Themes in American Women's History:
Women in the American West

This course examines the discipline of women's history by tracing the historigraphical and methodological debates surrounding American women's history in the Western United States. We will investigate women's pasts in the region, looking at women of differing classes, races, and ethnicities. We will look both at views of women and women's views of themselves, at women's political and social activism, and women's cultural activities. Students will have opportunities to undertake directed primary research into women's history in the area, and to read both primary and secondary accounts of women's pasts.

Course Requirements:

All students are required to attend class meetings and take part actively in class discussions. Written work will require students to synthesize readings, lectures, and discussions. Students must also read and assimilate assigned readings, and be prepared to discuss the readings on the schedule listed below. Students will submit all assignments on time; late assignments will only be accepted by prior arrangement with the professor. Plagiarism and other forms of intellectual dishonesty or sloth will not be tolerated.

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 Mondays and Wednesdays from 2:15 to 3:15, Tuesdays 4:30-5:30, and by appointment. You may also reach me via email at lavender@postbox.csi.cuny.edu.

Assignments:

Informal Writing Assignments: Ten assignments, 5% of final grade each (50% total)
Biographical Project: 20% of final grade (5% for draft, 15% for final version)
Historiographical Project: 20% of final grade
Participation in Class Discussions/Attendance: 10% of final grade
CSI ATTENDANCE POLICY: Any student with two or more unexcused absences will receive a grade of WU for this course.

Required Texts (starred * items for purchase at College bookstore):

    *Lillian Schlissel and Catherine Lavender, eds., The Western Women's Reader (HarperCollins, 2000) (WWR)
    *Elizabeth Jameson and Susan Armitage, eds., Writing the Range: Race, Class, and Culture in the Women's West (University of Oklahoma Press, 1997) (WR)
    Additional Autobiography (to be chosen in class)
Essay Packet:

    Susan Armitage, "Through Women's Eyes: A New View of the West," in Armitage and Jameson, The Women's West (University of Oklahoma Press, 1987).

    Elizabeth Jameson, "Toward a Multi-Cultural History of Women in the Western United States," Signs (1988).

    Peggy Pascoe, "Western Women at the Cultural Crossroads," in Limerick, Milner, and Rankin, Trails: Toward a New Western History (University of Kansas Press, 1991).

    Antónia I. Castañeda, "Women of Color and the Rewriting of Western History: The Discourse, Politics, and Decolonization of History," in Pacific Historical Review (1992).

    Susan Johnson, "'A Memory Sweet to Soldiers': The Significance of Gender," in Milner, A New Significance: Re-Envisioning the History of the American West (Oxford, 1996).

    Vera Norwood, Made from This Earth: American Women and Nature (University of North Carolina, 1993) (selections)

    Catherine Lavender, "'Is She Not a Man?': Feminist Ethnography and the Man-Woman in the American Southwest" (2000)

    Era Bell Thompson, American Daughter (1946) (selections)

    Monica Sone, Nisei Daughter (1953) (selections)

    Jade Snow Wong, Fifth Chinese Daughter (1950) (selections)

    María Amparo Ruíz de Burton, Who Would Have Thought It? (1872) (selections)

Course Schedule:

Week One: Introduction to the Course
	Tuesday, 5 September	Introduction to Course; What is Women's History? What is Western Women's History?
	Readings: Schlissel & Lavender, "The Angle of Vision," in The Western Women's Reader (WWR); Jameson & Armitage, "Editor's Introduction," in Writing the Range (WR)

Week Two: Historiography of Western Women
	T 12 September	Historiographical Overview
	Readings: Armitage, "Through Women's Eyes"; Jameson, "Toward a Multi-Cultural History of Women in the Western United States"; Pascoe, "Western Women at the Cultural Crossroads"; Castañeda, "Women of Color and the Rewriting of Western History": and Johnson, "'A Memory Sweet to Soldiers'" (all in essay packet); Perales, "Empowering 'The Welder'" (WR)

Week Three: Women in Western Landscapes
	Tuesday, September 19	Situating Western Women in Place
	Readings: Norwood, from Made from This Earth

Week Four: Women and the West as Home
	T 26 September	Homesites
	Readings: "Homesites" in WWR; Thrush and Keller, "I See What I Have Done" (WR); Leyva, "A Poor Widow Burdened With Children" (WR)

Week Five: Women and the Westering Experience
	Tuesday, 3 October	Landfall
	Readings: "Landfall" in WWR; Hurtado, "When Strangers Met" (WR); White-Parks, "Beyond the Stereotypes" (WR); Garceau, "I Got a Girl Here" (WR); Wall, "Gender and the 'Citizen Indian'" (WR)

Week Six: No Class Meeting
	T 10 October	CLASSES FOLLOW MONDAY SCHEDULE

Week Seven: Women and the Ownership of the West
	T 17 October	The Gift of Good Land
	Readings: "The Gift of Good Land" in WWR; Mercier, "We are Women Irish" (WR); Moore, "Not In Somebody's Kitchen" (WR); Miller, "The Women of Lincoln County" (WR)

Week Eight: Women as Storytellers
	T 24 October	Storytellers; draft version of biography project due
	Readings: "Storytellers" in WWR; Pascoe, "Race, Gender, and Intercultural Relations" (WR); Matsumoto, "Desperately Seeking 'Deirdre'" (WR); Rodríquez-Estrada, "Dolores Del Rio and Lupe Velez" (WR)

Week Nine: Women as Witnesses
	T 31 October	First Person
	Readings: "First Person" in WWR; Padilla, "Yo Sola Aprendí" (WR); Chan, "Introduction to Quiet Odyssey" (WR); Nomura, "Tsugiki, a Grafting" (WR)

Week Ten: Women Rewriting History
	T 7 November	Rewriting History
	Readings: "Rewriting History" in WWR; Brooks, "This Evil Extends Especially to the Feminine Sex" (WR); Emmerich, "Save the Babies!" (WR); Conte, "Changing Woman Meets Madonna" (WR)

Week Eleven: Women as Community Leaders
	T 14 November	Walking the Line
	Readings: "Walking the Line" in WWR; Dickson, "Lifting as We Climb" (WR); Orozco, "Alice Dickerson Montemayor" (WR); Echeverria, "Euskaldun Andreak" (WR)

Week Twelve: Women as Fighters
	T 21 November	Talking Back; Biography Project due
	Readings: "Talking Back" in WWR; Jacobs, "Resistance to Rescue" (WR); Pardo, "Mexican American Women Grassroots Community Activists" (WR); Rodgers and Schott, "My Mother Was a Mover" (WR)

Week Thirteen: Complications and Contestations
	T 28 November	Complications and Contestations
	Readings: Lavender, "'Is She Not a Man?'"; Thompson, from American Daughter; Sone, from Nisei Daughter; Wong, from Fifth Chinese Daughter; Ruíz de Burton, from Who Would Have Thought It? (all in essay packet); Schlatter, "Drag's a Life" (WR)

Week Fourteen: Womens' Contemporary Writing
	T 5 December	Contemporary Writing
	Readings: "Looking Within Myself" in WWR

Week Fifteen: Western Women's History as American Women's History
	T 12 December	Summing Up
	Readings: Ruíz, "Dead Ends or Gold Mines?" in WR

FINAL: Western Women's Historiography
	T 19 December	Historiographical Essay on a Western Women's Topic of Choice Due