are scarce (most literature at this point was transmitted orally), some later authors claim that a leader named Vortigern (possibly itself a title) made the colossal mistake of inviting Saxon mercenaries into the country to protect Britons from the Picts and Irish. Instead, according to later literary sources, the Saxons began their own invasion of the island. Although modern historians debate whether the invasion was actually more of a migration, literary sources follow the version of events found in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (first composed in the ninth century). However it started, the Saxons, Angles, and Jutes would eventually overrun what is now England, or “Angleland,” pushing many of the Celtic tribes into Wales, Cornwall, Scotland, and Ireland, as well as across the British Channel to Armorica (modern-day Brittany in France).
The Romanized Britons attempted to repel the invaders, and it was during this time—approximately 450 to 550—that the legend of Arthur originates. There is no written evidence from that period that Arthur existed, although some historians have suggested that there may have been a leader (or several leaders) among the Romano-Britons who temporarily held back the Saxon invasion. Whether he was based on one war chief, or was a conglomeration of several historical figures, later authors named Arthur as the leader who defeated the Saxons in several key battles. Ironically, it would not just be later Celtic writers (such as the Welshman Geoffrey of Monmouth) who would write about Arthur, but also the very English/Anglo- Saxons against whose ancestors Arthur was supposed to have fought.
The Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England (Wessex, Sussex, Essex, Kent, Mercia, East Anglia, and Northumbria, along with other smaller domains) were slowly Christianized in the seventh and eighth centuries. Missionaries often tried to convert the ruler first, who would then allow (or order) the conversion of his people. Bede describes part of this process in his Ecclesiastical History of the English People , completed in about 731 ACE. Bede begins with the Roman invasion and continues to this present day. For the previously-pagan Germanic tribes, the process of conversion involved reconciling the warrior code with Christian teachings. Anglo-Saxon literature, therefore, often couches traditional warrior behavior in a Christian context. Stories such as Beowulf take a clearly pagan story and retool it into a Christian framework (scholars still debate the extent to which this effort is successful in that story). One of the most successful examples of this reworking is The Dream of the Rood , which tells the story of Christ’s crucifixion as the actions of a warrior who defeats his enemies through his bravery. More frequently, as in the poem The Wanderer , the Christian meaning of the story appears added after the fact. The opposite transformation happens with the story of Judith, taken from The Book of Judith (still found in the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Bibles, but removed from both Jewish and Protestant versions). The Hebrew Judith who fights the Assyrian Holofernes is described as a type of Anglo-Saxon shield maiden, worthy of her share of the enemy’s treasure. Our understanding of this process is limited as well by the scarcity of manuscripts that have survived; both Beowulf and Judith survive in only one manuscript, while only four manuscript books, or codices, of Anglo-Saxon poetry are extant.
1.2.3 Danelaw Britain
In 793, the Vikings raided the monastery at Lindisfarne, and Danish attacks on England began to increase. Over the next hundred years, Danish forces would occupy more and more Anglo-Saxon territory, at one point leaving only the kingdom of Wessex independent. Sections in the northern and eastern parts of England became known as the Danelaw, or areas where Danish laws were used, rather than Anglo-Saxon ones. Ironically, as Britain went through a temporary phase where fewer people knew Latin, more books were translated from Latin to Old English (or Anglo-Saxon, which is basically a dialect of Old German). In particular, King Alfred of Wessex (who ruled from 871 to 899) oversaw the translations of numerous Latin texts into Old English, so that past learning would not be lost. At the same time, areas under the Danelaw picked up quite a few loanwords from Norse/Scandinavian languages, including words like “anger,” “cake,” “window,” “glitter,” “mistake,” “eggs,” and “awkward.” Those words would spread to other areas of the island over time.
In 1016, King Canute of Norway and Denmark became king of all England, ruling until 1035. After a struggle with the succession among Canute’s heirs, the Wessex line was briefly restored when Edward the Confessor took the throne in 1042. Edward ruled until 1066, and his death led to a fight for the succession that resulted in the Norman conquest of England by William, Duke of Normandy (more commonly referred to now as William the Conqueror). William defeated his main rival, Harold Godwin, at the Battle of Hastings, on October 14, 1066.
1.2.4 Norman Britain
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle records the Norman Conquest as a punishment from God, although it is not complimentary about the instrument of that punishment, William, or his Norman troops. While suppressing revolts, William began the process of removing Anglo-Saxons from power and replacing them with his Norman followers. The Domesday Book (a survey of all the lands and wealth of England) records the removal of lands from Anglo-Saxon nobles, whose lands were then awarded to Normans. Many free peasants suddenly found themselves bound to the lord of the manor and required to work for him, signaling the start of the feudal system. At one point, fewer than 250 people owned most of the land in England.
