Course Descriptions For Woman Studies

Spring 2004

273 WOMEN, MEN AND GENDER IN AMERICAN SOCIETY SINCE 1877 (Pleck)
Same As W S 273

The central premise of this course is that gender matters in history and that to understand women's history, one must appreciate the differences among women's historical experiences. The course will introduce students to the history of women's work, sexual definitions, and political lives in industrializing and modern America. Readings in primary sources and those written by women's historians will emphasize changes in women's life experiences in relation to larger historical changes in the U.S., such as economic change, race relations, and social movements. A major goal of the course is to show that women's history is a central part of American social history and a unique subject of historical investigation. Although the title of this course refers to women and men, most of the lecture and reading will concern the history of women.

Fall 2003

272 WOMEN, MEN, AND GENDER IN AMERICAN SOCIETY TO 1877 (Pleck)
Same as W S 272

This course aims to introduce students to changing ideals and life experiences of American women from the period just prior to the arrival of European explorers to the Civil War. The readings draw on primary sources and historian's interpretations to emphasize the work, family, and political activities of American women, within the context of larger changes in colonial America and the United States. These larger changes include colonialism and European settlement, the role of Enlightenment ideas, the growth of an industrial economy, the expansion of slavery, and the rise of nineteenth century reform movements. Students will learn to think critically about historical arguments and the use of evidence.

298A THE BODY IN WESTERN CHRISTIANITY (McLaughlin)

Does the body have a history? And what, if anything, does that history have to do with religion? This course will explore changing ideas about physical pain and pleasure, eating and fasting, bodily emissions of various kinds, sexualities, reproduction, death and resurrection within Christian communities in Western Europe and America, from the beginning of the Common Era through the Middle Ages and into Modern Times.

298K EDUCATING WOMEN IN LATE MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN EUROPE (Michalove)

"The single most powerful investment we can ever make in life is investment in ourselves, in the only instrument we have with which to deal with life and to contribute." -Stephen R. Covey

The purpose of History 298 is to transform history majors from consumers of history into producers of history by practicing the methods used by professional historians--reading, writing, discussion, debate, and the formal presentation of research-- in order to create a historical product. However, the intent is far from a sterile exercise. The research, critical thinking, communication (written and spoken) and analytical skills honed in this course are useful for students, whether they continue on to graduate school, professional programs, or into the job market.

The education of women was meant, like that of men, to socialize them. The goal was to produce women who would be competent wives and mothers. Most women were expected to marry and their educational attainments were patterned on a model similar to that of their mothers. Stress was laid on mother's education their daughters to be moral, virtuous women. A well-educated woman knew how to run a large household, knew the rules of courteous behavior so as to be able to fit into court society, and was expected to nurse the sick, dispense patronage, and, perhaps most importantly, create a proper religious environment for her family. Women were to be competent and self-reliant, but compliant. Their training was to make them good helpmates to their future husbands.

This seminar, which will look at a variety of women from the late medieval well into the early modern period, will illuminate opinions on what education meant for women of various classes, how they were educated, and what various men and women thought about the idea of educating women. The women range from the religious like Margery Kempe and Julian of Norwich, to the professional writer Christine de Pizan, to the humanistically trained Anna Maria van Schurman. For male opinions, Henricus Agrippa and Juan Luis Vives' ideas will be considered.

One major focus of the course is the writing of a research paper. The temptation will be to work on your papers and not bother with the assigned readings. Of course the readings are necessary in order to have discussion, which is a vital part of the course. Just as important, however, is the historical context that is needed to write a successful research paper. In order to put your specific research into its wider context, the readings are essential. Also, depending on your research project, you may be able to use some of the readings as source material for your paper.

303 WOMEN IN MUSLIM SOCIETIES (Hoffman)
Same as ANTH 303, RELST 303, W S 303

This course examines the gender ideologies and social realities affecting the lives of women in various Muslim countries. We will begin with the ideological foundations, paradigmatic female figures, and historical precedents of early Islam, as well as the status of women in Islamic law and the potential for reinterpretation of Islamic law. From there we move to ethnographic studies and first-person accounts of contemporary women in several countries, the processes of social change and emergence of feminist movements, the rise of political Islam, and the challenges posed to women’s human rights in the Muslim world.

