History 75500-Women and the Family 19th and 20th Centuries

Professor Barbara Welter
Office: GC-room 5110; Hunter-W1512
bwelter@hunter.cuny.edu
212-772-5487

It is neither possible nor desirable to try to cover 200 years of 51% of the nation’s popular (and, for the history of the family much more than that). We will work both chronologically and thematically. No single textbook is required but a number of books cover a significant amount of the chronological material, including:

Carl N. Degler, At Odds: Women and the Family in America from the Revolution to the Present (1980)
William Henry Chafe, The American Woman: Her Changing Social, Economic and Political Roles, 1920-1970 (1972)
Sara Evans, Born for Liberty: A History of Women in America (1989)
Martha Banta, Imaging American Women: Ideas and Ideals in Cultural History (1987)
Stephanie Coontz, The Social Origins of Private Life: A History of American Family, 1600-1900 (1988)
Steven Mintz and Susan Kellogg, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life (1988)

You should be familiar with the five volumes of The Dictionary of Notable American Women
and the major primary source for the first woman’s movement: the six volume History of Woman Suffrage.

These are some themes and recurring organizing questions for the course:
Is there now, and was there ever, a separate sub-culture for women?
Are women inherently different from men? Is this an a-historical question or does the answer suggest important historical conclusions?
Is “womanhood” itself a social construct?
Are the sources used for the history of women and the family different from sources used in studying other topics in U.S. History?
Is there such a thing as “feminist history”?
Are there parts of U.S. History which are gender-neutral?
Are there some aspects of history which are particularly “good” or “not good” for women? For example, is war good? Is religion good?
In studying the role of women how do you balance the individual (usually through different forms of personal narrative) with the general (from more “objective” sources such as demography?

SYLLABUS

N.B. In any of the following readings you may substitute a similar work for the ones suggested, so long as it has the scholarly appurtenances of notes and/or a bibliography. In each case please pay particular attention to the following: how deeply-researched is the book; how respectful of the individual “voices” is the author? Is there a hypothesis? Is the work primarily historical or presentist? If historical are there any conclusions implied or argued for the present? What sources are used? Are sources from other fields, such as literature, psychology, etc. cited?

August 27th Introduction. Since this course starts in the early nineteenth century, what were some of the changes in the role and status of women and the family brought about by the American Revolution? What aspects of early 19th century American society were auguries for changes in the role of women? What factors such as class, region, ethnicity and religion where particularly marked at the beginning of the 19th century?

There is no class on Monday, September 3rd.

September 10th – Religion; Read ONE of the following:(or a similar monograph):
Mary Ewens, The Role of the Nin in Nineteenth-Century America
Ann Douglas, The Feminization of American Culture
Sandra Stanley Holton, Quaker Women: Emotional Life, Memory and Radicalism in the Lives of Women Friends, 1800-1920
Sudan Hill Lindley, “‘You Have Stept Out of Your Place’: A History of Women and Religion in America
Dana L. Robert, American Women in Mission: A Social History of Their Thought and Practice

Find ONE primary source connected with ONE of the following religions: Shakers, Mormons, Quakers, Christian Science, New Thought

Organizing questions: Was religion a motivating force for woman or a rationalization of nineteenth-century domestic and foreign policy agendas? In what way does religion confer power and in what ways does it limit the power of women? Were any religions particularly “good” for women?

September 17th – Reform; Read ONE of the following:(or a similar monograph):
Robert H. Abzug, Cosmos Crumbling: American Reform and the Religious Imagination
Ruth Bordin, Woman and Temperance: The Quest for Power and Liberty
Barbara Leslie Epstein, The Politics of Domesticity: Woman’s Evangelism and Temperance in Nineteenth Century America
Lori Ginzberg, , Women and the Work of Benevolence: Morality, Politics and Class in the 19th Century
Mary Ryan, Cradle of the Middle Class
Shirley Yee, Black Female Abolitionists

Find a primary source written by a woman abolitionist or for a woman’s abolitionist society
or temperance organization or read Margaret Fuller, Woman in the Nineteenth Century

Organizing questions: What were the causes (short and long-term) for the ante-bellum reform movements? Were women particularly good at reform? Why might they have been considered to be so? Were any of these reforms really successful? How would you measure success or the lack of it?

September 24th – Work
Read ONE of the following (or a similar monograph):
Mary H. Blewett, Men, Women and Work; Class, Gender and Protest in the New England Shoe Industry, 1780-1910
Faye E. Dudden, Serving Women: Household Service in Nineteenth-Century America
Jacqueline Jones, Labor of Sorrow: Labor of Love: Black Women, Work and the Family from Slavery to the Present
K Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Lesiure in Turn of the Century New York
Christine Stansell, City of Women: Sex and Class in New York, 1789-1860
You may substitute a very specific monograph on work in a particular area or a history of women and work over the whole chronological period of U.S. History, such as works by Alice Kessler-Harris and Thomas Dublin

For a primary source read an account of the Sears Case

Organizing questions: Do Women work for the same reasons as men work? How valid are concerns about changes in the family when women work “outside the home”? How do the organizing principles of class, ethnicity and region, as well as of gender, affect work for women and its impact on the family in the 19th century?

