H349B Course Goals

The goals of this course are fivefold:

1) to gain an understanding of women's past experience, particularly in the areas of family, work, and public life;

2) to understand how women's experiences in family, work, and public life have changed over time;

3) to understand the relationship between individual and group experiences, and how ethnicity, race, and class--as well as gender, have shaped women's past experiences;

4) to understand how women have exerted power in their own lives and in society as a whole; and

5) to learn how historians have explained women's past lives, and to think about which explanations you find most persuasive.

Class lectures will form a framework for readings and discussions, and for a generalized understanding of the experiences and group patterns of American women. Additionally, biographies will provide examples of the rich and complicated texture of women's individual lives.

Power--individual, group, and institutional--is a key theme in understanding women's past (and present) lives. To what extent have women exercised individual choices in matters of family, work, or public interest? To what extent are women's opportunities narrowed, broadened, or not affected by gender? What do the lives of the women you read about tell us about individuals and the cultural views regarding women?