These are a variety of online materials I have developed for my courses other than Western history that deal with topics and themes in Western women's history.

Discussion notes and questions for Patricia Raybon's My First White Friend: Confessions on Race, Love, and Forgiveness (1996).

Raybon, an African-American journalist, grew up in Denver and Northglenn, Colorado. Her book is a discussion of those formative years, as well as her plea for interracial forgiveness in order to heal the souls of both Blacks and whites.

Discussion notes and questions for Elsie Clews Parsons's Journal of a Feminist.

Parsons's fictionalized "Journal"--unpublished in her lifetime--addresses her own experiences and traces out her development as a feminist. It covers the years during which Parsons was conducting field research in the American Southwest.

Discussion notes and questions for Ruth Underhill's and María Chona's Papago Woman (1936).

Underhill's interviews with Chona resulted in this, the first published Southwestern women's autobiography.

Discussion notes and questions for Salt of the Earth (1953).

This Cold War-era blacklisted film concerns a strike by Local 890 of the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union against the New Jersey Zinc Company in Bayard, New Mexico. The Local was composed largely of Spanish and Mexican Americans. During this strike, the miners' wives took up the picket after the New Jersey Zinc used a Taft-Hartley injunction to bar the miners' pickets. This film focuses on the community dynamics of gender, race, and class, viewed through the relationship of Esperanza and Ramón Quintana.

Discussion notes and questions for Rickie Solinger's The Abortionist: A Woman Against the Law (1994).

This book covers the life and work of Portland, Oregon, abortionist Ruth Barnett. It tells not only the story of Barnett and her clients, but also of the changing application of anti-abortion laws in the U.S. In addition, it provides a fascinating glimpse into community morés in the Pacific Northwest.

Images of We'Wha, a Zuñi man-woman, 1886.

At the moment, these are just images used to illustrate a lecture on the ways in which Matilda Coxe Stevenson and Elsie Clews Parsons presented We'wha, but text should be coming soon.

Prepared by Professor Catherine Lavender for courses in the Department of History, The College of Staten Island of The City University of New York.
Last modified: Monday 20 October 1997