History of Women in the United States

elective courses

This course will study the experiences of women in American history from the colonial era to the present. In particular, we will consider the evolving ideologies that have defined the role of women in American society, the realities of women’s lives in the home and at work, the quest of women to gain full civic and political rights, and the variations race and class have imposed on these themes.

This course will study the experiences of women in American history from the colonial era to the present. In particular, we will consider the evolving ideologies that have defined the role of women in American society, the realities of women’s lives in the home and at work, the quest of women to gain full civic and political rights, and the variations race and class have imposed on these themes. We will study such topics as: women in colonial America, Republican motherhood, slave women, private life and domesticity, women and immigration, American women in social and political movements, waves of American feminism.

Colonial period

Revolution

Women in American South

Victorian domesticity

Working women

Everyday life, health, and sickness in the 19th century

Immigrant women

Suffrage, reform, and social movements

Public life in the interwar period

Private life in the 1920s and 30s

War and after

The Second Wave

Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers. Gendered Power and the Forming of American Society, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996.

Mary Beth Norton, “ We Commenced Perfect Statesmen,” in: Liberty’s Daughters. The Revolutionary Experience of American Women, 1750-1800, Boston-Toronto: Little, Brown and Company, 1980,

Deborah Gray White, “Female Slaves: Sex Roles and Status in the Antebellum Plantation South,” in: Half Sisters of History. Southern Women and the American Past, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1994.

Barbara Welter, The Cult of True Womanhood, 1820-1860, “American Quarterly” 18 (2, 1966): 151-174.

History of Wage-Earning Women in the United States, New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1982.

Janet F. Brodie, “A Story of Love and Family Limitation,” in: Contraception and Abortion in the 19th America, Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1994.

George J. Sanchez, “’Go after the Women. Americanization and the Mexican Immigrant Woman, 1915-1929, in Mothers and Motherhood. Readings in American History, ed. Rima D. Apple and Janet Goldin, Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1997.

Barbara Leslie Epstein, “ The Woman’s Crusade and Home Protection,” in: The Politics of Domesticity. Women, Evangelism, and Temperance in Nineteenth Century America. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 1981

Estelle B. Freedman, “Separatism as a Strategy: Female Institution Building and American Feminism, 1870-1930,” Feminist Studies 5 (3,1979), 512-529.

Rima D. Apple, “The Modern Way.” Mothers circa 1920-1945,” in: Perfect Motherhood. Science and Childrearing in America, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2006.

Wini Breines. Young, White and Miserable. Growing Up Female in the Fifties, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2001.

J. S. de Hart, Second-Wave Feminists and the Dynamics of Social Change, in: Women’s America. Refocusing the Past, ed. L. K. Kerber and J. S. de Hart, New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004.

Knowledge:

1.Students will gain an understanding of the general themes of American women’s history from the colonial period to the late 20th century.

2. Students will be able to make connections between history of women and general themes of the history of the U.S., using women’s history as an example in their analysis of the general development of the American past.

3. Students will be able to use terminology pertaining to history writing, with specific knowledge of terms and ideas pertaining to women’s history.

Skills:

1. Students will learn to synthesize this material to make arguments that demonstrate their understanding of American women’s history.

2. Students will learn how to analyze primary sources for what they reveal about the era in which they were produced.

3. Students will learn how to critically assess secondary sources, including textbooks and scholarly literature, and to read critically the contributions of historians to our understanding of American women’s history.

Competences:

1. Students will learn how to present assigned material and how to formulate and defend their opinions.

2. Student will practice the ability to speak publically, presenting argument supporting their theses.

3. Students will gain the appreciation of diversity and multiculturality.

1. attendance

2. active participation in class discussion and completing assigned on-line exercises (40%) (students need to come to class PREPARED, knowing the assigned readings)

3. presentation (20%) – short (max. 15 min.) presentation of an assigned article

4. written paper - 4-5 pages (40%)

Grading: 100-90/5; 89-86/4+; 85-79/4; 78-73/3+; 72-60/3; 59-0/2