History/ W.S. 493

History/ W.S. 493
Problems in Comparative Women’s History
Readings in U.S. Women’s and Gender History

Elizabeth H. Pleck
epleck@uiuc.edu
314A Gregory Hall
Office: 244-2079
Office Hours: Fri. 10-noon, 1-2 p.m.
Fall, 2003
M, 3-4:50 p.m.
446K Gregory Hall

This course is a broad overview of historiography in U.S. women’s, men’s, and gender history. It is selective, not comprehensive. The course does not attempt to review some of the basic questions of the field.  This field is now  so huge that no single course can do that.  The reading here includes some “classics” in the field but for most weeks we read articles and books written in the last thirteen years.

The point of this class is to examine one tendency within women’s, men’s, and gender history especially noteworthy since the 1980s—the desire to broaden the field and move away from interpretive categories framed  in relationship to the history of white middle-class U.S. women. The method of broadening has been to interrelate what are perceived as separate categories. These categories are gender, race, class, and sexuality. The second and third weeks of this course will focus on definitions of key terms (sex; race; class; gender; sexuality).  Some readings address these categories in the context of  major events or periods in American history, such as the American Revolution, Reconstruction, or World War II while other writings do not as neatly fit into event or era-focused history. 

During class discussions students will summarize and analyze the arguments of books and articles, assess how well the research methods fit the research question, and think about how the material was organized and a story was told. We will also talk about the theoretical issues the readings raise and about historiographical debates.  Whenever possible, it is a good idea to look up reviews of books we will be discussing.  Because we will be reading more new works than classics, it will be important to use the footnotes in these books and articles to follow the historiography on this subject.

Class Website. The class website is on Blackboard. The address is http://blackboard.cet.uiuc.edu 

Requirements

  1. REPORT. The book and/or articles report—Write a review of the readings listed under Report. The report should be five double-spaced pages long. The review should summarize the book’s arguments, its main strengths and weaknesses, and assess how the book and/or articles add to the required reading  and the topic of discussion for the week. This report should be entered on the class website (Discussion Board) by 5 p.m. of the day before class. A sign up sheet will be passed around for  reports and their due dates. All students are expected to read these reports. The student who has written the report will generally be called on in class to discuss how the book she/he read adds or challenges the reading for the week.

    The basics of a book report

    • Identify the author’s central argument
    • Place the work in the context of other works by historians and identify the author’s contribution to this historiography
    • What does the book cover?
    • Describe the evidence the author uses. Does the evidence support the argument?
    • How is this book organized? Does this organization make sense?
    • How does this author speak to the relationship of gender to sexuality, or class, or race?
    • Is this book worth reading? How important is this book to historical scholarship

    For more about the format of such a review, see Steven Stowe, “Thinking About Reviews,” Journal of American History, 78 (September, 1991), 591-595. JSTOR 20% of grade

  1. COMMENTARY PRIOR TO CLASS DISCUSSION. Submit one page informal commentary on the readings to the class web site by 5 p.m. of the day before class. Grades will be lowered for late postings.  A commentary should be no longer than 300 words.  You are required to submit seven commentaries—choose any seven weeks of reading for your informal commentaries.   You should comment on the questions raised by the readings, the main themes you see discussed in the reading, and mention one question you want to discuss.  20% of grade.
  2. CLASS LEADER.  Lead one class discussion as part of a two person team. Two people should work together in coming up with a list of five to seven tersely worded questions for class discussion. These questions should be posted on the class website by Sunday at 5 p.m. to give other students in the class time to think about their responses. The two class leaders can debate each other, or take different hours of the class or divide the class into two groups.  It is expected that the two group leaders will meet with me in my office hours on Friday to discuss the questions you have devised. A sign up sheet will be handed out on the first class. I will discuss the historiography on the subject briefly before calling on the two class leaders. I will step in to get discussion  back on track, if needed; I will call on the author of the book report for the week;  and I will probably take some time at the end to summarize the points of class discussion that day.
  3. REVIEW ESSAY. Part A. Clare Crowston has asked me to speak at a forum on the question, “Is Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality merely a mantra, now grown very stale, or is it a valuable way of writing women’s, men’s, and gender history? If not very valuable, what should replace it?  And, if it is valuable, provide examples of what is valuable and why?”Answer this question in seven pages with examples from a discrete set of class readings and class discussion. I recommend writing this paper with emphasis on a particular topic and set of readings. This paper is due in class on Nov. 3rd and should be posted to the class website.  15% of grade

    Part B. Read all other student papers, and submit a response to the papers.  Three pages in length, due in class on Dec. 8th.  10% of grade.