317 WOMEN, AUTOBIOGRAPHY AND HISTORY (A. Burton)
Same as W S 317

Despite the fact that women's history has taken off as its own sub-discipline over the past quarter of a century, there are still some questions that go unanswered because women's voices and experiences have been excluded from traditional archives. This course aims to study autobiography as a particularly gendered genre, and as an historical source which can offer us glimpses of the past not available in traditional historical narratives. We will focus on four specific categories of historical significance -- the legacy of slavery in the United States, the Holocaust, the civil rights movements of the 1960s, and the apartheid in South Africa -- and read life-writing which has emerged from those moments as a way of understanding what kind of light attention to a single story can shed on those histories. We will also ask what counts as an autobiography by reading a family history, a novel and a collection of letters alongside more recognizable autobiographies -- each of which raises questions about the limits of one genre for recovering history, each of which requires that we expand our notion of what an archive is in the context of creating a truly expansive, democratic, and usable women's history. The course will be discussion-based, focusing heavily on the "autobiographical" texts under consideration. Students will be encouraged to cultivate critical writing, reading and speaking skills not just in the class discussions, but through a variety of written and/or creative assignments.

493A PROBLEMS IN COMPARATIVE WOMEN’S HISTORY (Pleck)
Same as W S 493

Topic: Readings in U.S. Women’s and Gender and History

The purpose of this course is to introduce graduate students in history and women’s studies to recent scholarship in U.S. women’s and gender history. The course will emphasize readings that examine the intersection of gender, race, class, and sexuality. The course welcomes students doing a preliminary field in Comparative Gender History as well as students who have a general interest in this subject. The readings will include some classics as well as major recent works. Students will become familiar with some of the major historiographical debates in the field. Among the readings for the course will be Nancy F. Cott, Public Vows; Mary Beth Norton, The Devil’s Snare: The Salem Witchcraft Crisis of 1692; and Joanne Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States.

Spring 2003

298G HISTORY OF REPRODUCTION (Reagan)

As the reports and debates about reproductive practices, ethics, and policy that appear in contemporary news reports and political discourse underscore, human reproduction is neither simply a personal nor biological event. This course not only historicizes contemporary concerns, it is designed to introduce students to important themes in the history of medicine and women as well as to a range of historical theories and methods. Topics include midwifery, obstetrics, birth control, abortion, mother and fatherhood, adoption, birth defects, infant mortality, and more.

Although often treated as a “private” family issue, in fact, pregnancy and reproductive topics have long been of great interest to the nation, militaries, and medicine, and subject to state control and political debate. As such, reproduction deserves critical attention. The social status of women has been defined by their reproductive capacity, which has raised important questions about the relationship between biology and society, about what is "natural" and what socially constructed. A number of theorists argue that reproduction is as important to as a society’s mode of production and political structure.

The study of reproduction also sheds new light on the history of medicine and health. We will examine the nature of medical practice, the relationship between physicians and patients, professionalization and competition in medical care, public policy, and the impact of changing technology on medicine and society.

The course is designed around both readings and research. Students will analyze and become familiar with a variety of historical sources in class. Each student will also do their own research in primary sources and write a lengthy, analytical paper on a topic chosen in consultation with the professor. The course will also include one or more documentaries and field trip(s) to the library.

493A PROBLEMS IN COMPARATIVE HISTORY (Burton, A. & Allman)

This course provides a thematic overview of the intellectual questions, methodological challenges and historiographical innovations that arise when gender as a category of historical analysis is brought to bear on colonialism as a world-historical phenomenon. Among the subjects under consideration are the civilizing mission; the subaltern subject; conjugality; the materialities of culture; newly imagined geographies of sex and race; the fate of the nation/state; and the limits of the discipline of History itself.