Professor: Laura Lovett TA: Roneva Keel
635 Herter
Hall 7th
floor Herter Hall
545-6778 rkeel@history.umass.edu
Lovett@history.umass.edu
Office Hours: T 2:00-3:00, Th
11:45-12:45, and by appointment
Course Description: In this course we
will consider the diverse experiences and social roles of women from the late
nineteenth century to the present day. We will emphasize changes in women's
political action, social roles, cultural expression, and personal identity.
Issues of migration, race and multiculturalism, class and economic opportunity
as well as sexuality and feminism will inform our chronological survey of
women's history. This course will ask students to read a variety of primary
source materials and to synthesize and critique secondary sources.
General Education Statement
History 389 meets General Education
Requirements: The course introduces students to the diverse population of women
inhabiting and immigrating to the United States during the years from 1890 to
the present. From the outset, students tackle fundamental questions about the
ways gender structures societal and cultural arrangements in integration with
racial, religious, national and social class formations. We study documents and
discuss conflicting scholarly interpretation of myriad issues. The critical
thinking skill and training in empathic imagination prepare students for
enlightened and engaged citizenship. Students learn about both societal
oppression and individual agency, both categories vital to their discerning the
complexities of power in any time and place. Class assignments, ranging from
essays to oral history projects, require
students to grapple logically and creatively with historical topics, to
incorporate theories and methods from allied disciplines, and to gain skills in
oral and written communication.
Texts: (Books are available at Food For
Thought Books, 106 N. Pleasant Street, Amherst, MA 01002. Tel: 413-253-5432)
Required:
¥ Linda Kerber and
Jane DeHart, Eds., Women's America: Refocusing the Past, Volume
2. 7th Edition.
¥ Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland (Dover Edition).
Discussion Sections:
1 – M
9:05-9:55am
Morrill Science Center (I), room N319
2 – M
10:10-11:00am Morrill Science
Center (I), room N336
3 – M
12:20-1:10pm
Morrill Science Center (I), room N317
Course Website: https://spark.oit.umass.edu
Evaluation:
Participation
15%
Keller
Paper
10%
3-4 pages. Assigned topics.
Herland Paper 10%
Midterm 20%
"Second Wave" Paper 15%
4-5 page paper. See assignment sheet.
Oral History Paper 10%
2 pages. See assignment sheet.
Final 20%
Participation: When women were first admitted to
institutions of higher learning, including the Morrill Act Land Grant
institution you are now attending, they were permitted to sit in the rear of
some classes to observe only as long as their presence was not Ôdisruptive.'
Alternatively, some women were permitted to attend single sex academies, like
Mt. Holyoke, but even these had to push the Ôboundaries' of the kinds of
materials women were thought capable of study. As we will discover, women's
presence in this classroom and curriculum was a hard-fought-for innovation. I
value an active student presence. I have tried to structure the course to allow
you to actively engage with the material in this course, and with each other.
Your
participation grade has three components: (1) Attendance, (2) Contribution to
class discussion, and (3) Spark discussion participation. You are expected to
attend every class meeting, to be prepared, and to contribute to our
discussion. Each week you will be asked to respond to a reading question on the
Spark discussion pages for your section. Questions will be posted on Spark in
advance. Your responses will be due by Friday at 9pm. Your
responses should demonstrate that you have read and thought about the class
material. Each response will be graded on a two point
scale: depending on the quality of your response, you will receive two points,
one point, or no points.
Grade
Scale
The University Grade Scale will be followed:
A = 93 and above; A- = 92-90; B+ = 89-88; B = 83-87; B- = 82-80; C+=79-78;
C = 73-77; C- = 72-70; D+ = 69-69; D = 60-67; F = 59 and below.
Late Assignments
Numerous problems are lurking out there to help you miss
assignment deadlines. Computer failures, family crises, and misreading
the syllabus will all send you scrambling to complete work on time.
Please plan ahead and be ready to work around such problems where
possible. Papers are due at the beginning of class. Late papers
will be docked one third of a letter grade for every day they are late.
Academic Honesty
Plagiarism is a serious violation of expected
academic conduct. Your work must be your own. If you quote or
paraphrase work from someone else, you must give credit and provide a reference
for that source. Links to guidelines on plagiarism, including the
official policy on academic honesty, can be found on the following webpage: http://www.umass.edu/history/links_writing.html. The penalty for plagiarism in this class is zero credit for the
assignment in question.