  1. Class Attendance and Participation. You are expected to attend every class, having done the reading. Even if you do not write a commentary for the week, you are still expected to have read the books and articles listed on the syllabus, student web postings, and  book and article reports. Your grade will be lowered if you have more than one unexcused absence. 20% of grade.
  2. attend Miller Comm lecture of Professor Gerda Lerner, September 17 and go the luncheon in Greg Hall, 300C with her on Thursday, September 18th. This activity is ungraded.  

These are the books on order for this course at the UI Bookstore and are on reserve in the Graduate History library.

Mary Beth Norton, The Devil’s Snare

Susan Johnson, Roaring Camp

Linda Kerber, No Constitutional Right to be Ladies

Nancy F. Cott, Public Vows: A History of Marriage and the Nation

Alice Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity

Joanne Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed: The History of Transsexuality in the United States

Leslie Wexler, Tender Violence: Domestic Visions in an Age of U.S. Imperialism

The following textbooks provide an undergraduate overview of women’s history. They will provide necessary background for students unfamiliar with the subject matter of this course.

Sara Evans, Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America,  revised edition, 1997—a political narrative of U.S. women’s history

Nancy Woloch, --Women and the American Experience,  third edition, a more detailed and biographical U.S. women’s history textbook

Nancy Cott, ed., No Small Courage: A History of Women in the United States—a multi-  author textbook, originally written for (advanced) high school students

Estelle Freedman and John D’Emilio, Intimate Matters—a topical overview of the history of sexuality in colonial and U.S. history that pays special attention to issues of race and class

For a topical overview of women’s studies and the multiple definitions of feminism, consult Estelle Freedman, No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women.

A daunting graduate preliminary reading list in global gender history is the Rutgers list at http://history.rutgers.edu/graduate/readlistwomenprint.htm

For online reviews of books in women’s history and syllabi, go to H-Women, http://www.h-net.msu.edu

For an online and constantly updated guide to primary and secondary sources in U.S. women’s history, emphasizing web information, look at Ken Middleton, “American Women’s History: A Research Guide” at http://mtsu.edu/’kmiddlet/history.women.html

Schedule of Class Sessions

Aug. 27 Race, Gender, and the Salem Witch Crisis

Mary Beth Norton, The Devil’s Snare

September 1st no class LABOR DAY

Sept. 8 Defining Terms: What is gender? What is biological sex? What is sexuality?

Joanne Meyerowitz, How Sex Changed: A History of Transsexuality in the United States

Report

George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World, 1890-1994, intro, chs. 1-4, 9-10, 12, and epilogue

September 15—Defining Terms: What is class? What is gender (again)? What is race?

No class on Monday, Sept. 15. Class will meet with Gerda Lerner Thursday of this week and will attend her Miller Comm lecture, September 17, 7:30 p.m., Levis, 919 W. Illinois Street. She will lecture on “A Life of Struggle for Justice: Gerda Lerner and Her Political Autobiography, Fireweed

How does gender relate to race and class?

Manuela Thurner, “Subject to Change: Theories and Paradigms of U.S. Feminist History,” Journal of Women’s History, v. 9, No. 2 (Summer, 1997). http://iupjournals.org/jwh/jwhtoc9.html

Gerda Lerner, Why History Matters, 131-198  (to be handed out in class).

