Syllabus

Colloquium in American Women’s History
History

Margaret Marsh
Dean, Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the Graduate School, Camden
Professor of History

Phone: 856-225-6097
E-mail: mmarsh@camden.rutgers.edu

Office hours by appointment. For appointments, please call Ms. Rodriguez at the above number.

Designed to provide an introduction to Women’s and Gender History in the United States, this colloquium examines the development of the field, explores current scholarship, and analyzes and some of the principal themes in both women’s history and gender history. A reading and discussion course, its requirements include active participation, responsibility for leading one or more discussions, and one historiographical essay (of about 12-15 pages) due at the end of the semester. You will also present a report on your essay, sharing its highlights with the entire class. The focus is of this course historiographical and analytical, with an emphasis on understanding how this area of history has developed and changed over the course of its own history. After a brief look at some of the early works in women’s history, the works that you will be reading as a group, as well as those that you’ll be reading for your individual essays, represent both current trends as well as different ways of ways of writing history.

Students will be expected, it goes without saying, to attend every class, having read the work assigned and come prepared to discuss it. Each week, one or two students will be assigned the role of principal discussant.

In addition to reading and discussion, students will also write a 12-15 page historiographical essay on an area within women’s history chosen in consultation with me. The essays can deal with gender history or with women’s history. Their subjects could be gender and race; gender and class; women and work; women and the family; lesbian history; women and reform; international feminism in historical perspective -- and others. Students will present their principal insights on during the last three weeks of the semester, and share their bibliographies with their fellow students. Final papers will be due no later than the last day of class – of course you can always turn them in earlier – and students will realize that they must have the bulk of the work completed, including their bibilographies, by the time they are scheduled for their presentation.

With the exception of "Woman of Valor," the required books
should be at the book store. "Woman of Valor" is out of print,
but Amazon.com has more than sixty copies available. It is an
important example of a particular type of women's and gender
history, so please obtain a copy this way or check the book
out of a library.

Required Books:

Joan Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (revised edition)

Linda Kerber, Alice Kessler-Harris, and Kathryn Kish Sklar, eds., U.S. History as Women’s History: New Feminist Essays

Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers

Nell Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol

Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture

Ellen Chesler, Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America

Alice Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th Century America

Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America

Schedule of Readings:

1/26 Introductory Class

2/2 Reading: Joan Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (revised edition)

2/9 Linda Kerber, Alice Kessler-Harris, and Kathryn Kish Sklar, eds., U.S. History as Women’s History: New Feminist Essays

2/16 Mary Beth Norton, Founding Mothers and Fathers

2/23 Nell Irvin Painter, Sojourner Truth: A Life, A Symbol

3/1 Kathy Peiss, Hope in a Jar: The Making of America’s Beauty Culture. Professor Peiss will be speaking on this Campus on 3/3, as part of a Women’s History Month Panel on Miss America. I urge all to attend.

3/8 Discussion of presentations and papers. Students will be armed with their proposed bibliographies.

3/15 No Class. Spring Break

3/22 Ellen Chesler, Woman of Valor: Margaret Sanger and the Birth Control Movement in America

3/29 No Class. Students will work on presentations and papers

4/5 Alice Kessler-Harris, In Pursuit of Equity: Women, Men, and the Quest for Economic Citizenship in 20th Century America

4/12 Ruth Rosen, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women’s Movement Changed America

4/19-5/3 Presentations. Papers due no later than (but may be turned in earlier than) 5/3/04