As a condition
of continued enrollment in this course, you agree to submit all four papers to
the Turnitin service for textual comparison or originality review for the
detection of possible plagiarism. All submitted assignments will be included in
the UMass Amherst dedicated databases of assignments at Turnitin. These
databases of assignments will be used solely for the purpose of detecting
possible plagiarism during the grading process and during this term and in the
future. Students who do not submit their papers electronically to Turnitin will
be required to submit copies of the cover page and first cited page of each
source listed in the bibliography with the final paper in order to receive a
grade on the assignment.
Disabilities
If you have a documented disability that may affect your
performance in the class, please speak to me as soon as possible so that
appropriate arrangements can be made.
Lecture Schedule (Subject to
Change): Please read & prepare the materials assigned before the class
meets.
T
1/18 SNOW DAY
Th
1/20 Education and Opportunity at the
Turn-of-the-Century
Reading: Edward Clarke, Sex in Education (1873) Excerpt. (Available in the Reading folder on the course
Spark page)
Week 2 Discussion Question (Due Monday
1/24 in section): Why was women's education
controversial at the end of the nineteenth century? What does this imply about
the role of women in American society?
T
1/25 Library Meeting at Special
Collections and University Archives
W.E.B. DuBois Library, 25th Floor
(Class will be divided into three groups. Sign up for 1:00, 1:25,
or 2:00.)
Th 1/27 Gender and Jim Crow
Reading: Patricia Schechter, "Ida B. Wells
and Southern Horrors" in Women's America
Glenda Gilmore, "Forging Interracial
Links in the Jim Crow South" in Women's
America
T
2/1 SNOW DAY
Th
2/3 Beyond Wounded
Knee
Reading: Zitkala-Sa, "... this semblance of civilization
..." in Women's America
Devon Abbott (Mihesuah),
"'Commendable Progress': Acculturation at the Cherokee Female
Seminary," American Indian Quarterly,
Vol. 11, No. 3. (Summer, 1987), pp. 187-201. (Available in the
Reading folder on the course Spark page)
Peggy Pascoe, "Ophelia Paquet, a Tillamook Indian Wife: Miscegenation laws and the
Privileges of Property" in Women's
America
T
2/8 Bread and
Roses: Working Women's Movements, 1890s-1914
Reading: Annelise Orleck, "From the Russian Pale to Labor Organizing in
New York City" in Women's America
Judy Yung, "Unbound Feet: From China to
San Francisco's Chinatown" in Women's
America
Th
2/10 Helen Keller
and Progressive Reform
Keller Reading (in
chronological order):
* ÒExpressions of Opinions by Distinguished Educators,Ó in The Problem,
HumanityÕs Problem and Its Phases, or The Six Great Problems and Their
Satellites, Vol. 1, no. 2, April 1900. (Available on Spark in the Reading
folder).
* "I Must Speak," Ladies Home Journal, 1901
http://www.afb.org/Section.asp?SectionID=1&TopicID=193&SubTopicID=18&DocumentID=1198
* ÒThe Story of My Life, Part 5,Ó from The Ladies Home Journal, August 1902.
(Available on Spark in the Reading folder).
* ÒAn Apology for Going to College,Ó McClureÕs Magazine, June 1905. (Available
on Spark in the Reading folder).
* "How I Became a Socialist," New York Call, 1912.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/keller-helen/works/1910s/12_11_03.htm
* "New Vision for the Blind," Justice 1913.
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/keller-helen/works/1910s/13_10_25.htm
* "Why Men Need Woman Suffrage," New York Call, 1913
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/keller-helen/works/1910s/13_10_17.htm
* "Why I Became an IWW," New York Tribune , 1916
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/keller-helen/works/1910s/16_01_16.htm
* "What is the IWW?", New York Call, 1918
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/keller-helen/works/1910s/18_01_x01.htm
* "Put Your Husband in the Kitchen," Atlantic Monthly, 1932
http://www.afb.org/Section.asp?SectionID=1&TopicID=193&SubTopicID=18&DocumentID=1209
* Helen Keller's FBI File
http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/keller-helen/bio/fbi-file.pdf
Reading: Kathryn Kish Sklar,
"Florence Kelley and Women's Activism in the Progressive Era" in Women's America
Muller v. Oregon in Women's America
Rhetta Child Dorr, What
Eight Million Women Want. Chapter 1.
