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This course will survey the history of women in the United States from approximately 1890 to the present, a century of dramatic and fundamental change in the meaning of gender difference. We will examine the re-making of womanhood in the domains of work, family, sexuality and politics and be attentive to the variety of ways gender is structured and experienced within different classes and ethnic groups. While the lectures will focus on larger patterns of gender history, the readings and papers will view that history through the eyes of individual women.
Reading List
Mary Beth Norton and Ruth Alexander, Major Problems in American
Women's History
Ida B. Wells, Memphis Diary
Anzia Yezierska, Hungry Hearts
Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar
Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston and James Houston, Farwell to Manzanar
Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street
Judith Stacey, In the Name of the Father
Course Outline:
Introduction
Week of August 24 Women, Gender, History
Reading: for Norton and Anderson
Chapter 1; Wells, IX-19
Part I From Breadgiver to Flappers: 1890-1920
Week of August 31 19th-Century-Womanhood:Contrasts in Black
and White
Reading, Norton and
Alexander 254-258,323-25.
Wells, 19-159
Week of September 7 Public Womanhood
Reading: N&A, 259-284;333-348
Wells,161-199
Week of Septmeber 14 The Immigrant Working Class: The Breadgiver
and Her Daughter
Reading Yezierska, vii-177
Week September 21 Flapper?: "Sexual Revolution" as Gender
Change
Reading: N&A, 221-228, 312-321.327-329.
Yezierska, complete
Week of September 28 Midterm September 28
September 30 Library Session and
Paper Planning
Part II Back and Forth: From Home to Work to Headlines 1920 -1970
Week of October 5 The Gendering of the Labor Force
Reading: N&A pp 328-312, 357-385
October 7 Film "The Women of Summer"
Week of October 12 Wives and Mothers through the Fifties
Reading N&A Chapter 14
Sylvia Plath, entire
October 4 Paper Topics Due: brief description of your subject, plus bibliography
Week of October 19 Migrating Mothers: From Asia, and the Rural
South
Reading: N&A 385-399;Houston, entire
Week of October 26 Women's Liberation and the New Feminism
Reading:N&A 439-499;502-522
Part III Postmodernity and Gender Difference 1970 forward
Week of November 2 Gender in Post Industrial Society
Reading: Judith Stacey, chapters 1&2
Week of November 9 Gender Pluralism: The New Immigrants
Reading: Cisneros, entire
Week of November 16 A Plurality of Genders: Lesbians and Post
Modern Sexualities
Reading: Stacey, chapter 5
Movie: "Last Call At Maud's"
Week of November 23 and November 30 Individuals and Families
STUDENT PRESENTATIONS
Week December 1 Politics into the Future
Reading: N&A499-502,522-529
The Newspaper
Review
Class Requirements
All readings must be completed by the date assigned. They will be discussed in class and all students are expected to participate. In addition to the mid term and a final (with study questions provided in advance) students will submit one paper of approximately 8 pages which re-views Women's History through the personal account or memory of an individual subject, for example the autobiography of a celebrated American woman or an oral interview of one's grandmother. Guidelines for the paper and suggestions on selecting a subject will be provided. Late in the semester the students will bring these individual accounts together in a dramatic presentation before the class.
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