U.S. Women's History

HST 286-9879/WMS 286-9880 Professor Catherine Lavender
Spring 2009 Office: 2N 203, 718-982-2869
Tuesdays 630-950, 2N 110 Office hours: Wednesdays 400-600,
and by appointment

Purpose of the Course:
This course explores American women’s history. Women's history is the study of women in past times and across cultures. Its goals are to find the women missing from the pages of our history books; to analyze and understand their experience as lived, felt, and understood; to integrate that knowledge into the history of particular times, places, and societies; and to develop from that knowledge conceptual frameworks with which to understand the role and significance of gender in culture and society.

Course Requirements:
All students are required to attend lectures and take part in discussions. Exams will require students to synthesize lecture materials as well as readings. The term paper will require students to compare and contrast the two main texts for the course (Darlene Clark Hine’s A Shining Thread of Hope and Sara Evans’s Born for Liberty). Students must also read and assimilate required readings, and be prepared to discuss readings on the schedule given below. Students will submit all assignments on time; late papers will not be accepted without prior arrangement with the professor. Further, no student with more than four unexcused absences will receive a passing grade for the course.

A Note About Academic Integrity: Integrity is fundamental to the academic enterprise. It is violated by acts such as borrowing or purchasing term papers, essays, reports, and other written assignments; using concealed notes or crib sheets during examinations; copying others' work and submitting it as one's own; and misappropriating the knowledge of others. The sources from which one derives one's ideas, statements, terms, and data must be fully and specifically acknowledged in the appropriate form; failure to do so, intentionally or unintentionally, constitutes plagiarism. Violations of academic integrity may result in failure in the course and in disciplinary actions with penalties such as suspension or dismissal from the College.

Contacting the Professor: My office is in 2N 203, and my office phone is 718-982-2869; I have office hours Wednesdays from 4:00 to 6:00pm, and by appointment (preferably on Thursday afternoons). You may also reach me via email at lavender@mail.csi.cuny.edu. Please put “HST/WMS 286" in the subject line of your email.

Assignments:
• Midterm Exam (T 3/17): 30% of Final Course Grade
• Final Exam (T 5/19): 30% of Final Course Grade
• Term Paper: 20% of Final Course Grade (5% for outline, 15% for final paper)
• Participation, Quizzes, Short Writing Assignments (Ongoing): 20% of Final Course Grade

Required Texts (books with ISBNs should be purchased and have been ordered at the on-campus bookstore):
• Darlene Clark Hine, A Shining Thread of Hope: A History of Black Women in America (Broadway, 1999, ISBN 0767901118)
• Sara Evans, Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America (Free Press, 1997, ISBN 0684834987)
• Catherine Lavender, "Liberty Rhetoric" and Nineteenth-Century Women (1998, http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/americanstudies/lavender/liberty.html)
• Additional Materials stored on course website (www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/286.html).

Online Lectures:
Powerpoint lectures are stored online for student review at http://www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/history/lavender/286/s09286lectures.html.

Course Schedule:
T 1/27 Introduction to the Course: What is Women's History?
T 2/3 Colonial Women, North and South
T 2/10 CSI THURSDAY -- No Class Meeting
T 2/17 Witchcraft and Women's Historiography
T 2/24 View and Discuss A Midwife's Tale in class; Liberty and Free Labor in a Family Economy; Discuss Liberty Rhetoric Part I (The Origins of Liberty Rhetoric in the Revolutionary Tradition – www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/americanstudies/lavender/origins.html)
T 3/3 Slavery and Resistance; discuss Linda Brent, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (download text -- 3.8MB).
3/10 Women and the Industrial Revolution; Discuss Liberty Rhetoric Part II (Uses of Liberty Rhetoric Among Lowell Mill Girls -- www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/americanstudies/lavender/lowell.html)
T 3/17 MIDTERM EXAM; at 8:00 pm, screening by College of Staten Island women student filmmakers, as part of Women's History Film Series
T 3/24 Scientific Sexism & The Victorian Medical Construction of Womanhood
T 3/31 Women, True Womanhood, and Abolitionism; discuss Linda Brent's Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (download text -- 3.8MB); TERM PAPER OUTLINE DUE
T 4/7 The Woman Movement and Suffrage; Discuss Liberty Rhetoric Part III (The 1848 Declaration of Sentiments as an Expression of the Tradition of Liberty Rhetoric -- www.library.csi.cuny.edu/dept/americanstudies/lavender/seneca.html)
T 4/14 SPRING BREAK -- No Class Meeting
T 4/21 The "Woman Movement" Becomes the "Women’s Movement" -- First Wave Feminism; discuss Charlotte Perkins Gilman's The Yellow Wall-Paper (download text -- (234 kB)
T 4/28 Women and Social Reform
T 5/5 Women in the Great Depression and WWII; View and discuss The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter in class; TERM PAPER DUE
T 5/12 The Second and Third Waves
T 5/19 FINAL EXAM
Last updated: Saturday 21 February 2009.