Women and Gender in Early America

 

HI 300X / HN 202D, Fall 2009

Wednesday, 5:30-8:30, Brown Historic Site

 

 

Instructor: Kerry Wynn

Office: 311P Henderson                                                                                

Office hours: Tuesday 2:30-4:30pm and Wednesday, 10-12pm (and by appointment)

Office phone: 670-2062

Email: kerry.wynn@washburn.edu

 

Course Description:

 

This course explores the histories of women in regions that would become the United States from the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries.  As a guiding theme throughout the course, we will also consider the ways in which ideas about gender shaped the lives of women and men in these places and times.  We cannot assume that ideas about sex and gender have always been similar to those we might find today, nor can we assume that all men or women possessed the same beliefs about what constituted differences between the sexes, or even that they accepted male and female as essential, binary categories.  Throughout the semester, through readings and discussion, we will examine women’s lives in historical context.  This means that we will consider seriously the American societies in which women lived, and the ways in which women’s experiences differed from men’s experiences—and from other women’s experiences—according to their positions in those societies.

 

In order to understand women’s lives, we must ask essential questions about experience and context:  How did women in early America encounter other individuals and the world around them?  What sorts of kinship and family structures helped to define women’s experience?  How did gender shape the colonial and early U.S. world, and how did the category of gender intersect with other categories created by historical actors, such as race, class, ethnicity, religion, and age?  What roles did women play in shaping their societies?  How did women and men support change or uphold the status quo in terms of gender relations?  What sort of power dynamics did this create in the area that would become the United States?

 

Course Objectives:

 

This course is structured to meet the following goals:

• Facilitate familiarity with theoretical concepts and historical events essential to the understanding of early American women’s history—in particular, those concepts and events influential for understanding women’s experiences and the importance of gender to daily life.
• Strengthen skills for analyzing primary and secondary sources through discussion and short paper assignments.
• Strengthen skills of historical analysis, interpretation, and argumentation through the exploration of a research topic.

Required Texts:

 

• Dubois, Ellen Carol, and Lynn Dumenil.  Through Women’s Eyes: An American History with Documents (volume 1).  Boston: Bedford/St. Martins: 2009.
• Berkin, Carol.  First Generations: Women in Colonial America.  New York: Hill and Wang, 1996
• Saxton, Martha.  Being Good: Women’s Moral Values in Early America.  New York: Hill and Wang, 2003.
• Jacobs, Harriet A. (ed. Jennifer Fleischner).  Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself.  Boston: Bedford/St. Martins, 2010 [original, 1861].

 

Course Requirements:

 

Success in this course requires completing all of its components: timely completion of reading assignments, participation in class discussion, and completion of exams and essay/paper assignments.  Students in this course will take two exams and write two short (3-4 page) essays and one longer (6-8 page) primary source paper.  Each of the two short essays will focus on one of the required books for the semester—First Generations, Being Good, or Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl.  You may choose to write about any two books of the three assigned, however, you must turn in your paper on the dates specified for the books you have chosen.  The longer essay will explore the context and themes of a primary source, which you will select from a list I will distribute in class.  Due dates for the longer paper are included within the syllabus.  I will distribute more information on the exams and assignments in class, including hand-outs on the short essays and research paper.

 

 

Grade Distribution:

 

Midterm Exam                                    25%

Final Examination                               25%

Book Essays                                        20%

Primary Source Paper                          15%

Attendance and Participation             15%

 

 

Class Schedule:

 

Aug 26            Introduction and Theory

                        Reading Assignments:

·         Thurner, Manuela. “Subject to Change: Issues and of U.S. Feminist History.” Journal of Women’s History 9 (Summer 1997): 122-146. [excerpt]

·         Bock, Gisela.  “Challenging Dichotomies: Perspectives on Women's History.” In Writing Women's History: International Perspectives,ed. Karen Offen, Ruth Roach Pierson, and Jane Rendall. Bloomington: Indiana University Press [excerpt]

·         Brown, Kathleen M. “The Anglo-Algonquian Gender Frontier.”  In  Negotiators of Change, ed. Nancy Shoemaker            

 

Sept 2              New Encounters

                        Reading Assignments:

·         Dubois, Chapter 1

           

Sept 8              British Colonies

                        Reading Assignments:

·         Dubois, Chapter 2

·         Berkin, Chapter 1-2

 

Sept 15            Puritan Sex and Morality

·         Saxton, Part 1

 

Sept 22            Empire and Slavery

                        Reading Assignments:

·         Berkin, Chapters 3-5

·         Barr, Juliana. “From Captives to Slaves: Commodifying Indian Women in the Borderlands.”  In the Journal of American History, 92:1

 

Sept 29            Changes in the Eighteenth Century

                        Reading Assignments:

·         Berkin, Chapter 6

·         Dubois, Pages 122-153

 

Oct 7               Colonial Society and Revolution

                        Reading Assignments:

·         Berkin, Chapter 7-end

·         Dubois, Pages 153-186

                        Writing Assignments

·         **RESEARCH PAPER BIBLIOGRAPHY DUE IN CLASS**

 

Oct 14             **MIDTERM EXAM**

                        Writing Assignments:

·         **BERKIN PAPER DUE IN CLASS**

 

Oct 21             Virginian Sex and Morality

                        Reading Assignments:

·      Saxton, Part 2

 

Oct 28             Women in the New Nation

                        Reading Assignments:

·         Kerber, Linda. “The Republican Mother: Women and the Enlightenment—An American Perspective.” American Quarterly 28:2 (summer 1976): 187-205.

 

Nov 4              St. Louis Sex and Morality

                        Reading Assignments:

·         Saxton, Part 3

                       

Nov 11                        “True Womanhood,” Wage Earning, and Antebellum Slavery

                        Reading Assignments:

·         Dubois, Chaper 4

Writing Assignments

·         **SAXTON PAPER DUE IN CLASS**

 

Nov 18                        Antebellum Slavery and Activism

                        Reading Assignments:

·         Jacobs, Parts 1 and 2 (to page 215)

 

Nov 25                        **No Class--Thanksgiving

 

Dec 2               The Civil War and Reconstruction

                        Reading Assignments:

·         Dubois, Chapter 5

                        Writing Assignments:

·         **JACOBS PAPER DUE IN CLASS**

·         **RESEARCH PAPER DUE IN CLASS**

 

 

 

December 9    **Final Exam Scheduled (Under unusual circumstances, exam times    

5:30pm           may change.  I will announce any changes in class, so be sure to                                                 confirm this time as December approaches.)**

 

**Dates and readings may be altered during the semester.  Announcements of changes will be made in class.