HIST 223-01, Interpretive Issues in American Women's History, spring 2000

Abstract

Beginning with early contact between Native Americans and Europeans, we explore the effects of colonization on Native American gender systems, the nature of Anglo women's status in coastal colonies, and the meanings of witchcraft in seventeenthcentury New England. Next we investigate the impact of the American Revolution on women, the rise of domestic sentimentalism in Victorian America, the nature of gender and race relations in the slaveholding South, and women’s roles in the Civil War. Moving into the late nineteenth-century, we examine the blurring of ‘separate spheres’ within the contexts of westward migration, industrial expansion, and urban growth. This brings us to that kaleidoscopic figure whom historians call the 'New Woman.' A mixture of Victorian legacies and modern behaviors, she leads us into the twentieth century. There we explore the paradoxes of New Womanhood, both Anglo and African- American. Finally, we weigh three pivotal changes in recent American women's history: the impact of World War II, the postwar resurgence of domesticity, and the second wave of American feminism.