This syllabus is subject to change at the discretion of the instructor. It is provided as a model of a typical course presentation, as part of the UCC resubmission process.

Course Description: This course surveys the history of women in America from the colonial period through the nineteenth century. We will look at the relationship between major political, social, and cultural developments and the lives of women, and we will trace the changing definition of gender in history. We also will examine the varieties of female experience focusing on such aspects as race, class, ethnicity, religion, and age. Topics for lecture and discussion include: female deviance, women’s work in and outside of the home, women in the family, women in social reform movements, and suffrage/feminist politics. Our approach will be both chronological and thematic. Content provides a firm foundation for students so that they have a basis on which to make good arguments and ask pointed questions. But historical facts should be treated as the beginning rather than the final goal of historical study. Additionally, historical knowledge helps students to discover things about themselves and their larger cultural identity. It can broaden students’ intellectual and civic horizons by cultivating a historical imagination that encourages them to think in terms of another time and to attempt to step outside of their own experiences. This course is designed to achieve the overall General Education goals and learning outcomes for students in History courses. Students are expected to study the course outcomes as individual learning objectives and apply them to their role in the course as active learners.

Course Goals: Although this course cannot be completely comprehensive, it will enable students to understand the driving forces, formative movements and ideas of the era under consideration while focusing on the specific themes of race, class, ethnicity, religion, and age in relation to American women’s experiences. This course develops an awareness of how current events and the contemporary problems women face -- including patterns of racist, sexist and ethnic discrimination -- evolve from the historical conditions of women in the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries. In the process, students will learn to evaluate and analyze primary and secondary sources. This will help them to gain an understanding of how historians interpret the past while also encouraging students to think historically, to develop their capacity for understanding complexity, and to understand the extent to which people’s opportunities and choices are shaped by their historical contexts. The analytical skills they hone are a tremendous asset to them in their future careers as teachers, radiologists, psychologists, accountants, etc. Additionally, I also hope to create a sense of community by learning interactively.

Groups of five students meet several times over the course of the semester to discuss primary and secondary sources. Groups are sometimes required to hand in an informal essay at the end of each session and other times they will make oral presentations of their findings. The instructor assigns a grade based on the quality of the work submitted. In both oral and written presentations, students must present a clear and concise thesis statement, followed by supporting evidence (with specific references from the documents provided for the assignment), and a concluding summary pointing to the significance of the assignment. These exercises introduce students to historical methods by asking them to reevaluate simple cause and effect explanations of historical events; they begin to see the complexity of both history and historiography. Additionally, when students compare historians’ interpretations and analyze what makes an argument convincing, they can join the debate as they struggle with their own reformulation of current interpretations. These group exercises encourage students to feel connected to others in the class – particularly important on a commuter campus -- and this also provides an opportunity for each student to express his or her thoughts in a large class. Additionally, this method enables students to improve their writing and analytical skills as they jointly construct and critique their essays or oral presentations.

Critical thinking and writing are some of the most important skills I hope my students will acquire. I encourage students to think more critically about the messages they receive through the media today, particularly the printed word that overwhelmingly is perceived as the “real truth” by undergraduate students. The ability to analyze the messages they are bombarded with is only part of the education process. Effective communication is essential to personal and professional development. My classes always include a large discussion component, as well as significant amounts of writing. The goal, of course, is to help students to figure out ways to develop, express, test out, and defend their own worldviews, so that they can learn more about what they want to contribute to our society. Toward these ends, I incorporate a variety of strategies in the classroom and I view essay exams as a teaching tool. While testing whether students have mastered as much content as possible, I also attempt to pose essay questions that make students think about what they have learned in new ways. The ability to reorganize the knowledge they have acquired is an important step in assisting adults in their educational process.

Course Requirements: Attendance at lectures and films and informed participation in class discussions and group work are mandatory (35% of your final grade). Several times during the semester, students work in groups to compose an informal essay with a clear thesis statement and supporting evidence based upon a collection of primary sources. These sources include political documents, newspaper accounts, letters, photos, film clips, etc.. Students discuss the question posed at the beginning of class and analyze the conflicting evidence to complete the assignment. Students must decide for themselves what constitutes believable evidence and construct a persuasive argument in their written and oral work. They soon discover that the “right” answer varies from group to group. Acting as historians, students realize that history is about interpretation, not just a series of uncontested facts. And over the course of the semester they see that minorities, women, and different social classes often experience the same historical era in different ways. Students also take two essay exams (35%) and submit two formal papers (30%). Students are expected to learn and apply the norms of historical citation and narrative presentation, in particular as presented in the Chicago Manual of Style. One papers will be an exercise in assessing the quality of websites that are directly related to the study of American women. Students must choose at least two websites and write a formal paper evaluating their usefulness, authority, accuracy, objectivity, currency and coverage. (Please refer to the library’s “Evaluating Web Resources” site for a full explanation of these terms.) Late papers will be accepted, but will be marked down a grade for each day of lateness. Grades of “incomplete” will be given only with instructor’s permission and only for serious illness or immediate family emergency.

