EARLY AMERICAN WOMEN
Professor Karen Manners
Smith
AH 300 D, 3 credits
Fall 1998 (MWF
9:00-9:50)
COURSE DESCRIPTION
This course is the first
half of a two-semester sequence in American women's history, and focuses
on the social history of American women of many ethnicities from the colonial
era to 1890. We begin with a general discussion of culture and gender and
progress to the history of colonial white women, Native American women,
and African American women of the 16th and 17th centuries. Women
as witches and midwives are early topics for reading and discussion, followed
by the women's suffrage movement, women and labor, women immigrants, women
in the Civil War, and women's reform initiatives of the late 19th century.
The 19th century feminist critique of marriage and women's legal inequality
is a significant focus of this course. Our major text is Nancy Woloch's
Early American Women, a documentary history of the period which has been
chosen to facilitate discussion. Lectures will supply the theoretical
framework and narrative continuity for the course. We will spend
the last few periods of the course on student reports.
Women's history is the
story of women's shared experiences -- those experiences that are shaped
by their sex or gender alone -- but it is also the story of differences
between women that are determined by their race, region, religion, ethnicity,
and social class.
COURSE REQUIREMENTS:
The
format of each class period includes both lecture and discussion.
Always complete reading assignments in advance and bring relevant books
and articles to class with you. BE PREPARED TO TALK. You may
miss 6 classes without penalty. After that, absences will affect
your grade.
There will be a mid-term
and a final in this course, two short papers based on books, and a presentation
to the class, with script or outline submitted for grading.
All ESU rules regarding
academic honesty apply in this course. Plagiarism (using the work
of another writer without appropriate citation or acknowledgment) is a
serious academic offense, and may result in failing the course. Please
ask me if you are unsure about the correct way to quote or paraphrase the
work of other writers.
REQUIRED READINGS:
Woloch: Early American Women:
A Documentary History 1600-1900
Blake: Fettered for Life
DuBois: Feminism and Suffrage
Jones: Labor of Love, Labor
of Sorrow: Black Women, Work and the Family from Slavery to the Present
Karlson: The Devil in the Shape
of a Woman
Oates: A Woman of Valor:
Clara Barton and the Civil War
Ulrich: A Midwife's Tale: The
Life of Martha Ballard Based on her Diaries 1785-1812.
Additional required readings may
be distributed in class or placed on reserve in the library. Generally,
they will be available at least two class periods before they are scheduled
for discussion.
CLASS SCHEDULE (tentative)
Week 1: Cultural Contact.
Woloch Ch. 1. Additional article.
Week 2: Colonial Women I The "Goodwife."
Woloch 2 and 3. Begin Karlsen
Week 3: Colonial Women II The
law. Salem. Discuss Karlsen
Week 4: Women in the American
Revolution. Film. Woloch Ch 6
Week 5: The New Republic.
Republican Motherhood. Discuss Ulrich, Woloch Ch. 7 Paper on
Ulrich due October 5. Midterm, October 9.
Week 6: The School and the
Mill. Woloch Ch 8. Additional article on reserve. Begin Jones,
pp. TBA
Week 7. Women and the Institution
of Slavery. Discuss Jones, Woloch Ch 10
Week 8: Women in the West.
Woloch Ch. 9. Additional readings on reserve. Begin reading
DuBois.
Week 9: Women and Reform:
Abolition and Suffrage. Woloch Ch. 11. DuBois pp TBA
Begin reading Oates.
Week 10: Women in the Civil
War. Discuss Oates. Film.
Week 11: Women in the Post Civil
War eras: Temperence, Suffrage, labor. Read Woloch, Ch. 13.
Finish DuBois, Jones pp TBA
Week 12: 1870s and 1880s:
Discuss DuBois and Jones. Women in Education slide lecture. Begin
Blake Immigrants Woloch Ch 17
Week 13: Women and Reform:
Settlements, Suffrage reunification Second paper Due.
Weeks 14-16 Student Reports.
Final Exam Wednesday December
16, 9:00 a.m.
For more information, contact:
Professor Karen Manners Smith
phone: (316) 341-5538
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