Report

Gerda Lerner, Fireweed

September 22nd—The Slave trade, international and domestic, and the development of slavery

Jennifer Morgan, “Slavery and the Slave Trade, 1600-1760,” in Nancy Hewitt, ed., A Companion to American Women’s History

Jennifer L. Morgan, “’Some Could Suckle over Their Shoulder”: Male Travelers, Female Bodies, and the Gendering of Racial Ideology, 1500-1700,” The William and Mary Quarterly, v. 54, No. 1 (January, 1997), 167-192. JSTOR

Edward E. Baptist, “’Cuffy,’ ‘Fancy Maids,’ and ‘One-Eyed Men: ‘Rape, Commodification, and the Domestic Slave Trade in the U.S.,” American Historical Review (December, 2001),  online at http://www.historycooperative.org

Walter Johnson , “The Slave Trader, the White Slave, and the Politics of Racial Determination in the 1850s,” Journal of American History, v. 87 (June, 2000). http://www.historycooperative.org

Report

Martha Hodes, White women, black men: illicit sex in the 19th century South

OR

Deborah Gray White, Ar’nt I a Woman?: Female Slaves in the Plantation South  (New York, 1999), with new introduction

September 29th—Race and gender in the West: the California Gold Rush

Susan Johnson, Roaring Camp

Report

Brian Roberts, American Alchemy: The California Gold Rush and Middle-Class Culture

AND

Lisbeth Hass, “Conflicts and Cultures in the West,” in Nancy A. Hewitt, A Companion to American Women’s History, 132-149.

October 6 Feminism and Citizenship

Linda Kerber, No Constitutional Right to be Ladies: Women and the Obligations of Citizenship

Report

Nancy Isenberg, Sex and Citizenship, chs. 1-3.

October 13 Marriage and Citizenship

 Nancy F. Cott,  Public Vows: A History of Marriage and Nation

Report

Amy Dru Stanley, From Bondage to Contract: Wage Labor, Marriage, and the Market in the Age of Slave Emancipation

October 20  Immigration: Gender and Asian Americans in the late l9th century

Karen Leong, “’ A Distinct and Antagonistic Race’: Constructions of Chinese Manhood in the Exclusionist Debates, 1869-1878,” in Matthew L. Basso, Dee Garceau, Laura McCall, eds., Across the Great Divide: Cultures of Manhood in the United States West

Peggy Pascoe, “The Marriages of Mission-Educated Chinese-American Women, 1874-1939,” Journal of Social History, v. 22 (Summer, 1989), 631-652. Project Muse. .

Martha Gardner, “Working on White Womanhood: White Working Women in the San Francisco Anti-Chinese Movement, 1877-1890,” Journal of Social History, v. 33, No. 1 (Fall, 1999).  Project Muse

Mary Ting Yi Liu, “’ The Real Yellow Peril”: Mapping Racial and Gender Boundaries in New York City’s Chinatown , 1870-1910,” Hitting Critical Mass: A Journal of Asian American Cultural Criticism, v. 5, N. 1 (Spring, 1998),

http://ist-socrates.berkeley.edu/~critmass/v5n1/lui1.html

Report

Judy Yung, Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco

OR

Mari Yoshihara, Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism

OR

Peggy Pascoe, Relations of Rescue: The Search for Female Moral Authority in the American West, 1874-1939

October 27 Gender and Empire

Laura Wexler, Tender Vision: Domestic Visions in an Age of U.S. Imperialism

Report

John Kasson, Houdini, Tarzan and the Perfect Man: The White Male Body and the Challenge of Modernity in America

OR

Gail Bederman, Manliness and Civilization: A Cultural History of Gender and Race in the United States, 1880-1917

OR

Kristin Hoganson, Fighting for American Manhood: How Gender Politics Provoked the Spanish-Ameriacn and Philippine-American Wars

Nov. 3 Gender, Race, and Sexuality during World War II

Karen Tucker Anderson, “Last Hired, First Fired: Black Women Workers During World War II, Journal of American History, 69 (June 1982), 82-97. (JSTOR).

Leissa D. Meyer, “Creating G.I. Jane: The Regulation of Sexuality and Sexual Behavior in the Women’s Army Corps during World War II,” Feminist Studies, 18, No.3 (Fall, 1992), 581-601.