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/12226/12226-h/12226-h.htm
T
2/15
From NAWSA to ERA: White Women, Suffrage and the
Issue of Race
Reading: Henrietta Briggs-Wall, "Woman
and Her Political Peers": Reading Race in a Suffrage Propaganda Cartoon (http://www.kshs.org/cool/coolamwm.htm)
Lucia Maxwell, "Spider Web Chart: The
Socialist-Pacifist Movement in America Is an Absolutely Fundamental and
Integral Part of International Socialism," The Dearborn Independent, XXIV (22 March 1924): 11.
(http://www.binghamton.edu/womhist/wilpf/doc3.htm)
Ellen Carol DuBois, "Harriet Stanton Blatch
and the Winning of Woman Suffrage"in Women's
America
Nineteenth Amendment, 1920 in
Women's America
T 2/15 Keller Paper Due
Th
2/17 A Feminist Utopia?
Reading: Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Herland. (available
in print or online at http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/GilHerl.html)
T
2/22
No Class: Monday
Schedule
Th
2/24 Flappers and Svelte Bodies (Pat
Warner, Guest Speaker)
Reading: The
Body Project, 97-137
Vicki Ruiz, ÒFrom
Flappers to Chaparones,Ó in WomenÕs
America
Joan Brumberg,
ÒFasting GirlsÓ in WomenÕs America
Photo Essay:
Adorning the Body in WomenÕs America
T
3/1 A New Deal for
Women?
Reading: Alice Kessler Harris,
"Designing Women and Old Fools: Writing Women into Social Security
Law" in Women's America
Jacqueline Jones, "Harder Times: The Great Depression"
in Women's America
T
3/1 Herland Paper Due
Th 3/3 Home Fronts during WWII
Reading: Blanche Wiesen
Cook, "Storms on Every Front: Eleanor Roosevelt and Human Rights At Home
and in Europe" in Women's America
Valerie Matsumoto, "Japanese-American
Women during World War II" in Women's
America
Ruth Milkman, ÒGender at Work: The Sexual
Division of Labor in WWII,Ó in WomenÕs
America
T
3/8
Civil Rights
Reading: Pauli Murray, "I had entered
law school preoccupied with the racial struggle ... but I graduated an
unabashed feminist as well" in Women's
America
Civil Rights Act, Title VII, 1964 in Women's America
Th
3/10 Midterm
T
3/15 Spring Break – No Class
Th
3/17 Spring Break – No Class
T
3/22 Domestic Ideals and the 1950s
Reading: Daniel Horowitz,
"Betty Friedan and the Origins of Feminism in Cold War America" in Women's America
Betty Friedan, “The problem that has no name …”,
in Women’s America
Th
3/24 No Class – Remember the
Triangle Fire Conference
http://rememberthetrianglefire.org/
T
3/29 From Front Porch to Back Seat
Reading:
Leslie Reagan,
"When Abortion was a Crime: Reproduction and the Economy in the Great
Depression" in Women's America
Margaret Sanger, “I
resolved that women should have knowledge of contraception …”, in Women’s America
Th
3/31 HUAC, Homosexuality, and
the Pressure to Conform
Reading: Estelle Freedman, "Miriam Van Waters and the Burning of
Letters" in Women's America
Amy Swerdlow, ÒLadiesÕ Day at the CapitolÓ in WomenÕs America
Susan K. Cahn, "Mannishness,"
Lesbianism, and Homophobia in U.S. Women's Sports" in Women's America
Alfred Kinsey, Sexual Behavior in the Human Female (1953), Excerpt. (Available
in the Readng folder on the course Spark page)
T
4/5 Teach in at Student Union
Th
4/7 Women's
Liberation and Lesbian Feminism
Reading: Jane S. De Hart, "Second-Wave
Feminists and the Dynamics of Social Change" in Women's America
Redstockings, "Male supremacy is the oldest, most basic form of
domination" in Women's America
Phyllis Schalfly,
"The Thoughts of one who loves life as a woman ..."