William did not speak English, so Norman French became the most commonly- used language of the British royal court—as well as government offices and the legal system. Just as the Christianization of the Anglo-Saxons had introduced Latin words into the language, Old English incorporated more and more French vocabulary over time. As a result, English speakers can say that they are going to have a “drink” (Anglo-Saxon origin) or a “beverage” (Old French origin), or that they are going to “weep” (Anglo-Saxon) or “cry” (Old French). Additionally, the very word “government” is of French origin, as are the words “office,” “city,” “police,” “tax,” “jury,” “attorney,” and “prison.”
The Norman invasion also led to a resurgence of interest in King Arthur, and it would be during the next few centuries that the most common modern image of Arthur was created. The three main topics of literature in medieval Britain were “the Matter of Rome” (stories of the Trojan War, using Virgil’s Aeneid as a reference), “the Matter of France” (mostly stories of Charlemagne and his men), and “the Matter of Britain,” which were mostly stories related to King Arthur. Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain , written around 1135-1139, introduced many Normans to the story of Arthur, including a new character from a different tradition: Merlin. (Well over two hundred years later, Chaucer would mention in The House of Fame that some people considered Geoffrey of Monmouth a liar.) Many of the most well-known elements of the Arthurian legend were added over the next forty years or so; the Anglo-Norman writer Wace, in his Roman de Brut (1155), added the Round Table, while the French writer Chrétien de Troyes added a French knight, Lancelot, as the lover of Queen Guinevere and the greatest knight of King Arthur’s court in his The Knight of the Cart; or Lancelot (written roughly between 1175 and 1181).
The quest for the Holy Grail evolved during this time as well. In the Welsh Peredur , the grail is a platter with a severed head on it; in Chrétien’s Perceval , it is a serving dish with contents that light up the room; and in Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival , the grail is a stone (possibly a meteorite) guarded by the Knights Templar. It is in Robert de Boron’s Joseph d’Arimathe that the grail becomes the cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper and used by Joseph of Arimathea to catch blood from Jesus during the Crucifixion. By the time that Sir Thomas Malory wrote his huge compilation of Arthurian stories in Le Morte d’Arthur , the Grail knight was no longer Percival, but Galahad, the son of Lancelot and Elaine, the daughter of King Pelles (a version of the Fisher King of the Grail stories), although Percival accompanies Galahad on his quest.
Several British monarchs attempted to use the Arthurian stories for their own political advantage. Henry II (who reigned from 1154-1189) claimed to have found the grave of Arthur and Guinevere in Glastonbury, possibly to discourage the popular idea that Arthur might return one day. During the reign of Edward I (1272-1307), a Round Table was constructed (5.5 meters in diameter), which now hangs on the wall in the Great Hall of Winchester Castle. Edward III (1327- 1377) created the Order of the Garter (rather than a Round Table, which he considered at one point) to create a new type of community of knights. It was during Edward III’s reign that the English language, rather than French, slowly became prominent again. In 1362, English was re-established as the language of the legal system (before the Pleading in English Act of 1362, all legal proceedings were conducted in French, even though most of the English did not know French), although it would not be until the reign of Henry V (1413-1422) that English would be re-established as the official language of government for the first time since the Norman conquest.
By the time that Geoffrey Chaucer began writing, English was slowly becoming the language of literature in Britain once more. Although some of his contemporaries, such as John Gower, wrote in French and Latin as well as English to reach a wider audience, Chaucer wrote his works in Middle English, as did the anonymous author of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight , William Langland with his Piers Plowman , and other authors. By the time that William Caxton printed a copy of Chaucer’s The Canterbury Tales in 1476 (long after Chaucer’s death in 1400), Chaucer was considered the master that many English and Scottish authors sought to emulate. In the Renaissance, Shakespeare took Chaucer’s poem Troilus and Criseyde and turned it into a play, writing in Early Modern English.
The Middle Ages in Britain end (more or less) in 1485, when Henry VII ends the Wars of the Roses (and the Early Modern Period begins). Malory’s Le Morte d’Arthur was published in the same year, and it is the literary reaction to the wars between the houses of Lancaster and York that had just ended. As the Middle Ages drew to a close, Malory records a picture of knighthood that is both nostalgic and, at times, cynical: celebrating the concept while criticizing the practice of it. Just as the start of the Middle Ages gave rise to the legend of King Arthur, Le Morte d’Arthur serves as a bookend to the period.


