(3 credits)
This course explores the impact of historical events on the lives of American women and
the varied roles women have played in shaping United States’ history from the colonial
period to the present. It will focus specifically on how class, ethnicity and race has influenced
American women’s work, family life and organized activities. Topics include: Native American
women’s lives; gender and family life under slavery; the impact of industrialization on women
of different classes; the ideology of separate spheres; women’s political activities including
the antislavery movement, the suffrage movement, the Nineteenth Amendment and the
resurgence of feminism in the 1960s; and transformations in the lives of modern women
including work, politics, sexuality, consumption patterns and leisure activities. While tracing
larger trends and identifying common experiences, the course pays close attention to the
specific experiences of individual women in order to shed light on the differences and divisions
among them. Throughout, it investigates the ways in which notions of gender difference have
changed over time and how a wide variety of women both created and responded to shifting
and contested cultural, political and social roles.