Students are required to know and follow NKU’s Honor Code. The Honor Code is a commitment to the highest degree of ethical integrity in academic conduct, a commitment that, individually and collectively, the students of NKU will not lie, cheat, or plagiarize to gain an academic advantage over fellow students or avoid academic requirements.

If the university cancels classes, assume that whatever was scheduled for the canceled class will be covered the next time the class meets and that the reading and assignment schedule remains unchanged. Modification of the syllabus may occur due to unanticipated circumstances, in which case students will receive maximum prior notification. In addition, students are warned that videos and readings used in this course may contain frank/ graphic/ objectionable language or stark depictions of the human condition.

Required Reading:
Joy Day Buel and Richard Buel, Jr., The Way of Duty: A Woman and Her Family in Revolutionary America, Norton (1984) ISBN 0393312100
Linda Brent (aka Harriet Jacobs) Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: An Authentic Historical Narrative Describing the Horrors of Slavery as Experienced by Black Women
Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention: Women of the Slaveholding South in the American Civil War, University of North Carolina Press
Mary Beth Norton and Ruth Alexander, eds., Major Problems in American Women’s History, Houghton Mifflin (1996) chapters 2,4-7,9 [This book will also be used in His 445/645 next semester]
Handouts in class and articles on reserve in the library

SCHEDULE
WEEK ONE – Introduction and an overview of seventeenth-century English women.
In class reading: a variety of documents from Patricia Crawford and Laura Gowing’s, Women’s Worlds in Seventeenth-Century England: A Sourcebook, London: Routledge (2000).
WEEK TWO - Colonial Chesapeake/ Intro to Salem
Reading Assignment: Debra Meyers, “The Civic Lives of White Women in Seventeenth-Century Maryland,” Maryland Historical Magazine, 94 (1999) 309-328.
In class: “Colonial Economy” handout and witch documents from Major Problems ch. 3
WEEK THREE -Witches, Magic, and Religion in Colonial New England
Reading Assignment: chapter 3 from Elizabeth Reis, Damned Women: Sinners and Witches in Puritan New England, Ithaca: Cornell University Press (1999) (on reserve)
In class: a short excerpt from Carol Karlsen’s book, witch video, and trial transcripts from Anne Hutchinson’s experience in Massachusetts Bay colony.
WEEK FOUR - Native American Women
Reading Assignment: Chapter two (The Impact of Christianity on Native American Women) in Major Problems in American Women’s History, 20-45 and Rayna Green, “The Pocahontas Perplex: The Image of Indian Women in American Culture,” from Ellen DuBois and Vicki Ruiz, eds., Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women’s History, New York: Routledge (1990) 15-21.
WEEK FIVE - Women and the American Revolution
Reading Assignment: Joy Day Buel and Richard Buel, Jr., The Way of Duty
In class: “The Revolutionary Era” handout
WEEK SIX - Women and the American Revolution
Reading Assignment: Chapter four (The Impact of the American Revolution) in Major Problems in American Women’s History, 76-107
Video – Mary Silliman’s War
WEEK SEVEN – Midterm Exam
Library tour and internet instruction for writing assignment.
WEEK EIGHT – The Cult of Domesticity and True Womanhood
Reading Assignment: Chapter five (The Cult of Domesticity) in Major Problems in American Women’s History, 108-137
In class: “Mistress and Slave” handout and letters from the working girls of Lowell Mills from the early nineteenth century.
WEEK NINE – Enslaved Women
Reading Assignment: Linda Brent (aka Harriet Jacobs), Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl
WEEK TEN – Enslaved Women
Reading Assignment: Chapter six (The Lives of Enslaved Women) in Major Problems in American Women’s History, 138-160 and Deborah Gray White, “Female Slaves: Sex Roles and Status in the Antebellum Plantation South,” from Ellen DuBois and Vicki Ruiz, eds., Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women’s History, New York: Routledge (1990) 22-33.
WEEK ELEVEN - Female Activism
Reading Assignment: Chapter seven (Varieties of Nineteenth-Century Activism) in Major Problems in American Women’s History, 161-188
In class: “The Reform Impulse” handout
WEEK TWELVE – Female Deviance and Victorian Sexuality
Reading Assignment: Chapter nine (Victorian Sexuality) in Major Problems in American Women’s History, 217-252
In class: “New York Prostitutes” handout
WEEK THIRTEEN - Civil War Era
Reading Assignment: Drew Gilpin Faust, Mothers of Invention
In class: “Women’s Civil War” handout
WEEK FOURTEEN – Reconstruction / Course Summary
Video: Susan B. Anthony
Final Exam TBA

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