8.5: The Meaning of Neutrality - The Autoprotolysis of Water
In the previous section, we described the reaction of an acid and a base to form water. When all of the acid and base have been consumed, we are left with water and an aqueous solution containing an ionic compound. Another way to think of this would be to say that, the acid we began with had a high concentration of hydronium cations (H 3 O + ), the base had a high concentration of hydroxide anions (HO – ) and the neutral solution contains only water. This, however, is a little too simplistic. Just like water can promote the ionization of acids, water can also promote the ionization of itself . Picture two water molecules sharing a hydrogen bond. Just like for HF , the partially bonded hydrogen can transfer along the hydrogen bond to form a hydronium cation and a hydroxide anion. This process occurs very rapidly in pure water, thus, any sample of pure water will always contain a small concentration of hydronium and hydroxide ions. How small is “small”? Very small! In pure water at 25 o C, the concentration of hydronium ions ([H 3 O + ]) and hydroxide ions ([HO – ]) will both be equal to exactly 1 × 10 -7 M. Based on this, we can expand upon our definitions of acidic, basic and neutral solutions:
- A solution is acidic if [H 3 O + ] > 1 × 10 -7 M.
- A solution is basic if [H 3 O + ] < 1 × 10 -7 M.
- A solution is neutral if [H 3 O + ] = 1 × 10 -7 M.
Working with these definitions, if you have a solution with [H 3 O + ] = 4.5 × 10 -4 M, it will be acidic (4.5 × 10 -4 > 1 × 10 -7 ) . If you have a solution with [H 3 O + ] = 1 × 10 -4 M, it will be basic (1 × 10 -4 < 1 × 10 -7 ). Finally, a neutral solution is one in which [H 3 O + ] and [HO – ] are both 1 × 10 -7 M.
Recalling our discussion of acid dissociation constants from Section 8.2 , we can write the ionization equilibrium for water
\[\ce{2 H2O(l) <=> H3O^{+}(aq) + OH^{–} (aq)} \nonumber \]
and the expression for the dissociation constant, K a , as shown below:
\[\begin{align*} K_{a} &=\dfrac{a_{H_3O^+}·a_{OH^-}}{a_{H_2O}^2} \\[4pt] &\approx \dfrac{[H_{3}O^{+}][HO^{-}]}{(1)^{2}} \\[4pt] &=[H_{3}O^{+}][HO^{-}] \end{align*} \nonumber \]
where \(a\) is the activity of a species. Because water is the solvent, and the solution is assumed to be dilute, the activity of the water is approximated by the activity of pure water, which is defined as having a value of 1. The activity of each of the solutes is approximated by the molarity of the solute. In this reaction, one water molecule acts as an acid and one water molecule acts as a base. Thus, this reaction actually can be designated as the \(K_a\) of water and the \(K_b\) of water. It is most common, however, to designate this reaction and the associated law of mass action as the \(K_w\) of water:
\[K_{w}=[H_{3}O^{+}][HO^{-}] \nonumber \]
At neutrality and 25 o C, [H 3 O + ] and [HO – ] are both 1 × 10 -7 M, therefore:
\[K_{w}=[1\times 10^{-7}][1\times 10^{-7}]=1\times 10^{-14} \nonumber \]
This simple relationship is actually quite powerful. Because K W is a constant, if we know either a hydronium ion or a hydroxide ion concentration, we can directly calculate the concentration of the other species. For example, if you are given that [H 3 O + ] is 1 × 10 -4 M, [HO – ] can be calculated as:
\[\begin{align*} K_{w} &=[H_{3}O^{+}][HO^{-}] \\[4pt] &=1\times 10^{-14} \\[4pt] &=[1\times 10^{-4}][HO^{-}] \end{align*} \nonumber \]
\[[HO^{-}]=\frac{1\times 10^{-14}}{1\times 10^{-4}}=1\times 10^{-10}M \nonumber \]
A solution at 25 o C, is known to have a hydronium ion concentration of 4.5 × 10 -5 M; what is the concentration of hydroxide ion in this solution?
A solution at 25 o C, is known to have a hydroxide ion concentration of 7.5 ×10 -2 M; what is the concentration of hydronium ion in this solution?
A solution is known to have a hydronium ion concentration of 9.5 × 10 -8 M; what is the concentration of hydroxide ion in this solution?