in Women's America
Equal Rights Amendment, 1972 in Women's America
Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History
of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America, excerpt. (Available in the
Reading folder on the course Spark page)
Radicallesbians, “What is a lesbian?’” in Women’s America
T 4/12 “Second Wave”
Paper
Due
T
4/12
From “Free Children” to Family Values
Reading:Title IX, Education Amendments of 1972 in Women's America
Pat Mainardi, “The Politics of Housework,” in Women’s America
Th
4/14 Women's Rights and Reproduction
Reading: Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pennsylvania v. Casey, 1992 in Women's America
Beth Bailey, ÒPrescribing the Pill,Ó in WomenÕs America
T
4/19 The Fight for Reproductive
Freedom (Bill Baird)
Reading: Roe v. Wade, 1973 in Women's America
Jane S. De Hart and Carolyn H. Lewis,
"Thirty Years after Roe: The Continued Assault on a Woman's Right to
Choose" in Women's America
Th
4/21
From The War on Poverty to the War on Welfare
Reading: TBA
T
4/26 Women’s Oral History
Oral History Project Due
Th
4/28 Backlash: the
1980s and 1990s
Reading: Time
Magazine: Is Feminism Dead? (Available in the Reading
folder on the course Spark page)
Susan Faludi,
"Blame It on Feminism" in Backlash:
The Undeclared War Against American Women(New York:
Doubleday, 1991), excerpt. (Available in the Readng
folder on the course Spark page)(http://coursesa.matrix.msu.edu/~hst203/documents/faludi.html)
Rethinking Marriage documents in WomenÕs America
T
5/3
What is Feminism Today?
Reading: Amy Richards and Jennifer Baumgarten, "What
Is Feminism?" in Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future (Farrar,
Straus & Giroux, 2000). (http://www.feminist.com/resources/artspeech/genwom/whatisfem.htm)
Susan Faludi, ÒAmerican Electra: FeminismÕs
Ritual Matricide,Ó Harpers (Oct. 2010). (http://www.harpers.org/archive/2010/10/0083140)
Opportunities in WomenÕs History in the Five Colleges
M 1/31
Jade Sasser, "Anticipating the Future by Acting in the
Present: Climate Change
and Women's Bodies at the Science-Policy
Interface." 5
pm, Campus Center 917
Th 2/3
Laura
A. Foster, Epistemic
Citizenship and the Patenting of Hoodia as Life. 5 pm, Campus Center
917, UMass
M 2/7 Angela
Willey, Race
and the Science of Love: Reframing the Problem of Compulsory Monogamy for
Feminism, 5 pm, Campus Center 917, UMass
Th 2/10 Catherine
Bliss, The
Genomics of Human Difference, 5
pm, Campus Center
917, UMass
Th 2/10 Well-known author and
social historian Stephanie Coontz will speak at UMass Amherst on
Thursday, February 10, from 7:30-9:00 p.m. in Mahar Auditorium. The talk
is free and open to the public.
CoontzÕs talk, ÒÕMad Men,Õ Working ÔGirls,Õ and Depressed Housewives: The
1960s and The Feminine Mystique,Ó will draw on her new book, ÒA
Strange StirringÓ: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn
of the 1960s.
See http://www.stephaniecoontz.com/ for articles on gay
marriage and why ÒMad MenÓ is TVÕs most feminist show.
F& S
4/8-4/10
Reproductive Rights Conference at Hampshire College
Funded internships are available to Five
College students. http://clpp.hampshire.edu
June 9-12 The
Berkshire Conference on the History of Women
The oldest and largest conference on womenÕs history will draw
over 1,200 historians to UMass this June.
For
more information see http://blogs.umass.edu/berks/
If
you would like to volunteer in exchange for free admission, please send an
email to berks@history.umass.edu.
Sophia Smith Collection
The premier archive of womenÕs history at Smith College has
amazing documents and resources on almost every facet of womenÕs history,
including Margaret SangerÕs papers, Gloria SteinemÕs papers, and thousands more.
Browse their collections online at http://www.smith.edu/libraries/libs/ssc/index.html
Valley WomenÕs History Collective
The VWHC is a dedicated to collecting the history of women in the
Pioneer Valley. For a list of
current projects go to http://www.vwhc.org.
If
you would like to volunteer to collect oral histories, design new webpages, and
make womenÕs history, please contact Laura Lovett.