October lst – The Home
Read: Richard Bushman, The Refinement of America
Material on the home will be handed out in class.

Familiarize yourself with objects, furniture, and costume from approximately 1850-1920.. There are rooms at the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of the City of New York, The East Side Tenement Museum and the Brooklyn Museum. There are also houses open to the public.
And of course there are many web-sites, books, poetry and songs on the subject.

Read ONE issue of a popular woman’s magazine from 1840 to 1920..

Organizing questions: What objects could be considered to be gender-specific? What does costume tell about class, as well as gender? What dress reforms were considered, and why?
What does “Victorian” mean in the context of the American home? Were these objects,
furniture, and costume part of long-term economic and social trends?

There is No Class On October 8th

October 15th – Women’s Education
Read ONE of the following or a similar monograph:
Rebecca Frankfort, Collegiate Women: Domesticity and Career in Turn-of-the-Century America
Lynn D. Gordon, Gender and Higher Education in the Progressive Era
Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz, Alma Mater: Design and Experiences in the Women’s Colleges from Their Nineteenth Century Beginnngs to the 1950s
_______ The Power and the Passion of M.Carey Thomas
Rosalind Rosenberg, Beyond Separate Spheres: Intellectual Roots of Modern Feminism

Organizing Questions: Henry Adams said that Harvard taught Henry Adams little and that little badly. Could women say something similar? What were the advantages and disadvantages of the “feminization” of certain professions, such as teaching and nursing? Is there any validity to the arguments pro and co single-sex education? If so, what and could you prove it? Should there be
any difference in the education of women and men at any level?

October 22nd – Region
Read ONE of the following (or a similar moograph):
John Mack Faragher, Women and Men on the Overland Trail
Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women and the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War
Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Women in the Plantation Household
Suzanne Lebsock, The Free Women of Petersburg
Julie Roy Jeffrey, Frontier Women
Ann Firor Scott, The Southern Lady: from Pedestal to Politics

Primary Source: Read the diary or autobiography of any woman (approximately 19th to early 20th century) where region played an important role.

Organizing Questions: Region has again bcecome an important marker for understanding history, largely because of the work of such “new” western historians as Patricia Limerick. Do you consider region an appropriate way to study history even in the age of mass communication?
Is the difference among urban, suburban, and rural a regional difference?

October 29th – Suffrage
Read ONE of the following (or a similar monograph):
Ellen DuBois, Feminism and Suffrage: The Emergence of an Independent Women’s Movement in America, 1848-1969
Eleanor Flexner, Century of Struggle: The Woman’s Rights Movement in the United States
Aileen Kraditor, The Ideas of the Woman Suffrage Movement
Susan Marshall, Splintered Sisterhood: Gender and Class Against Women’s Suffrage
William O’Neill, Everyone Was Brave: A History of Feminism in America
R Rosalyn Terborg-Penn, African American Women in the Struggle for the Vote 1850-1920
Primary Source: Read as much as you can in the History of Woman Suffrage volumes.

Organizing Questions: The lst generation of women’s history concentrated on the suffrage as the single most important issue in American women’s history; the second chose to ignore it or at least to dismiss its importance; we are now in (approximately) the third generation of the field: how important was suffrage? Can you pont to any specific changes that resulted from it? In the broader context of change and reform, how does one group prevail upon another to share power? What are “women’s issues” which the suffrage did or did not address?

November 5h – Women’s Lives and Family Life
Read a scholarly biography of any American woman in a field which interests you. Pay particular attention to the kind of sources used and the questions asked of these sources
Be familiar with some of the work done on women’s lives, such as Jill Conway’s Written By Herself, Margo Culley’s American Women’s Autobiography, or Mary Catherine Bateson’s Composing a Life. .

Primary Source: Using the five volumes of The Dictionary of Notable American Women
choose a particular field –education, medicine, politics, literature, etc. –and find ten women’s lives from that field (any chronological period). See if any patterns emerge .:

Organizing Questions: How valid is the personal narrative (spiritual autobiography, memoir, autobiography, diary, letters, etc.) In constructing knowledge of women’s lives? Does the biographer of women have a different task, different sources, different themes than the biographer of men? Accepting the fact that historical truth is a goal and not a reality, which sources do you consider most nearly approximate “truth” in constructing these lives?
What role does the family (as distinct from the individual) play in the variables that make up a woman’s life? Class? Ethnicity? Is memory itself different for women?

November 12th – Popular Culture and Literature
Read any scholarly article published in the last twenty years on women’s popular fiction.

Primary source: read a novel, a book of poems, or a play discussed in the article
Go to the Brooklyn Museum and visit the Feminist Art space.

Organizing questions: Is there such a thing as “chick lit”? What might that mean in terms of popular culture? Is there a “woman’s” art?