Eileen Boris, “You Wouldn’t Want One of ‘Em Dancing with Your Wife”: Racial Bodies on the Job in World War II,” American Quarterly, 50, 1 (1998): 77-108. Project Muse.

Steve Meyer, “Rough Manhood: The Aggressive and Confrontational Shop Culture of U.S. Auto Workers during World War II, Journal of Social History, v. 36, No. 1 (Fall, 2002). PROJECT MUSE.

Report

Ruth Milkman, Gender at Work: The Dynamics of Job Segregation by Sex during World War II

OR

Alan Berube, Coming Out Under Fire

Nov. 10 Lucy, not June Cleaver: toward an understanding of the 1950s

Estelle Freedman, “Uncontrolled Desires’: The Response to the Sexual Psychopath, 1920-1960,” Journal of American History, 75, Vo. 1 (l987), 83-106. (JSTOR).

Mary L. Dudziak, “Josephine Baker, Racial Protest, and the Cold War,” Journal of American History, 81, 2 (1994), 543-570. JSTOR.

Regina Kunzel, “Pulp Fictions and Problem Girls: Reading and Rewriting Single Pregnancy in the Postwar  United States,” American Historical Review, 100 (1995), 1465-1487. JSTOR.

Joanne Meyerowitz,” Beyond the Feminine Mystique: A Reassessment of Postwar Mass Culture, 1946-1958,” Journal of American History, 79 (1993), 1455-1482. JSTOR.

Report

Ruth Feldstein, Motherhood in Black and White: Race and Sex in American Liberalism, 1930-1965

AND

K. A. Cuordileone, “’Politics in an Age of Anxiety’: Cold War Political Culture and the Crisis in American Masculinity, 1949-1960,” Journal of American History, 87, 2 (September, 2000), 515-545. http://www.historycooperative.org

OR

Rickie Solinger, Wake up Little Susie: Single Pregnancy and Race Before Roe v. Wade

OR

Susan Lynn, Progressive Women in Conservative Times: Racial Justice, Peace, and Feminism, 1945 to the 1960s

Nov. 17  Women’s Sexualities Conference, the Kinsey Institute, Indiana University, Bloomington, Ind.

There will be no class this week. The class is going to attend this conference.Register online and click on the web page for housing arrangements. The class will be taking a field trip to this conference.

The cost of this conference is $50 for registration; c. $60 for a room;  the cost of gas, split five ways and the cost of meals ( The conference will be held at Indiana University, Bloomington, Nov. 13-15). To register for the conference at the group rate—your group is UIUC—go to http://www.indiana.edu/~kinsey/services/2003/conf03.htm

Nov 24 THANKSGIVING BREAK

Dec. 1 Breadwinning, Homemaking and Social Citizenship

Alice Kessler-Harris,  In Pursuit of Equity

Report

Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor

OR

Linda Gordon, Pitied but not Entitled

Dec. 8th Second Wave Feminism

Daniel Horowitz, “Rethinking Betty Friedan and the Feminine Mystique: Labor Union Radicalism and Feminism in Cold war America,” America Quarterly, v. 48 (March, 1996), 1-42. (Project Muse). 

Becky Thompson, “Multiracial Feminism: Recasting the Chronology of Second Wave Feminism,” Feminist Studies, v. 28, No. 2 (Summer, 2002).

Jane Gerhard, “Revisiting the Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm: The Female Orgasm in Second-Wave Feminism and American Sexual Thought,” Feminist Studies, v. 26, No. 2 (Summer, 2000).

Nancy Maclean, “The Hidden History of Affirmative Action: Working Women’s Struggle in the 1970s and the Gender of Class,” Feminist Studies, v. 25, No. 1 (Spring, 1999) http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m0300/1_25/54955658/pl/article.jhtml

Report

Dennis A. Deslippe, Rights, not Roses: Unions and the Rise of Working-Class Feminism

OR

Jane Gerhard, Desiring Revolution: Second-Wave Feminism and the Rewriting of American Sexual Thought, 1920-1982

OR

Kathleen Anne Weigand, Red Feminism: American Communism and the Making of Women’s Liberation