Week 1: Women, Gender, and Women’s History
Aug 23 Introduction to the Course

Aug 25 Gender and Sex: What do they mean? How do they differ?
Jane Sherron DeHart and Linda Kerber, “Introduction: Gender and the New Women’s History,” K&D 1-23
Mary Beth Norton, “‘Searchers again Assembled’: Gender Distinctions in Seventeenth-Century America,” K&D 69-78

Week 2: Native American Women Confront Colonization
Aug 30 Native American Women Before (and After) Contact

Sep 1 Gender and Cross-Cultural Contact
Suzanne Lebsock, “‘No Obey’: Indians, European, and African Women in Seventeenth-Century Virginia,” Hewitt 6-20
Ann Marie Plane, “Creating a Blended Household: Christian Indian Women and English Domestic Life in Colonial Massachusetts,” K&D 29-37
James Brooks, “”This Evil Extends Especially ... to the Feminine Sex’: Negotiating Captivity in the New Mexico Borderlands,” K&D 38-45

Written Reflection #1 due in class

Week 3: Colonial Women – Image vs. Reality
Sep 6 Colonial Womanhood: From the Chesapeake to New England
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives, 1-86

Sep 8 Evidence, Material Culture, and New England Women
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives, 87-163

Written Reflection #2 due in class

Week 4: Variations on a Theme
Sep 13 Race, Class, and Region
Carol Berkin, “African American Women in Colonial Society,” K&D 59-66
Documents: The Law of Slavery, K&D 67-68
Anne Firor Scott, “‘Sisters, Wives, and Mothers’: Self-Portraits of Three Eighteenth-Century Women,” Hewitt 38-56

Sep 15 Women in Extremis
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives, 165-241

Written Reflection #3 due in class

Week 5: Women and the American Revolution
Sep 20 Daughters of Liberty
Online Readings -- https://courseware.vt.edu/users/mmollin/US_Women_I/Daughters_of_Liberty/Index.htm
(access using your Virginia Tech PID and password)

Sep 22 How much of a revolution was it?
Linda Kerber, “The Republican Mother and the Woman Citizen: Contradictions and Choices in Revolutionary America”, K&D 119-127
Catherine Scholten, “‘On the Importance of the Obstetrick Art’: Changing Customs of Childbirth in America, 1760-1825,” Hewitt 78-89

Written Reflection #4 due in class

Week 6: Women’s Lives on the Rural Frontier
Sep 27 A Midwife’s Tale
in-class video: “A Midwife’s Tale”

Sep 29 What can a diary tell us?
Online Reading Assignment

Required Written Reflection #5 due in class

Week 7: Separate Spheres and Gender Roles in Antebellum America
Oct 4 The Cult of True Womanhood
Caroll Smith-Rosenberg, “The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations Between Women in Nineteenth-Century America”, K&D 168-183

Oct 6 Women’s Domestic Labors
Stephanie McCurry, “Women’s Work: The Gender Division of Labor in Yeoman Households of South Carolina before the Civil War,” K&D 145-152
Jeanne Boydston, “The Pastoralization of Housework,” K&D 153-164
Paul Johnson, “The Modernization of Greenleaf and Abigail Patch: Land, Family, and Marginality in the New Republic,” Hewitt 90-104
Theda Purdue, “Domesticating the Natives: Southern Indians and the Cult of True Womanhood,” Hewiit 159-170

Written Reflection #6 due in class

Week 8: White Women’s Experiences in the Antebellum South
Oct 11 The Southern Lady
Reading TBA

Oct 13 Material Culture on the Southern Frontier
Class trip to Smithfield Plantation

Week 9: Black Women and Slavery
Oct 18 Race, Servitude, and Womanhood
Deborah Gray White, Ar’n’t I a Woman?, 13-118

Oct 20 Strategies for Survival
Deborah Gray White, Ar’n’t I a Woman?, 119-190

Written Reflection #7 due in class

Week 10: History Over a Hot Stove
Oct 25 Cooking as History
Reading TBA
Collaborative cooking assignment

Oct 27 Food as Evidence
Offsite class – location TBA

Required Written Reflection #8 due in class (question to be distributed)

Week 11: Leaving the Domestic Sphere
Nov 1 Women and Work
Thomas Dublin, “Building a Community of Labor: Women, Work, and Protest in Lowell,” Hewitt 110-123
Document: Working Conditions in Early Factories, K&D 165-167

Nov 3 Women and Social Reform
Caroll Smith-Rosenberg, “Beauty, the Beast, and the Militant Woman: Sex Roles and Sexual Standards in Jacksonian America,” Hewitt 124-138
Nancy Hewitt, “Women’s Antislavery Activism in Rochester, New York,” Hewitt 139-153

Written Reflection #9 due in class

Week 12: When Prescription and Description Collide
Nov 8 Women’s Opportunities for Advancement: Education and Careers
Catherine Clinton, Fanny Kemble’s Civil Wars, 9-136

Nov 10 How far could one go and still stay within “Woman’s Sphere”?
Catherine Clinton, Fanny Kemble’s Civil Wars, 137-268

Written Reflection #10 due in class

Week 13: From Abolitionism to Women’s Rights
Nov 15 The Emergence of Antebellum Feminism
in-class video: “Not for Ourselves Alone”

Nov 17 What did “feminism” mean?
Documents: Claiming Rights I, K&D 193-200
Judith Wellman, “The Seneca Falls Women’s Rights Convention: A Study of Social Networks,” K&D 200-213
Documents: Claiming Rights II, K&D 214-217
Nell Irvin Painter, “Sojourner Truth’s Defense of the Rights of Women,” K&D 218-219

Written Reflection #11 due in class

Thanksgiving Break – Nov 20-28

Week 14: Other Challenges to True Womanhood
Nov 29 Women and the Westward Journey
John Mack Faragher, “The Midwestern Farm Family at Midcentury”, Hewitt 181-196

Dec 1 Women and the Civil War
Drew Gilpin Faust, “Enemies in Our Households: Confederate Women and Slavery,” K&D 220-232
Lori Ginzberg, “A Passion for Efficiency: The Work of the United States Sanitary Commission,” Hewitt 202-216
Jacqueline Jones, “Freed Women? The Civil War and Reconstruction,” Hewitt 217-233

Written Reflection #12 due in class

Week 15: Women’s History: A Recap
Dec 6 Quilts and History – One last look at evidence and the reconstruction of the past
in-class video: “Hearts and Hands”

Dec 8 Evaluating the history of early American women

Final Portfolio due: Wednesday, December 15th, 9:45 am