November 19th – Race and Ethnicity
Read ONE of the following (or a similar monograph)
Hasia R. Diner, Erin’s Daughters in America: Irish Immigrant Women in the Nineteenth Century
Donna Gabaccia, From the Other Side: Women, Gender & Immigrant Life in the U.S. 1820-1990
Annelise Orleck, Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States 1900-1965.
Mary J. Farmer, Freedwomen and the Freedman’s Bureau: Race, Gender and Public Policy in the Age of Emancipation
Ella Forbes, African American Women During the Civil War
Joyce Ann Hanson, Mary McLeod Bethune and Black Women’s Political Activism
Darlene Clark Hine, A Shining Thread of Hope: the History of Black Women in America
Tara Hunter, To ‘joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors After the Civil War
Jane Rhodes, Mary Ann Shadd Cary: The Black Press and Protest in the Ninetenth Century
Patricia Schecter, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and American Reform 1880-1930
Gayle Tate, Unknown Tongues; Black Women’s Political Activism in the Antebellum Era 1830-1860
Organizing Questions: How can one (or can one) separate race, ethnicity, gender and class in discussing the women in these books?

November 26th – Alternative Lives and Families
Read whatever you can in the following bibliography (or similar scholarly sources):
John D’Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters: A Historyof Sexuality in America
Lilian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in 20th Century America
Carol Groneman, “Nymphomania: The Historical Construction of Female Sexuality,” Signs 19
(Winter 1994), 337-67
Karen V. Hansen, “‘No Kisses Like Yours’” An Erotic Friendship Between Two African-American Women during the Mid-19th Century,” Gender and History, 7 (August 1995), 153-82
Donna Penn, “The Meanings of Lesbianism in Post-War America,” Gender and History, 3 (Summer 1991), 190-203
Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy and Madeline D. Davis, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community
Kathy Peiss, “Charity Girls and City Pleasures: Historical Notes on Working-Class Sexuality, 1880-1920" in Ann Snitow, Christine Stansell, and Sharon Thompson, eds, Power of Desire: The Politics of Sexuality, 74-87
Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations Between Women in 19th Century America,” Signs 1 (Autumn 1975), 1-29 (also in Smith-Rosenberg, Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America)

December 3rd – The “Second” (or possibly third) Woman’s Movement
Read ONE of the following (or a similar monograph)
Flora Davis, Moving the Mountain: The Woman’s Movement in America Since 1960:
Sara Evans Tidal Wave: How Women Changed America at century’s End
__________ Personal Politics: The Roots of Women’s Liberation in the Civil Rights Movement and the New Left
Leila J. Rupp and Verta Taylor, Survival in the Doldrums: The Woman’s Movement in America , 1945 to the Present

Primary Source: Read Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique and, if you have not already read it read Simone DeBeauvoir, The Second Sex

Organizing Questions: How did this movement differ from the women’s movement(s) which preceded it? What, if ay, were the specific changes in American society that this movement accomplished? Is there a “Backlash” as some have suggested? What is “Postfeminism?”

December 10th – Presentation of Research Papers


WRITTEN REQUIREMENTS AND GRADING POLICY
Classroom discussion of reading: 25%
Two brief papers: 20% each
Final Research paper 35%
And presentation

Classroom Discussion: Obviously the first requirement is that you be present. I know that the unexpected can and often does happen, and you cannot attend a class. When that happens please let me know that you will be absent. We can arrange a time to discuss the reading you did for the class. In discussing the reading you are expected to know something about the author, the hypothesis of the book, the kind and depth of sources, and, of course, the narrative content. It is often a good idea to look up a review in a scholarly journal –to augment, not control, your own
reading of the text.

Two Brief Papers: . Each paper should be from 5 to 7 pages long (double-spaced) and have foot or end-notes and a bibliography in Chicago Manual of Style Documentation I format

1. Suffrage Time Line –construct a time line, with a brief paragraph for each event, explaining why it was important; look well before the 19th Amendment for ideas, and put the events in context; comment on the three most significant events in your paper. DUE: October 29th

2. Construct an annotated bibliography of at least seven items on ONE of the following: a)
.Women in World War I; b)Women during the Depression; c)Women During World War II.
Include:at least one government document, one newspaper source, and one scholarly article.
DUE: November 19th

Research Paper: Each paper should be approximately 12 to 15 pages long, including
foot or end-notes and a bibliography in Chicago Manual of Style Documentation I format.

1.You may choose a subject which ties in with other research interests which you have so long as you discuss it with me and get approval.

2. Or you may choose one of the following topics:
a) Choose a major primary source on women in the 19th or the 20th century and annotate it.
This could be a court case, a diary, autobiography, or novel among other things.

b) Choose any country (for which you have the necessary language skills) and write about
The suffrage movement in that country. Compare it where chronologically and historically
Appropriate to the suffrage movement in the United States.

c) Choose a New York institution (Church, hospital, museum, etc.) And write on the role
Of women in that institution, historically and today. Interview at least one woman connected
with that institution.

d) Choose a topic treated in textbooks on U.S. history and not considered to be about women
And explain, with documentation, why it could be so considered.