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 1900 through today. 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. Thus, acquainting students with the important events and historical actors from the past through primary and secondary source readings, lectures and exams is an essential component in this course. 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 and interesting 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 (30% 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 (30%) and submit two formal papers (30%). One of these papers will be an exercise that includes internet based sources. 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:
Mary Beth Norton and Ruth Alexander, eds., Major Problems in American Women’s History, Houghton Mifflin (1996) chapters 8 and 10-16.
Hasia Diner, Erin’s Daughters in America
Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn of the Century New York
Rickie Solinger, Beggars and Choosers: How the Politics of Choice Shapes Adoption, Abortion, and Welfare in the United States (2001).
Kathleen Blee, Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s
Handouts in class and articles on reserve in the library

Schedule:
Week One - Introduction to course
Video: Mr. Sears’ Catalog
Week Two - Women in the West
Reading Assignment: Norton ch 8
Video: Hester Street
Week Three - Immigrant Women
Reading Assignment: Hasia Diner, Erin’s Daughters in America
In class: Anzia Yezierska, “An Immigrant Daughter Awakens to the Possibilities of the New World,” Modern American Women (2002)
Week Four - Visions of the New Woman
Reading Assignment: Lynn Gordon, “Race, Class, and the Bonds of Womanhood at Spelman Seminary, 1881-1923” History of Higher Education Annual 9 (1989) 7-32 and from The Physician and Sexuality in Victorian America, “The Silent Friends”
In class: Lecture on the Settlement House Movement and Nancy Bertaux, ““Women’s Work” vs. “Men’s Work” in Nineteenth Century Cincinnati,” Queen City Heritage 47 (1989).
Week Five - Working Women
Reading Assignment: Kathy Peiss, Cheap Amusements: Working Women and Leisure in Turn of the Century New York
In class: “Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire,” “The Burdens of Rural Women’s Lives,” “Buffalobird Woman’s Story,” and “The Harsh conditions of Domestic Service”
Week Six - New Women
Reading Assignment: “The ‘New’ Woman: Social Science Experts and the Redefinition of Women’s Roles in the 1920’s” from Wheeler/Becker Discovering the American Past
In class: “Do Women Want National Prohibition?”
Week Seven- Midterm Exam
Week Eight - Women and Racism
Reading Assignment: Blee, Women of the Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s
Video: Clips from Birth of a Nation
Week Nine – The Woman Suffrage Campaign
Reading Assignment: Norton ch 10 and 12
Week Ten – Women and the War
Reading Assignment: Norton ch 13
Video: The Life and Times of Rosie the Riveter
Week Eleven - Women and the Civil Rights Movement
Reading Assignment: Norton ch 14
Video: The Long Walk Home (Women during the Montgomery Bus Boycott)
Week Twelve – Women and Welfare
Reading Assignment: Solinger’s Beggars and Choosers
Week Thirteen – Building a Feminist Movement
Reading Assignment: Norton ch. 15
Video: Step by Step
Week Fourteen – Women’s Choice?
Video: Casting the First Stone
Final Exam TBA

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