HIST 250-02, History of Southern Women, Fall 1998

Abstract

This course will examine the history of women in the southern states from colonial America to the present. Particular attention will be paid to the interaction of race and class in shaping the public roles and private behaviors of women from this region. Students will read in a variety of genres including autobiography, demographic studies, fiction, primary documents, and interpretive historical essays. Topics to be covered include strategies of Native American women in the Chesapeake; female property rights in the southern colonies; women in slavery; gender and power in the Old South; women in the Civil War; black women’s educational and “uplift” strategies; women and lynching; temperance, suffrage, and civil rights activities among black and white women; southern music; and women and poverty in contemporary Memphis.